TIME: When Tom Met Jack

[Pirate Smile]

When Tom Met Jack
Inside the cozy relationship between Tom DeLay and D.C.'s most notorious lobbyist. Could it take the leader down?


Sunday, Apr. 17, 2005
It was congress's holiday for memorial Day 2000, and majority whip Tom DeLay's staff thought the boss and two top aides deserved a respite from the arduous hours they had been putting in doing the people's business. They wanted to make sure DeLay's little delegation had the finest of everything on its weeklong trip to Britain—from lodgings at the Four Seasons Hotel in London to dinners at the poshest restaurants with the most interesting people, right down to the best tickets for The Lion King—at the time, one of the hottest shows playing on the West End and one for which good seats usually meant a six-month wait. So DeLay's congressional office turned to someone they trusted far more than any travel agent or concierge: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "He ran all the trips," recalls a former top DeLay aide. "You ask where the itineraries came from, who made all the travel arrangements—it all came out of Jack's shop."
Previous trips had taken DeLay and members of his staff all over the world, but none had been planned quite as meticulously as this one.

Three sources who worked with Abramoff at the time say the majority whip's office ran one of Abramoff's assistants ragged with its constantly changing requests. Indeed, say two of those sources, the whole idea for the expensive London jaunt originated with DeLay aides as an additional stop on a golf outing that Abramoff had proposed to Scotland's famous St. Andrews course.

Abramoff delivered on virtually everything DeLay's staff requested.

"Jack didn't need this to go awry," recalls a lobbyist who then worked with Abramoff at the Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds law firm and who notes that the trip came at a critical moment. Congress was considering legislation (which died a month after the trip) that might have shut down Internet gambling—and jeopardized the livelihoods of some of Abramoff's biggest clients. Two of them—a Choctaw Indian tribe and the Internet gambling company eLottery Inc.—each wrote a check for $25,000 on May 25, 2000, the day DeLay departed, to the sponsor of the trip, the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative nonprofit foundation on whose board Abramoff sat. Those checks would cover most of the cost of the $70,000 junket. Sponsorship by the center made the trip allowable under House ethics rules, which prohibit lobbyists from paying for congressional travel.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1050216,00.html

[Alpharetta]

1. "Values most Americans care about"

The Republican Party. Their values sound like cha ching and feel like an auctioneer's sweaty palm.

[Voltaire99]

8. Heh, nice post. (nt)

[Thor_MN]

2. Interesting picture - you think they are trying to say something?

[truthisfreedom]

3. sometimes a cigar is just rethuglican corruption. especially a contraband

Cuban cigar.

[Robert Oak]

4. if only this image put Delay where he belongs

in prison being someone's bitch...

that's what this image looks like.

[slor]

5. Yeah, he is saying something alright...

something along the lines of "As far as I am concerned, poor Americans are sleeping with da fishes!".

[Cheney Killed Bambi]

6. Cash for Lobbying Favors

That's what this is all about -- an obscenely plush spread at the Four Seasons in exchange for going easy on internet gambling companies. Petty corruption at its finest.

[amber dog democrat]

7. I'd like to know more about on line gambling -

I don't have money to waste on it nor do I know anyone that does. How much of a problem are these firms. As far as DeLay is concerned, he is going down - but god knows where he will re surface and what sort of lobbyist he will become.
Evil no doubt.

[Voltaire99]

9. When even Time is talking about your downfall...

...you can't even count sycophants as your friends.

[Alpharetta]

10. But Ann Coulter is on their next cover

This is noise. No worse than the White House outing a CIA operative who was looking for WMD evidence. America won't even notice.

[Voltaire99]

14. Good point

I hardly think Time is having any epiphanies or shifts in allegiance--merely that Delay has lost has halo.

[JoFerret]

11. ...and when Jack met Ralph

Good NYT story today on Ralph Reed and right-wing purists in dismay over sleazy deals with Jacko over gambling and casinos.

[Toots]

12. I blame all of this on Minorities

If only the Minorities had not had all military slots filled up during the sixties Delay may have learned something. Now he is just plain screwed up and it's Minorities fault. :silly:

[Hamlette]

13. the rate for a standard room @ 4 seasons is over $700 per night

just what most of us pay when we go to London for Memorial day.