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The Justice Department is prosecuting the legendary lobbyist Jack Abramoff on felony conspiracy charges. Again.More than 14 years after he pleaded guilty in the biggest Washington lobbying scandal in a generation, Abramoff has agreed to enter guilty pleas on charges of criminal conspiracy and failing to register as a lobbyist for his role in two separate schemes, according to the Justice Department.SNIPBut he didn’t entirely leave the influence industry. In 2016, he was recruited by a Romanian consultant to help set up a meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the president of the Republic of Congo. (The effort...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Jack Abramoff, a once-powerful lobbyist who spent time in federal prison for fraud and corruption, has been charged in a San Francisco court in an investor fraud case involving cryptocurrency and lobbying disclosure, federal authorities announced Thursday. U.S. Attorney David Anderson said Abramoff, 61, of Silver Spring, Maryland, has agreed to plead guilty to criminal conspiracy charges and a criminal violation of the Lobbying Disclosure Act in the case involving a cryptocurrency called AML BitCoin. Anderson said the charges were the first brought since Congress in 2007 amended the act to address lobbying abuses and undisclosed...

WASHINGTON - David Margolis, a lawyer at the Justice Department for 40 years, was named Friday to oversee a special prosecutor's investigation of who in the Bush administration disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer. Margolis, whose title is associate deputy attorney general, is taking the place of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, whose last day of work was Friday. Comey will be Lockheed Martin's new general counsel. Comey made the designation of Margolis. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has stepped aside from the probe because he was White House counsel when Valerie Plame's name was leaked in 2003 and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A lawyer for former media baron Conrad Black urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to overturn his fraud conviction, and several justices asked whether the federal law at issue was too vague. The Canadian-born Black, a member of Britain's House of Lords, has been in prison since March 2008, when he began serving a 6 1/2-year sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice. Attorney Miguel Estrada, representing Black and two ex-colleagues who were found guilty of defrauding shareholders of one-time newspaper publishing giant Hollinger International Inc, argued before the Supreme Court that all convictions in the...

When the Democrats adopted the "culture of corruption" meme as their campaign theme earlier this year, we noted that the culture hardly respected party lines. The leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, Harry Reid, took contributions from clients of Jack Abramoff and intervened on their behalf at least four times, and Abramoff hired one of Reid's staffers and started holding fundraisers for the Senate Minority Leader in Abramoff's offices. Now COGirl at Hang Right Politics points us towards a Los Angeles Times report on the "culture of corruption" surrounding Harry Reid and a new real-estate development outside of Las Vegas....

Jack Abramoff's political confession, "Capitol Punishment," promises to provide a respite from daily reports of government corruption, civil liberties violations, abuses of power, constitution shredding, mad power grabs, cover-up, phoniness and lies emanating from the current White House. He sounds like a one-of-a-kind guy: "a power-lifting, football playing, Orthodox Jewish, right wing Republican opera buff. You know the type." It's good to know that his ordeal didn't rob him of his sense of humor. Abramoff was exhibit A-Z in the museum of corrupt Washington types: homo-lobbyist. What makes that laughable is the suggestion that any one person sits at the...

Investigative reporter Susan Bradford has filed a small-claims court lawsuit in Virginia against The Huffington Post and The New York Times, alleging that the publishers plagiarized her work on the Jack Abramoff scandal in 2008. The civil suit was filed September 1 in Fairfax County, Va., a close-in suburban county near Washington, D.C. Bradford told The Daily Caller that she entered into a verbal agreement with Nico Pitney, Politics Editor of The Huffington Post, for payment of $12,000 in exchange for a series of seven articles about the scandal. She alleges that she submitted the articles and that HuffPo rejected...

Iran's Oil Mafia April 16, 2007 Frontpagemagazine.com Hassan Daioleslam Robert William (Bob) Ney is a current federal prisoner and a former Ohio Congressman from 1995 until November 3, 2006. Ney pled guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements in relation to the Jack Abramoff lobbying and bribery scandal. Ney reportedly received bribes from Abramoff, other lobbyists, and two foreign businessmen - a felon and an arms dealer - in exchange for using his position to advance their interests. Conspicuously missing from this dossier of disservice to the country was Ney’s assistance in the creation of a Washington-based lobbying...

Here is video of CNN’s Rick Sanchez relishing the opportunity to report that Jack Abramoff is out of prison and is now working in a Baltimore area Pizza Parlor. Sanchez cracks several clever lines in reporting the story, such as Abramoff “rolled in dough” all those years, and now he is “rolling the dough.” How sharp Rick is. I post this because it says a great deal about Sanchez. Here is a man who has served four years in prison and is now trying to start his life over on the outside. Abramoff should be praised for getting off his...

For a decade, Tom DeLay ruthlessly enforced Republican rule in Washington with such vigour that he was nicknamed "The Hammer". But the party's former leader in the House of Representatives will this month launch a national grassroots movement to combat the liberal activists who he believes outfoxed and outmanoeuvred Republicans to win the 2006 mid-term elections. Mr DeLay, who revelled in his reputation as a no-holds-barred Washington operator as the party's chief whip and then majority leader from 1995 to 2005, aims to instil an army of conservatives across the country with his political street-fighting skills. Tom DeLay: 'I have...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to four years in federal prison Thursday for his corrupt lobbying activities, which led to the downfalls of a congressman and several other Washington officials.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose corruption scandal shook up Washington's power elite and contributed to the Republican loss of control in Congress, was sentenced on Thursday to four years in federal prison. Judge Ellen Huvelle issued the sentence on conspiracy and other charges after federal prosecutors recommended leniency due to Abramoff's cooperation in pursuing corruption cases against lawmakers and former administration officials. He faced a maximum of 11 years under a plea deal reached in 2006.

This is an upcoming book, available on Amazon.com for pre-sale,presumably due to release closer to the November 2008 election to do more harm to McCain. Here is the book description, as provided on Amazon: The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Jack Abramoff (Hardcover) by Gary S. Chafetz (Author) Product Details Hardcover: 480 pagesPublisher: Martin & Lawrence Press (September 5, 2008)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 097738988XISBN-13: 978-0977389889 Product Description Gary Chafetz is a liberal Boston journalist who set out to chronicle the scandal involving conservative gun-for-hire and super-lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Instead he uncovered a Shakespearean tragedy of deceit, betrayal and political...

The Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals today overturned the conviction of former Bush administration official David Safavian, who was entangled in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and ordered that he should be given a new trial.

U.S. Senate candidate Mark Udall took $1,500 in contributions from two firms that once employed disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Udall's campaign spokeswoman Taylor West said the donations from the companies' political-action committees to the Eldorado Springs Democrat's congressional campaigns were legal. But, she said, Udall plans to donate the $1,500 to an organization in the Marianas Islands that assists victims of human trafficking. Abramoff and the islands have become an issue in Udall's Senate race against former Congressman Bob Schaffer... Schaffer's campaign manager, Dick Wadhams, ripped Udall on Wednesday, questioning why he waited to return donations he received in 2000...

Touchy, touchy, Chris! Palpably stung by Ken Blackwell's observation that Republicans had lost their way by running like Reagan but governing like Carter, Chris Matthews -- former speechwriter to the president from Plains -- cracked back by playing the Abramoff card and claiming Republicans are more corrupt than Dems. Blackwell, the very impressive former Secretary of State of Ohio and past candidate for Buckeye state governor, was Matthews' guest on this evening's MSNBC election coverage. Blackwell was discussing what it would take for Republicans to win in 2008. KEN BLACKWELL: My view is this, Chris, that we got off track....

According to the liberal website Raw Story, and confirmed by examining Federal Election Committee records, top brass at Greenberg Traurig, the law firm convicted lobbyist Abramoff worked for between 2001 and 2004, have given thousands of dollars to Barack Obama's campaign

One current permathread on Big Orange is that Krugman and Obama are feuding or having a vendetta. Which, when you take a step back, is bizarre. That movement conservatives and Villagers like stone Bush enabler William Kristol, like David Brooks, Broderella, and Andrew Sullivan are all good with Obama isn’t even mentioned in passing by Obama’s fan base. And yet those same enthusiasts spend inordinate amounts of time vilifying Paul Krugman, a true progressive who was there for us from the earliest dark days of the Bush regime. Curious. What’s really happening? Krugman doesn’t have a problem with Obama; Krugman...

Congress is trying again to exert more control over the Northern Marianas, this time minus the interference of jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who for years dissuaded lawmakers from tinkering with the troubled Pacific islands. Legislation that could clear the House in December would apply federal immigration and labor rules to the U.S. Commonwealth of The Northern Mariana Islands, which in the past three decades of local control has been tainted with charges of sweatshop and human trafficking abuses. The bill is opposed by commonwealth Gov. Benigno Fitial, who says it ignores recent improvements in labor standards and could cripple attempts...

New revelations about Republican ties to convicted influence-peddler Jack Abramoff have brought to the fore once again the unfortunate specter of public corruption as two congressmen, John T. Doolittle (R-CA) and Rick Renzi (R-AZ) were forced off their respective committees when it came to light they were under FBI investigation. It is a sad and by now all too familiar story. It is also infuriating because as a former White House budget analyst, I know full well that the kind of influence peddling highlighted in the Abramoff scandals is only noteworthy because Mr. Abramoff and his conservative clients got caught....