Wanted: Face time with President Bush or top adviser Karl Rove. Suggested
donation: $100,000. The middleman: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Blunt e-mails that
connect money and access in Washington show that prominent Republican activist
Grover Norquist facilitated some administration contacts for Abramoff's clients
while the lobbyist simultaneously solicited those clients for large donations to
Norquist's tax-exempt group.
In this photograph provided by the Saginaw
Chippewa tribe Web archives , Saginaw tribal Chief Maynard Kahgegab Jr.,
right, and his wife Malissa, left, pose with President Bush and first lady
Laura Bush at a 2002 White House Christmas reception in Washington.
[AP] |
Those who were solicited or landed administration introductions included
foreign figures and American Indian tribes, according to e-mails gathered by
Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by The
Associated Press.
"Can the tribes contribute $100,000 for the effort to bring state
legislatures and those tribal leaders who have passed Bush resolutions to
Washington?" Norquist wrote Abramoff in one such e-mail in July 2002.
"When I have funding, I will ask Karl Rove for a date with the president.
Karl has already said 'yes' in principle and knows you organized this last time
and hope to this year," Norquist wrote in the e-mail.
A Senate committee that investigated Abramoff previously aired evidence
showing Bush met briefly in 2001 at the White House with some of Abramoff's
tribal clients after they donated money to Norquist's group.
The 2002 e-mail about a second White House meeting and donations, however,
was not disclosed. The AP obtained the text from people with access to the
document.
The tribes got to meet Bush at the White House in 2002 again and then donated
to Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR.
Though Norquist's own e-mail connects the $100,000 donation and the White
House visit, ATR spokesman John Kartch said Norquist never offered to arrange
meetings in exchange for money.
Instead, Norquist simply wanted Abramoff's tribes to help pay for a
conference where lawmakers and tribal leaders passed resolutions supporting the
Bush agenda, ultimately securing a brief encounter with Bush, Kartch said.
"No one from Americans for Tax Reform ever assisted Jack Abramoff in getting
meetings or introductions with the White House or congressional leaders in
exchange for contributions," Kartch said, suggesting some of the e-mails might
be misleading.
"If you look at some of Abramoff's e-mails to third parties, they might be
misread to suggest that he was misrepresenting or confusing support for a
project with a specific meeting," Kartch said. "This could have been deliberate
or just unclear."
Kartch said: "People were invited to ATR's conference and to the White House
only if they worked on pro-tax-cut resolutions. Nobody was invited because they
made a contribution to ATR."
Lawyers for Abramoff declined comment.
