Posted on 01/29/2006 8:14:03 AM PST by Carl/NewsMax
Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday that Democrats who took money from Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff and who did something on behalf of those tribes have "a big problem."
Dean made the statement apparently unaware that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has reportedly done exactly that.
Under questioning by "Fox News Sunday's" Chris Wallace, Dean claimed that Democrats did no favors for Abramoff's Indian tribe clients:
"Nobody got anything out of the Democrats from Jack Abramoff," the top Democrat insisted. "No Democrat delivered anything and there's no accusation and no investigation that any Democrat ever delivered anything to Jack Abramoff. And that's not true of the Republicans."
But Wallace countered: "So if we find that there were some Democrats who wrote letters on behalf of some of the Indian tribes that Abramoff represented, then what do you say, sir?"
Dean's response: "That's a big problem. And those Democrats are in trouble. And they should be in trouble."
In November 2005 the Associated Press reported that Senate Minority Leader Reid had accepted tens of thousands of dollars from an Abramoff client, the Coushatta Indian tribe, after interceding with Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton over a casino dispute with a rival tribe.
Reid "sent a letter to Norton on March 5, 2002," the AP said. "The next day, the Coushattas issued a $5,000 check to Reid's tax-exempt political group, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. A second tribe represented by Abramoff sent an additional $5,000 to Reid's group. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000 in Abramoff-related donations between 2001 and 2004."
Questioned about the donations in December by "Fox News Sunday's" Wallace, Reid immediately turned testy.
"Don't try to say I received money from Abramoff. I've never met the man, don't know anything," he claimed.
The full exchange between Dean and Wallace went like this:
DEAN: It is possible that some of Jack Abramoff's clients may have decided on their own to give Democrats some money. The key is . . .
WALLACE: I'm sorry. Did you say that you're sure that Abramoff didn't direct them to give that money?
DEAN: No, what I said was that it is possible that some Democrats got money from someone he [represented]. What I'm saying is that Abramoff may not have directed some of this money to Democrats.
WALLACE: In fact, he did. We have evidence of that.
DEAN: But the point is not one Democrat either knew it or acted on it. Nobody got anything out of the Democrats from Jack Abramoff. No Democrat delivered anything and there's no accusation and no investigation that any Democrat ever delivered anything to Jack Abramoff. And that's not true of the Republicans.
WALLACE: So if we find - and we have to wrap this up - so if we find that there were some Democrats who wrote letters on behalf of some of the Indian tribes that Abramoff represented, then what do you say, sir?
DEAN: That's a big problem. And those Democrats are in trouble. And they should be in trouble. [END EXCERPT]
Before McCain Feingold campaign finance reform was enacted into law, most money donated to the DNC was given by individual candidates. The money came from a fairly small number of donors who could contribute unlimited amounts. Donations in those amoutns are now illegal.
One of the last acts of Deans predecessor was to move nearly all of the fund raising staff and their accounts to 527's under the control of Bill and Hillary Clinton. 527s have no limits and don't report to anyone.
The Clinton people put out the word that Dean is not collecting money in the amounts of those who held the job before him. That cannot be done by anyone. But Dean is raising substantial quantities of money and most of it is going to those he promised it. They are quite happy with the major increases in funds from the DNC.
As a result the local Democratic officials love him.
IT WAS THE SAME OLD..BS...THEY THINK IF THEY REPEAT IT
LONG ENOUGH, PEOPLE WILL THINK THEY ARE CREDIBLE...THE
WHOLE DEMOCRATIC PARTY (WHAT'S LEFT) STILL DON'T REALIZE
THAT THEIR PARTY HAS THE "CLINTON CURSE" OR BJ-MANIA...
AND EVERYONE IN THE NATION, EXCEPT THE MASSACHUSETTS
AND CALIFORNIA LIBERALS, UNDERSTAND AND VOTE ACCORDINGLY..
BYE, BYE, DEMS,DEAN, AND TAKE THE DEMS ON THE JUDICIARY
PANEL WITH YOU....THEY HELP..US..THE GOOD GUYS. jake
roflol!
Reid "sent a letter to Norton on March 5, 2002," reported the AP. "The next day, the Coushattas issued a $5,000 check to Reid's tax-exempt political group, the Searchlight Leadership Fund. A second tribe represented by Abramoff sent an additional $5,000 to Reid's group. Reid ultimately received more than $66,000 in Abramoff-related donations between 2001 and 2004."
Reid: "I'll repeat, Abramoff gave me no money. His firm gave me no money. He may have worked [at] a firm where people have given me money. But I have – I feel totally at ease that I haven't done anything that is even close to being wrong."
http://tinyurl.com/79cp6
Mad How Disease.
It's no raving matter.
Abramoff fallout follows Reid on red-state tour
By Donald Lambro
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 16, 2006
snip
Mr. Reid received $30,500 from three Indian tribes for whom Abramoff lobbied in this election cycle, according to a reassessment of political contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), which has compiled campaign funds given to lawmakers by Abramoff, his associates or clients he represented.
However, other public-interest groups report that Mr. Reid has received about $61,000 between 2001 and 2004 from clients represented by Abramoff, contributions that the senator has refused to return because, he says, they were not illegal.
snip
"One of the biggest beneficiaries of Jack Abramoff is Harry Reid," said Utah Republican Chairman Joe Cannon during the Democratic leader's stop in the state.
The response to Mr. Reid's denials "shows that this [scandal] is not limited to inside the Washington Beltway and that Reid and other members of Congress should expect that when they take their show on the road this election season, they'll get questions about whether they got money from [Abramoff] or not," said CRP spokesman Massie Ritsch.
http://tinyurl.com/c96hf
And how does the rest of the quote change anything of substance?
Yeh...it's great to have a hero like Mad How.... he is such a wonderful troll tool for the GOP. Hope the DUmmies don't catch on to it just yet.....please....just 'til 2008 is over is all we ask for our man How to keep crowing on as DNC head....gotta love it.
Did Dean bleach his hair?..he looked much blonder..
Don't you just wish that the TV journalists would have gone after Clinton and Gore with this vigor while they were hauling in the dough from the Chinese.
Have we ever actually seen Howard Dean and Karl Rove in the same room together? Are we sure they are not the same man?
Letting Dean be DNC chair is one of the hugest blunders among all the blunders the rats have tried. Dean doesn't care about anybody but Dean. I fully expect him to use the position as a springboard for another run at the big prize. Which means more entertainment for us.
"Did Dean bleach his hair?..he looked much blonder.."
watch it with the blonde jokes.....lol
Saw this. Towards the end, Wallace reported the money that Harry Reid took. AND THE LETTER HE WROTE TRYING TO INFLUENCE ON BEHALF OF THE TRIBE WHO GAVE HIM 5 GRAND THE DAY AFTER!
WALLACE: Let's talk about lobbying reform. Why do you think it is that the White House is refusing to release all of its contacts with lobbyist Jack Abramoff?
DEAN: I think they're embarrassed. I think, again, the president shaded the truth. He claimed that he didn't hardly know Jack Abramoff, and now we've got pictures, apparently, with the president and Jack Abramoff smiling and laughing and so forth and so on.
WALLACE: But you know, Governor, you know that people take pictures. I'm sure that you've taken pictures with tens of thousands of people you didn't know who they were.
DEAN: Yeah, you can — that's true, and if there's one picture or two pictures, maybe it doesn't make much of a difference in a rope line with a ton of people. But if it's a repeated series of pictures, 10 or 12 of them at different events, you can tell if there's a close relationship or not.
Look, I think the president should release the information about when Jack Abramoff was at the White House. We know that he met now — I think we believe — I believe it's been confirmed that he's met with Karl Rove in the past in the White House.
We need to know who Jack Abramoff met with in the White House and did he meet with the president in the White House. That's public information, and we're putting in a FOIA request to make sure that the American people know the extent of this lobbying scandal. Does it reach into the White House in addition just to the Republicans in Congress?
WALLACE: You and other top Democrats are going after what you call a Republican culture of corruption, but you deny any Democrats are involved. And let me take a look at an exchange of that.
Question, "In the last couple of weeks, but through various Abramoff-related organizations and outfits, a bunch of Democrats did take money that presumably originated with Jack Abramoff." Dean, "That's not true either. There's no evidence for that either."
Governor, it is certainly true that Republicans got twice as much money from Abramoff-related contributions than Democrats did, but Democrats aren't clean in this area either, are they?
DEAN: Yeah, they are pretty clean, Chris, and I'll tell you why. First of all, every dime of Jack Abramoff's money went to Republicans. Not one dime went to any Democrat or any Democratic organization — his personal money.
Secondly, he did direct contributions to mostly Republicans, but a few Democrats. But the Democrats, A, didn't know that he directed that — his clients to give them money and, B, they never produced anything for Abramoff.
The problem the Republicans have with this is that they actually did things. Senator Burns did a number of things for Jack Abramoff in exchange for a contribution. And the proximity of those contributions to the actual act of doing something for the lobbyist — that's what's illegal, and that's what's going to get them in trouble.
There's not one shred of evidence that any Democrat, A, knew that he was getting a contribution from Jack Abramoff and, B, did anything in exchange for it. And that's why this is a Republican finance scandal and not some sort of bipartisan scandal.
Look, historically, we know that both Democrats and Republicans have done things they ought not to do. What we're saying in the Democratic Party is let's put a final stop to that. We're going to get rid of all corporate jet travel, get rid of all lobbying expenses, and golf trips and lunches.
One thing we're going to do that the Republicans haven't even talked about is we're going to stop people putting things in conference committee reports in the dead of night when nobody knows about it.
Here's the cost of this. It's not just dishonesty in government. The real cost is a couple weeks ago the Republicans stuck in a $22 billion tax money giveaway to HMOs. Nobody knew anything about it. That's the problem with corruption. It's not just dishonesty. It costs the American taxpayers billions and billions of dollars. And that is the shame of this scandal.
WALLACE: Governor, we're running out of money. But I just want to press this issue of...
DEAN: Yes, we are, rapidly. So we need a new party controlling Washington.
WALLACE: I just want to ask you about this question of the Democratic involvement. I want to put up something from the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics. This comes directly from their Web page, and it says, "Here is a detailed look at Abramoff's lobbying and political contributions from Abramoff, the tribes that hired him, and SunCruz Casinos, which is a company that Abramoff owned since 1999."
It lists recipients by the amount of money they received. Well, the top two are the Republican campaign committees. The third and fourth biggest recipients were Democratic campaign committees. And if you go down the list, Democrats received more than $1 million from Abramoff-related interests.
DEAN: There's two points to this. First of all, actually, we — the DNC actually got $100,000-some odd. Now, I can assure you Jack Abramoff never directed that money. It is possible that some of Jack Abramoff's clients may have decided on their own to give Democrats money. The key is...
WALLACE: I'm sorry, did you say, I'm sorry. Did you say that you're sure that Abramoff didn't direct them to give that money?
DEAN: No, what I said was that it is possible that some Democrats got money from some of the — yeah. No, what I'm saying is that Abramoff may not have directed some of this money toward the Democrats.
WALLACE: In fact, he did, sir. We've got evidence of that.
DEAN: But the point is that not one Democrat either knew it or acted on it. Nobody got anything out of the Democrats from Jack Abramoff. No Democrat delivered anything, and there's no accusation and no investigation that any Democrat ever delivered anything to Jack Abramoff. And that's not true of the Republicans.
WALLACE: So if we find — and I just want to — we have to wrap this up. But if we find that there were some Democrats who wrote letters on behalf of some of the Indian tribes that Abramoff represented, then what do you say, sir?
DEAN: That's a big problem, and those Democrats are in trouble, and they should be in trouble. And our party, if the American people will put us back in power in '06, we will have on the president's desk things that outlaw all those kinds of behaviors. Right now it's a Republican scandal. Maybe they'll find that some Democrats did something wrong, too. That hasn't been the case yet.
But our reforms in the Democratic Party are going to be aimed at both Democrats and Republicans. We want to clean up Congress, and we will within 100 days of the new Congress in 2007.
WALLACE: Chairman Dean, we're going to follow up on that. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us. And don't be a stranger. You're always welcome here.
DEAN: We'll see you soon. Thanks, Chris.
Howard Dean is a dishonest man of the highest magnitude.
I can't believe he sleeps at night! No conscience!
He is worse than Clinton when the joke was...if his lips are moving...he's lying through his teeth.
Freaking double standard in the media!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's a big problem, and those Democrats are in trouble, and they should be in trouble. And our party, if the American people will put us back in power in '06,
That is the socialist liberals problem...it is all about POWER...POWER...POWER
No constitutional principle! No Founders vision!
Just power-grabbing, lever-pushing/pulling power...how revolting!!!
This is absolutely hilarious. What's gonna be his next backstep?
"But uhm...did any Democrats actually receive a brown envelope personally from Abramoff labeled "bribes"? Y'see, that's the difference. Democrats are pure - and any money they receive from anybody is understood to be completely free of strings...y'know...for the good of the people and all...uhhh gotta run...sorry I can't answer any more questions...Reid's paging me like mad..."
But about 40 percent of the voters, died in the wool Democrats, Dean is a huge hero - he may be a hero put they are not donating to the DNC and that is the babys milk of politics; if the Dems dump him it will be over money
bttt
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