Joe Conason: A Tip for the Cowardly Press Corps

Friday 20 January 2006

Scott "Stonewall" McClellan arrogantly insists on "specific" questions about Abramoff's ties to the White House. OK, here's one: Did Bush meet with the lobbyist on May 9, 2001?
One of the president's top fundraisers pleads guilty to felony fraud in a major Washington bribery scandal - a scandal in which he plays the central role as a super-lobbyist handing out checks and favors to members of Congress. The crooked fundraiser is a close friend and associate of the president's top political advisor and deputy chief of staff, whom he has known for more than two decades. His former assistant now works in the White House as personal assistant to the deputy chief of staff. The fundraiser was awarded a place on the president's Department of the Interior transition team, and constantly exploited his White House connections to impress his clients.

The fundraiser described above is of course Jack Abramoff, whose connections to the Bush White House, the president and Karl Rove may yet prove to be a crucial aspect of the lobbying scandal. To date, however, members of the Washington press corps - from the New York Times bureau to the host of "Hardball"! - have displayed scant interest in discovering how extensive those connections actually were.

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McClellan, however, is still claiming not to know whether the disgraced lobbyist ever met with Bush. Two weeks ago, he claimed that the president "does not know Abramoff, nor does the president recall ever meeting him."

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On May 9, 2001, as Lou Dubose reported last June in the Texas Observer, Abramoff ushered the chiefs of the Coushatta and Choctaw tribal councils into a 15-minute Oval Office meeting with Bush. They also had lunch in the White House. For this swift brush with the president, the tribal chiefs paid dearly, including $25,000 to Abramoff himself, an additional $25,000 to Americans for Tax Reform (the outfit led by Republican eminence Grover Norquist, a longtime associate of Abramoff's and Rove's) and millions more in contributions to political causes and "charities" overseen by Abramoff.


Some brave soul in the White House press corps should ask Scott McClellan a "specific" question about that meeting on May 9, 2001, and suggest that he check the Secret Service's White House logs for the names of Abramoff and the tribal council chiefs. Someone should start asking the members of the Coushatta and Choctaw tribal councils about that date as well. The president meets with many people and cannot be expected to remember everyone - even if they raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him, perhaps. But the tribal chiefs are likely to remember the day they met George W. Bush in the White House, who brought them there - and how much they had to pay for the privilege.