12.31.05
Tom Delay Takes $ One Million $ From Russian Mobsters…
R. Jeffrey Smith
WaPo
The U.S. Family Network, a public advocacy group that operated in the 1990s with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay and claimed to be a nationwide grass-roots organization, was funded almost entirely by corporations linked to embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to tax records and former associates of the group.
During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money’s origins.
Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman’s former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.).
Whatever the real motive for the contribution of $1 million — a sum not prohibited by law but extraordinary for a small, nonprofit group — the steady stream of corporate payments detailed on the donor list makes it clear that Abramoff’s long-standing alliance with DeLay was sealed by a much more extensive web of financial ties than previously known.
Records and interviews also illuminate the mixture of influence and illusion that surrounded the U.S. Family Network. Despite the group’s avowed purpose, records show it did little to promote conservative ideas through grass-roots advocacy. The money it raised came from businesses with no demonstrated interest in the conservative “moral fitness” agenda that was the group’s professed aim.
In addition to the million-dollar payment involving the London law firm, for example, half a million dollars was donated to the U.S. Family Network by the owners of textile companies in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific, according to the tax records. The textile owners — with Abramoff’s help — solicited and received DeLay’s public commitment to block legislation that would boost their labor costs, according to Abramoff associates, one of the owners and a DeLay speech in 1997.
A quarter of a million dollars was donated over two years by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, Abramoff’s largest lobbying client, which counted DeLay as an ally in fighting legislation allowing the taxation of its gambling revenue.
The records, other documents and interviews call into question the very purpose of the U.S. Family Network, which functioned mostly by collecting funds from domestic and foreign businesses whose interests coincided with DeLay’s activities while he was serving as House majority whip from 1995 to 2002, and as majority leader from 2002 until the end of September.
After the group was formed in 1996, its director told the Internal Revenue Service that its goal was to advocate policies favorable for “economic growth and prosperity, social improvement, moral fitness, and the general well-being of the United States.” DeLay, in a 1999 fundraising letter, called the group “a powerful nationwide organization dedicated to restoring our government to citizen control” by mobilizing grass-roots citizen support.
But the records show that the tiny U.S. Family Network, which never had more than one full-time staff member, spent comparatively little money on public advocacy or education projects. Although established as a nonprofit organization, it paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to Buckham and his lobbying firm, Alexander Strategy Group.
There is no evidence DeLay received a direct financial benefit, but Buckham’s firm employed DeLay’s wife, Christine, and paid her a salary of at least $3,200 each month for three of the years the group existed. Richard Cullen, DeLay’s attorney, has said that the pay was compensation for lists Christine DeLay supplied to Buckham of lawmakers’ favorite charities, and that it was appropriate under House rules and election law.
Some of the U.S. Family Network’s revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay’s congressional office. DeLay’s associates at the time called it “the Safe House.”
DeLay made his own fundraising telephone pitches from the townhouse’s second-floor master suite every few weeks, according to two former associates. Other rooms in the townhouse were used by Alexander Strategy Group, Buckham’s newly formed lobbying firm, and Americans for a Republican Majority (ARMPAC), DeLay’s leadership committee.
They paid modest rent to the U.S. Family Network, which occupied a single small room in the back.
WaPo in it’s usual vaguely written style, reveals, in a long frontpage story, buried of course on a Saturday, a holiday weekend yet, that Tom Delay, the second most powerful man in DC, took a cool million dollars from russian mobsters (described as “Russian energy executives” who “traveled in Moscow with guards armed with machine guns”). He laundered the money through a front group which purchased a town house three blocks from his office where he used the master suite, paying a “modest rent” while the front group occupied a closet on the first floor. Of course all this is supposedly “technically legal”. Yeah if you believe that russian criminals just wanted to support family values in the good ole US of A. And a butt-load of other “coincidences”. Otherwise Delay is a flat out criminal who was offered a million dollars in cash and ” “what would happen if the DeLays woke up one morning” and found a luxury car in their front driveway”. Of course good ole Tom was in Russia to “to meet with religious leaders there.” Apparently they were outbid in the buy Tom Delay’s Ass contest. Oh, and did I mention Delay’s wife was paid 120,000 dollars for supplying lists of ” lawmakers’ favorite charities”, something you could find out by making a two minute phone call or maybe checking their frigging web sites? Good thing Bush’s new lapdog Alberto is too busy finding the dastardly criminals who leaked to Al Qaeda the important secret that the NSA was monitoring phone calls illegally, rather than legally, which has been public knowledge for decades. I guess this aides the terrorists who are legally in this country, and who are citizen of this country or the holders of a valid green card, that if they get caught, and survive torture in Afghanistan or Morroco or Libya, they can come back to the US and not have the evidence used against them, if they are ever allowed to talk to a lawyer. Do we even have a Consitution anymore?
S(erf)Squirrel
