A really bad crook in the Abramoff cabal just pleaded guilty. A big crook.

[Robbien]

The biggest one yet in Bush's administration to be charged.

But the "The Post off-leads and everybody else stuffs news that a former Deputy Secretary of the Interior pled guilty to lying to a Senate committee about the extent of his involvement with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. J. Steven Griles is the 10th person to face criminal charges in the Abramoff probe. He's expected to receive a 10-month sentence."

STEVEN Griles spent much of his career making it easier for out-of-state coal corporations to blast the majestic crests off mountains in West Virginia and elsewhere.

He was deputy chief of the U.S. Office of Surface mining during the Reagan-Bush administration in the 1980s. Then, while Republicans were out of power in the 1990s, he was a top lobbyist for the coal industry.

Incredibly, his old lobbying firm paid Griles $568,000 while he was No. 2 at Interior. He tried to sabotage federal studies into the damage caused by mountaintop removal mining — ordering the researchers to focus instead on “streamlining coal mine permitting,” Ward reported.

Vanity Fair magazine summarized the situation in a report titled “Sale of the Wild.” It detailed West Virginia cases in which Griles blocked pollution actions against coal companies. It recounted how he ordered federal inspector Jack Spadaro to reverse his charges against a mining firm, and suspended Spadaro when he refused. The inspector said he met with Griles about the charges “and explained why I could not vacate them. He became enraged, his face got red, he was almost spitting. I knew then that this was a different kind of animal.” Spadaro appealed his suspension and won.

But he didn't go to jail for any of the above excerpt, he went to jail for lying that he knew Abramoff. He is not going to jail for any corruption he and Abramoff may have done, he is just going to jail because he said he didn't know Abramoff.

For ten months.

Then case closed.

There is so much here unreported and unpunished, but the story on Griles guilty plea just vanished off most of the left side of the web. Just thought it deserved at least one more thread before the Griles story disappeared altogether.

[Blackhatjack]

1. Yep the corrupt officials of the Bush Administration keep on coming...

but I guess the MSM does not consider that to be significant news.

[damntexdem]

7. Oh, why should the MSM bother with these convictions ...

when Dubya will just pardon the perpetrators? ;-)

[robinlynne]

2. Thank-you! I agree wholeheartedly. What he was lying about, was also the fact

that abramoff paid him (his girlfriend) 500,000, to shut down the casino. he, griles, got all the senate signatures necessary to do so. No fraud or bribery charges! I think this is another example of a placed prosecutor. Also I find a parallel between this case and Fitz's case, where people are guilty of huge crimes and only charged with perjury or obstruction of justice. only charged with lying about their crimes, and not the crimes themselves. Maybe Fitz is not such a great hero after all.

[Robbien]

3. It is amazing to know that Abramoff is the little fry in this whole mess

Abramoff is presented as a big type gangster, but he is small potatoes in comparison to people like this Griles.

And Griles will only get ten months, and get to spend half that time at home with some ankle jewelry.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

4. That's supposed to be justice?

Or is it an example of the farce that is our justice system?

[Robbien]

5. This is one of the USA's they decided to keep

Look at how tough they are on Griles

Prosecutors dropped earlier allegations that Griles did anything improper to help Abramoff or had gained anything of value from the former Republican lobbyist. The agreement does not require Griles to help investigators with their grand jury probe.

Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher said the case _ the ninth conviction in the Abramoff investigation _ shows the Justice Department is willing to go after "public corruption at all levels of government."

Yeah right real fair, ten months for ripping tens of millions away from Indian tribes.

[loudsue]

6. The case against Griles needs to be reviewed by Congress,

to see if this wasn't part of the issue of the purge for political reasons. I think the way this case was handled is part and parcel of what the committee investigations are uncovering. They're putting people in who will go easy on republicans who are guilty of crimes against the taxpayers.

Does anyone know if Congress can recommend a case be reviewed by a different court for this type of thing?

:kick:

On edit: I didn't word that very well, but it's the best I can do right now! :rofl:

:kick:

[Robbien]

8. I don't believe so. Just read Wampum's entry and she is real sad/mad

Wampum has been following this case really close, for obvious reasons.

Griles, Federici and Abramoff

The scope of the Griles, Federici and Abramoff scheme was not limited to a few casinos. It included defrauding the Federal Minerals Management Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and of course, Tribal Governments.

For reasons that either pass understanding, or are patently obvious, the media and its non-tribal alternatives construe Abramoff et alia as a morality play in which Indian Gaming alone occupies the central stage.

Similarly, the political control of US Attorneys, manifested in the Gonzales Eight, is construed as partisan voting rights, overlooking the peculiarity that six of the eight fired US Attorneys had significant MMS and Tribal lease prosecution responsibilities.

Griles was the big fish. He's not required to cooperate with the continuing, now gutted, federal investigation of the Abramoff network.

They won.
http://wampum.wabanaki.net/vault/abramoff_the_injuns/

[NYC]

9. You worded it well enough that I understood what you said.

Why not? It would be an injustice if they did not review this case. Perhaps there is some hope here.

[PhilipShore]

10. I disagree...

because there is a conflict of interest, in that Congress itself is involved in the scandal. I am not a lawyer, but I think the International Criminal court (ICC) is by far the only forum possible -- to give all the Republican "rule of law" breakers a fair hearing.

[Robbien]

11. Also, on those royalties that Exxon, Shell etal didn't pay to US

Funny, right before Griles came to become second in charge of the Bureau, Chevron and Shell had paid him as an expert witness on their behalf in an earlier private lawsuit on royalty fraud. Upon arriving at the Bureau Griles ordered his staff auditors to spend less time looking for royalty fraud.

And now we are out billions.

Griles is going to serve a whole ten months.

The more one looks at Griles the more one really suspects this USAttorney.

[ClayZ]

12. The old saying, "Liars never win".... does not apply in bu$hworld!

ARGH!

[MagickMuffin]

13. Check out my comic about this on February 26

I also have the Letters John Conyers and Rham Emmanuel they sent to Fredo Gonzales last month...

He was not only helping Abramoff but also Conoco Phillips. Griles and his girlfriend Sue Ellen who worked in the legal division of the EPA bought a Beach house with Donald Duncan VP @ Conoco. But according to the WaPo article I read yesterday they didn't do anything ****Wait for it**** WRONG:shrug:

Norton's deputy chief of staff, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, provided ethics advice to Griles and advised Norton on the inspector general's allegations. She also sent a memo to the Office of Government Ethics about the case. Investigators learned after their report was issued that Griles and Wooldridge had been dating since February 2003, people familiar with the investigation said.

Wooldridge eventually became assistant attorney general for environment and natural resources. She resigned in January.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/23/AR2007032300581_pf.html

I think there needs to be MANDATORY SENTENCING for government fraudsters and gangtas. Hell people who smoke pot and get caught serve longer jail terms than these thugs.

Anyway here's a small version of my comic. Oh and I hope you enjoy Don's pic, I think I captured his ESSENCE...:rofl:

[CrazyOrangeCat]

14. "Oh daddy won't ya take me back to Muehlenburg County

Down by the Green River where Paradise lays?"
"I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in askin'
Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

-John Prine, 1971

K&R for the misused people of the eastern mountains.