Reminders from the past: Rove's ties to Abramoff

[FormerRepublican]

I personally recall reading a lot of articles about Rove's ties to Abramoff from last year, so I hunted one up to post as a reminder:

"WASHINGTON, July 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of a CIA operative for political advantage during wartime could be just the tip of the iceberg as far as unethical behavior, since his web of influence extends to the most notorious figure of the House Lobbying Scandal.

"It's widely known that Karl Rove has been pulling strings all over Washington for years, obviously not just in the case of the Plame leak," said Peter L. Kelley, manager of the Campaign for a Cleaner Congress.

"What is not widely known, however, is his close connection with Jack Abramoff, who is at the center of the lobbying scandal in which Washington is now embroiled. Rove let archconservative operatives like Grover Norquist call shots at the White House. And just this week, a Texas judge ruled that a former Rove lieutenant must face felony charges of money laundering for Tom DeLay's political operation.

"Without further ethics reforms, the public has virtually no ability to find out what is really going on in Washington these days," Kelley said. "But what we do know is starting to smell, and it offers a starting point for further investigation.""

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=50318

Since several Congressmen are being forced to resign from leadership roles because of their close association with Abramoff, shouldn't Rove's feet be put to the fire as well? And if Rove was involved, does anyone really believe Bush wasn't?

[babylonsister]

1. NOM! I just googled images for Rove + Abramoff and Abramoff +

Rove; nothing there! No scrubbing going on. :eyes:
Thanks for this link to the two, FormerRepublican! :thumbsup:

[FormerRepublican]

3. Here's some interesting old data on Norquist...

A quote:

"Norquist has had far less trouble uniting conservatives and corporations around his master plan for taking down the Democratic Party. By design, each of the prongs in that strategy is a win-win. Tort reform, for example, attracts millions in campaign lucre from corporate leaders while undermining trial lawyers, a major Democratic support base. School choice divides largely Democratic inner-city communities desperate for better education and undermines the authority of teachers' unions. Social Security privatization could one day provide a windfall to Wall Street brokers, who increasingly favor Republicans with campaign donations, while eliminating one of the most successful Democratic government programs in history. Tax cuts for rich investors give a Republican voting bloc even more money to send to campaigns. There is nothing accidental about this. "You want to make your team bigger and their team shorter," Norquist explains. "And the trial lawyers fund their team, labor unions fund their team, city tax collectors fund their team."

Closer to home, Norquist has been working to purge the corporate-lobbying community of Democratic supporters, a plan he calls the K Street Project. He has circulated a list of Democratic lobbyists, while getting out the word that lobby shops that employ them can expect less cooperation from the GOP-controlled Congress. Vic Fazio, a former Democratic member of Congress who now lobbies at Clark and Weinstock, says some of K Street's corporate clients have tried to resist these pressures with only mixed success. "They feel at times that they have to go along," says Fazio, whose clients include AT&T, Microsoft, and the pharmaceutical industry, noting that some Demo- crats "feel this makes them unmarketable."

It's not the first time Democrats have complained that Norquist doesn't fight fair. Though both parties regularly push the limits on campaign-finance rules, Democratic leaders claim that Norquist's group has gone over the edge. For the 1996 election, the Republican National Committee gave ATR $4.6 million for direct-mail and attack ads. Democratic Senate investigators later claimed the shuffling of money appeared to violate ATR's tax-exempt status. More recently, Oregon Department of Justice investigators found ATR had served as a conduit in what authorities said was a "laundering scheme," through which Norquist collected money from Oregon business leaders and trade groups that was then rerouted into the coffers of Oregon Taxpayers United, an anti-tax organization working to limit state spending. Though the group was found guilty of violating Oregon election laws, Oregon officials never pursued a case against Norquist. "It was both legal and proper," he says.

For the 2004 election, Norquist says he hopes to become a funnel for rich Bush supporters, who, because of campaign-finance reform, can no longer write unlimited checks to the GOP. "I am aggressively letting people who might want to be involved in soft-money contributions know what we do," he says."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_402.html

And a little more on Norquist:

"The conspiracy set up between Norquist, several RNC operatives and former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, worked like this:
Norquist and Barbour arranged for Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform -- in a highly detailed scheme -- to launder $4.6 million of RNC money through Americans for Tax Reform accounts in order to cloak the expenditure as an independent advocacy mailing.

Federal law prohibits coordination of such political activity between politics parties and so-called independent organizations such as Americans for Tax Reform. But Republicans have abused this law for years. I should know. I was trained at the presidential level by the Republican National Committee myself in 1980.

Norquist and the RNC claim there was absolutely no coordination between them -- but extremely detailed evidence show them to be liars.

In October 1996 the RNC gave Americans for Tax Reform a $4.6 million "donation." Keep that in mind -- nearly $5 million dollars. The "donation" itself would be questionable at any time, since Norquist seems to be universally loathed by a plethora of moderate conservatives and liberals alike who see him as a nightmare in human form and an embarrassment to the Republican Party as well as the nation. But Norquist's closest allies, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Haley Barbour share this mantle."

http://www.americanpolitics.com/20021209Koop.html

Read this article - it goes deep into the Republican money laundering schemes.

[spindrifter]

2. How about this:

Tyco Exec: Abramoff Claimed Ties to Administration


By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 23, 2005

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.
<snip>
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Rove "has no recollection" of being contacted by Abramoff about Tyco's concerns.
<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/22/AR2005092202204.html

++++

Why would Kkkarl have a better memory of contacts on behalf of Tyco than he has of contacts concerning Plame? Sheesh!

Actually, it looks like there is a mountain of stuff out there.

[Indykatie]

4. Agree that I think Rove Abramoff Connection

will be evident and probably result in a variety of disclosures on unethical and/or illegal behavior. Abramoff's Assistant ended up working as Rove's Assistant. THat situation offers great potential for wrong doing.

[Oceansaway]

5. k&r

:kick:

[FormerRepublican]

6. Here's some interesting quotes about Rove from the New Yorker...

"He appears to have supervisory authority over the Republican National Committee."

and

"He closely supervises political fund-raising."

and

"For Deardourff, that point came after Rove brought him in to help do with the Alabama Supreme Court what they had done together with the Texas Supreme Court—change it from a Democratic body friendly to tort claims into a Republican one unfriendly to them. Deardourff, an old-fashioned good-government liberal Republican, began to feel uncomfortable when, at Rove’s request, he accompanied Rove to a meeting at the Washington headquarters of the American Council of Life Insurance. At the meeting, there was a discussion of the national insurance-industry lobby making contributions, in the form of “soft money” donations, to the Republican National Committee, with the presumption that the money would be passed on to the Alabama Republican Party and then used to support candidates in judicial races there—a technique that was legal but was designed to evade campaign-spending limits. Later, Deardourff recalled, “Karl said, ‘I want you to sign on now for three more races, but we don’t know who two of the candidates are yet.’ I said, ‘Karl, I can’t do that. You’re telling me to sign up before I know who the candidate is.’ He said, ‘John, this is easy money. What do you mean, you can’t do it?’ We had an odd conversation where, at the end, he seemed to be congratulating me for saying no. I don’t think I’ve ever heard from Karl since then.”"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/030512fa_fact3

Sounds like Karl might have been the architect of DeLay's criminal enterprises. And since Abramoff and DeLay were joined at the hip, does this mean Karl was the architect of Abramoff's illegal acts?