04-23-2005

Lobbying & Law - Abramoff's DeLay Connection

Peter H. Stone (Email this author)
© National Journal Group, Inc.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff got to be good friends with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, with some inside help.

In September 1996, after what sources say was a golf date, Abramoff dashed off a thank-you note to DeLay's then-chief of staff, Ed Buckham. "I hope this finds you well," Abramoff wrote to Buckham. "Friday was fun. I hope we can get together again soon."

In the note, Abramoff added that he wanted to remind Buckham of the issues facing three of his biggest clients: the Mississippi Band of Choctaws, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and a wealthy group of Puerto Rican businessmen seeking statehood for the island. Abramoff listed his clients' concerns, including the Choctaws' worries about a particular appropriations measure in Congress. Abramoff described the measure as "anti-tribe," and asked Buckham to help squelch it.

The note was penned at the start of what turned into a long friendship between the two men, and one that helped Abramoff gain considerable leverage with DeLay. The ties were later cemented on overseas junkets that took Abramoff, Buckham, and DeLay to such far-flung spots as the Mariana Islands, Russia, and Scotland.

Abramoff's friendship with Buckham underscores how the once high-flying lobbyist built his business by forging ties with top congressional aides, a few of whom worked for DeLay. These aides helped Abramoff when they worked on the Hill, and some of them later became his business partners. Buckham, for example, became an Abramoff ally in both lobbying and fundraising ventures.

Sources say that Abramoff had a hand in shaping Buckham's early lobbying career after Buckham left DeLay's office in 1998 and set up his own firm, the Alexander Strategy Group. According to sources, when Buckham moved into the lobbying business, Abramoff, who was then at Preston Gates & Ellis, shared some clients with the fledgling lobbyist to help him jump-start his firm. The clients included the Choctaws, the Northern Marianas, and the Puerto Rican business interests.

Neither Abramoff, who is now under investigation by a federal grand jury, a federal interagency task force, and two Senate panels for allegedly bilking several Indian tribes out of tens of millions of dollars, nor Buckham, would comment for this story.

Lobbying sources point out that by doing PR and grassroots work for Abramoff clients, Buckham did not have to register as representing those clients. A lobbyist who talked with Abramoff at the time recalls Abramoff saying that in the first year or two after Buckham left the Hill, Abramoff's clients paid him as much as $500,000.

One lobbyist close to Abramoff recalls that Abramoff's promise of help was important when Buckham was considering his options on K Street and weighing whether to open his own shop or go with a big firm. "Jack reassured Buckham that he could help him," recalled the lobbyist. Abramoff was "trying to talk Ed into going independent," this lobbyist said, lest the former DeLay chief of staff join a competing firm where he might be less useful to Abramoff.

A lobbyist who is close to DeLay's office recalls how the Buckham-Abramoff relationship ripened. "Jack needed Ed for access to DeLay, and Ed needed Jack for his business acumen," the lobbyist said. Said a former GOP leadership aide, "When Ed left, he wasted little time in capitalizing on his relationship with Jack."

Former lobbying colleagues say that Buckham helped out with advice on some transportation appropriations issues that the Northern Mariana Islands lobbied for successfully in the late 1990s. In another instance, when the Choctaws tried to fend off competition to their Mississippi casino from the Poarch Creek Indian tribe in Alabama, Buckham lent a hand to Abramoff and Abramoff's partner Michael Scanlon, another former DeLay aide who was Abramoff's grassroots and PR associate on several Indian casino accounts.

To be sure, Buckham, during his time in DeLay's office, had already gained firsthand knowledge of Abramoff's clients, and had learned a few tricks from the lobbyist. Abramoff lobbied hard -- and got DeLay's help -- in a successful effort to preserve the Mariana Islands' exemption from U.S. minimum-wage laws, for example.

Early on, Buckham also displayed a talent for schmoozing with Abramoff's and DeLay's friends. When a group of top officials from the Marianas came to Washington in April 1997, Buckham rolled out the red carpet. In an e-mail to Buckham, one of the officials, Ben Fitial, profusely thanked him for his hospitality, noting that "DeLay was also very kind to allow our group to virtually take over his office yesterday."

In late 1997, Buckham went to the Marianas with DeLay and Abramoff, where colleagues recall that he was thrilled with the lifestyle that Abramoff opened up for him. One former Hill aide recalls that Buckham sounded giddy, as though "Ed had a new girlfriend," when he talked about Abramoff and the Marianas. But press reports in the U.S. about partying by lobbyists and staffers on trips to the Marianas created some angst among members of Congress.

Specifically, sources say that then-Chief House Deputy Whip Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., was upset by the reports. "The speaker was personally uncomfortable with Buckham's overly aggressive style," recalls one former GOP leadership aide.

Further, sources say that Hastert was uneasy about Abramoff's and Buckham's roles in a controversial House vote in March 1998 in which DeLay backed a measure giving Puerto Ricans the right to hold a referendum on statehood. Abramoff had lobbied hard for the measure, and sources say that Buckham also helped to build support for it.

Many GOP members and operatives thought the issue was a political loser. "The 1998 vote was opposed by 90 percent of the GOP operatives because [Puerto Rican statehood would mean] six additional seats for Democratic congressmen," said one GOP lobbyist. The measure squeaked through the House by one vote, but never made it through the Senate.

Two other lobbyists point out that some of the island's businessmen who were represented by Abramoff soon stepped up their backing for the House GOP. For instance, a political action committee called NewStar, which was affiliated with the family of Hernan Franco and other Puerto Rican donors, kicked in some $68,500 in contributions during the 2001-02 election cycle, mostly to GOP members of Congress. DeLay and Reps. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and John Doolittle, R-Calif., received $5,000 apiece from the PAC during that time.

Franco also pumped money into other enterprises with ties to Abramoff and his K Street allies. According to documents released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Franco wrote at least two checks totaling $60,000 to the American International Center, a shadowy Delaware-based think tank run by Scanlon; the center also received almost $2 million from two Indian tribes, the Choctaws and the Louisiana Coushattas. Sources say that Abramoff, who had moved to the law and lobbying firm Greenberg Traurig in early 2001, asked his Puerto Rican clients to send their payments for Abramoff's lobbying fees to Scanlon's think tank.

Along with their joint efforts on behalf of Puerto Rican statehood interests, Buckham and Abramoff also cooperated on other lobbying projects where their clients' interests intersected. In August 2001, for instance, DeLay hooked up with Abramoff and Buckham in Kuala Lumpur, where the Texan was on a trip sponsored by the Heritage Foundation. The lobbyists' itinerary happened to put them in the same place as DeLay.

Abramoff had recently inked an unusual deal to represent the government of Malaysia, which was under fire for human-rights abuses and for anti-Semitic comments by its prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad. The deal required Malaysia to pay $1 million a year to Scanlon's think tank, which in turn paid Greenberg Traurig for the services of Abramoff and a few other Greenberg partners, including former DeLay aide Tony Rudy.

For his part, Buckham in late September 2001 signed up as a subcontractor to Belle Haven Consultants, a Hong Kong-based firm that was helping Malaysian business interests buff their country's image following the September 11 attacks on the United States. That relationship brought in $620,000 over two years to Buckham's firm.

In May 2000, on one of DeLay's more lavish junkets, Abramoff and Buckham escorted the Texan and two of his top aides, Susan Hirschmann and Rudy, on a trip to Scotland and England. This trip, which included a meeting with former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and golf at the famed St. Andrews Links, cost close to $70,000 and was officially sponsored by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a think tank that boasted Abramoff as a board member.

But some $50,000 of the cost was actually paid by two Abramoff clients -- one of them the Choctaws -- who chipped in $25,000 apiece to the center. Further, in an apparent violation of the ethics rule that bars lobbyists from paying for travel for House members or staffers, Abramoff billed Preston Gates for $13,318 in expenses, including more than $4,285 to pay for the DeLays' stay at the Four Seasons Hotel in London. A DeLay spokesman has said that DeLay "properly disclosed the expenses that the national center provided us."

While Buckham and Abramoff mainly strengthened their ties around DeLay projects, fundraising, and lobbying clients, Abramoff's 1996 thank-you note alluded to another link between the two men. In concluding his letter, Abramoff, an Orthodox Jew, used a religious flourish that likely strengthened his bond with Buckham, a Christian minister. It was the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, and Abramoff wrote: "Today, all I can do is pray, but, as you know, prayer is really the only important thing any of us can do. It is all in the hands of Heaven, though we can help move things along, too."

 

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