Scandal May Upset Rules of Enrichment in Congress

“Lawful lobbying does not include paying a public official a personal benefit with the understanding -- explicit or implicit -- that a certain official act will occur. That’s not lobbying; that’s a crime.”

Alice Fisher, Justice Department official

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To many, the scandal surrounding fallen super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff has the ring of business as usual.

After all, it’s no secret that lobbyists hoping to gain favorable treatment for their clients offer not only campaign contributions but favors. And some members of Congress accept both.

But Abramoff’s agreement Tuesday to plead guilty to federal crimes and cooperate with prosecutors -- in what could be the farthest-reaching corruption scandal to hit Congress in a generation -- is focusing new attention on the rules of the influence-peddling game, and the line that separates the illegal from the merely unsavory.

That line, as it turns out, may be moving.

Traditionally, bribery cases involving public officials are among the most challenging for the government to crack. Prosecutors must prove that a lawmaker would not have taken a certain action if he or she did not receive the benefit that was given -- a so-called “quid pro quo.”

That has left a hole for defense lawyers to argue that the largesse that was showered upon their clients did not influence their official actions. And some say the pressure on legislators to raise money to campaign for reelection has compromised their ties with lobbyists.

“You could argue that our entire system is one of organized bribery,” said Randall D. Eliason, former chief of the public corruption section at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. “People say, ‘I got this huge contribution but it had nothing to do with the way I voted.’ On some level, it is an elaborate charade.”

At the same time, as some lobbyists have become more sophisticated in extending and concealing favors, the Justice Department is using aggressive new legal theories in corruption cases.

The strategy is directly reflected in the department’s deal with Abramoff; among the three felonies he pleaded guilty to was a charge that the perks he lavished on lawmakers and their aides deprived the public of the honest services of a member of Congress. The crime is considered a sort of legal catchall that is easier to prove than outright bribery, and does not require proof of a quid pro quo.

The fear that prosecutors may be pursuing a broader definition of bribery is pervasive among lawmakers and lobbyists, and is part of the reason that concern about the fallout of the Abramoff investigation extends beyond those who may be directly implicated.

More than 200 current members of Congress took campaign contributions from Abramoff or his clients. He has privately boasted of having information on dozens of lawmakers, although only one, U.S. Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio), is alluded to in the plea agreement.

For many other members of Congress whose names have surfaced in the scandal, the magnitude of favors given and received varies -- from cases with suspiciously close connections to those with easy, routine business explanations.

In many cases, lawmakers say that their actions on behalf of Abramoff’s Indian tribe clients is in keeping with their responsibilities to constituents. Several recipients of tribal donations come from states with large populations of Native Americans -- like Arizona, Montana and North Dakota.

But some lawmakers have raised eyebrows by acting to specifically benefit Abramoff clients with no apparent link to their regions or responsibilities. Many are now scrambling to return the Abramoff money they got, or to give it to charity.

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) has had multiple ties to Abramoff and his clients. He received $150,000 in campaign contributions from them. Burns’ chief of staff flew to the 2001 Super Bowl on a jet owned by Abramoff’s SunCruz floating casino firm, and Abramoff later hired him.

Burns used his position as chairman of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee to secure $3 million for one of Abramoff’s tribal clients for a school in Michigan. Democratic critics said the action was payback, but Burns said he put the money in because Michigan’s two Democratic senators had asked him too. He has documented that claim.

But a spokesman for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said that was just one of several home-state projects they were seeking.

To prove bribery, prosecutors would have to show that Burns acted because of Abramoff, not the Michigan senators.

Similarly, the challenge for prosecutors, if Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) is in their sights, is to show that he pushed causes favored by Abramoff in explicit exchange for the lavish trips and contributions the lobbyist gave him. DeLay has argued that he pushed Abramoff’s pet causes -- such as blocking a minimum wage increase for the Northern Mariana Islands -- because it was in keeping with his conservative, pro-business ideology.

Several members of Congress have been linked to Abramoff through a tool lawmakers routinely use: They signed a letter asking a federal agency to take action on an issue -- after they had received campaign donations from Abramoff clients. The issue, however, was remote from their constituents’ concerns but important to Abramoff clients.

In 2002, a letter signed by 33 members of Congress urged the Bush administration to block a proposal of an Indian tribe to build a casino in Louisiana -- a tribe that would have competed with some of Abramoff’s gaming tribes.

One of these congressmen was Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.), who said he signed the letter at the behest of a colleague, then-Rep. David Vitter (R-La.), not because of the $1,000 he received from Abramoff, but in keeping with his long-standing opposition to gambling.

Another signatory was Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville), who also had multiple links to Abramoff. He frequently used Abramoff’s skybox at a local sports arena for fundraising. The lobbyist hired Doolittle’s former chief of staff, Kevin Ring, and paid Doolittle’s wife, Julia Doolittle, to organize a fundraising event for the Capital Athletic Foundation, an Abramoff charity. She was on retainer with Abramoff’s firm to provide bookkeeping and other services.

Doolittle’s chief of staff, Richard Robinson, denied suggestions that Julia Doolittle’s business existed only because Abramoff gave her business. Robinson said she had other clients and ran her business before and after she worked with Abramoff.

Doolittle’s office said he signed the letter solely because, like Istook, he had always been opposed to the expansion of gambling. To suggest it was to pay back Abramoff is “both ludicrous and insulting,” said spokeswoman Laura Blackann.

Another lawmaker who got involved in the effort to block the new Louisiana casino was House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), who urged rejection of the casino bid.

A week earlier, he had held a fundraiser at Abramoff’s posh Washington restaurant, Signatures, where he collected at least $21,500 for his political action committee from Abramoff’s firm and tribal clients. Ron Bonjean, spokesman for the speaker, said there was no connection between the two events.

Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy) also went to bat for Abramoff clients far from home.

He received $40,000 from Abramoff, an associate and the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe from Massachusetts, an Abramoff client. Pombo became a leading champion of the tribe’s effort to get official recognition -- a precondition of becoming eligible for a raft of federal benefits.

Many lawmakers were benefiting from Abramoff and helping his clients, but said they were not aware of his influence -- which could be important in determining whether they had the specific corrupt intent that the law requires to establish a crime.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) backed a 2003 measure urging the Interior Department to act on the Mashpees’ recognition request. A spokesman said Dorgan had no idea that the Mashpees were represented by Abramoff. Likewise, he did not know that Abramoff represented the Indian tribes who had given him roughly $67,000.

Another factor that complicates the assessment of whether Abramoff was wielding legitimate or undue influence is that, in the clubby backslapping world of congressional lobbying, the lines between friendship and professional association are often blurred.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) frequently dined at Abramoff’s expense at the lobbyist’s Washington restaurant. But he said those were gifts of a friend, not a lobbyist, because he had known Abramoff since their college years, according to the congressman’s office. Rohrabacher turned up as a personal reference on Abramoff’s application for a $60-million loan.

Attacks on public corruption have had mixed success in the courts. Over the years, there have been frequent efforts to construct laws that would make it easier to prosecute influence-peddling that falls short of outright bribery. But the courts have sometimes rebuffed those efforts as overly vague or limiting the rights of the public to participate in the political process. In other cases, juries have not been persuaded that lawmakers were truly guilty.

The Supreme Court put limits on the use of the “honest services” law in the late 1980s, and on the idea that citizens could be defrauded of “intangible rights” of honest services and impartial government. Congress later amended the law, but its growing use is controversial.

The statute has now become “the law of choice for corruption prosecutors,” said Joshua Berman, a former attorney in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, which is overseeing the Abramoff case.

The high court also set a narrow standard for bribery in a 1991 case involving the conviction of a West Virginia legislator who had solicited secret payments from a lobbyist for doctors. The legislator had been convicted of extorting contributions, but the court held that there was no evidence that the support amounted to quid pro quo.

The Supreme Court has also given lobbyists the right to give gifts to public officials. In a case stemming from the bribery prosecution of former Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy, the justices ruled in 1999 that a trade association for fruit growers could not be convicted of making an illegal gratuity just because the official who received it had regulatory authority over its business.

But Abramoff could change all that.

His case stands out for the sheer breadth of his contacts with lawmakers, for the fact that he himself is the chief whistle-blower, and for the extensive paper trail that he left to support expectations of a quid pro quo. Add to that the signs that change is afoot, and the result is a climate of unease.

“That’s why people are so nervous,” said Ben Ginsberg, a Republican election and ethics lawyer. “They sense that standards are shifting in unknown ways. This is the time when paranoia runs the highest.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Lobbying or a crime?

About 200 members of Congress accepted campaign funds from former lobbyist Jack Abramoff or his clients, and some took actions that helped them. The links between Abramoff and the lawmakers range from long-accepted or unwitting activities to extensive, suspect relationships. Federal investigators are trying to establish who might have crossed the line between lobbying and bribery. Some examples:

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.)

Received $150,000 from Abramoff and his tribal clients. Burns’ chief of staff flew to the 2001 Super Bowl on a jet owned by Abramoff’s SunCruz cruise line, and Abramoff hired the chief of staff. Burns helped secure $3 million for an Abramoff tribal client for a school in Michigan.

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Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.)

Received $1,000 from Abramoff or his clients. Was among 33 members of Congress who signed a letter urging the Bush administration to block a proposed Indian casino in Louisiana that an Abramoff tribal client opposed.

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Rep. John T. Doolittle (R-Roseville)

Signed the same letter. Abramoff hired Doolittle’s former chief of staff and hired his wife, Julia Doolittle, to organize a fundraising event for an Abramoff charity. Doolittle frequently used Abramoff’s skybox at a local sports arena for fundraising.

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House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.)

Wrote another letter to the administration opposing the Louisiana casino bid, a week after holding a fundraiser at Abramoff’s restaurant where he collected at least $21,500 from Abramoff’s firm and tribal clients.

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Rep. Richard W. Pombo (R-Tracy)

Received $40,000 from Abramoff, an associate and a client, a Massachusetts Indian tribe. Pombo championed the tribe’s effort to get official recognition from the Interior Department to qualify for a raft of federal benefits.

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Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.)

Also backed the Mashpees’ recognition request, and received $67,000 from Indian clients of Abramoff. Also used a skybox operated by Abramoff.

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Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach)

Received $12,500 from Abramoff. Often dined free at his Washington restaurant. A college friend, Rohrabacher turned up as a personal reference on Abramoff’s application for a $60-million loan.

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Source: Times reporting