According to court papers, Mr. Safavian, 38, is accused of lying about assistance that he gave Mr. Abramoff in his earlier work at the General Services Administration, where he was chief of staff from 2002 to 2004, and about an expensive golf trip he took with the lobbyist to Scotland in August 2002...
The Justice Department said Mr. Safavian had been specifically charged with making false statements to investigators about his efforts at the General Services Administration in 2002 to help Mr. Abramoff acquire two large pieces of government-owned property in the Washington area, including the historic Old Post Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.
Safavian was one of the many Washington types that received a trip to Scotland's famed St. Andrew golf course.
The department said Mr. Safavian had also lied to ethics officials at the agency, which manages federal property, when he sought approval to accept free transportation from Mr. Abramoff for the golf trip to Scotland that summer. According to court documents, Mr. Safavian told the ethics office that Mr. Abramoff had no business with the agency at the time, an assertion that was repeated in a separate interview this May with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
This is just part of the fall out from the recent indictment of Jack Abramoff. Several Congressmen of both parties went on that golf trip, and e-mails sent from Safavian to others showed that he knew that the trip was to be paid for by lobby money. It is hard for other to say they didn't know if Safavian did.
Mr. DeLay, who has asked the House ethics committee to review his ties to Mr. Abramoff, has come under criticism from Congressional Democrats and ethics watchdog groups for taking a similar golf trip to Scotland with Mr. Abramoff in 2000, including rounds of golf on the fabled course at St. Andrews.
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3 comments:
If he's dirty- hang em.
I just wish they had gotten Jaime Gorelick- talk about skating by.
The others, well, they weren't front line folks, and so on. She however was.
I have the feeling that there is going to be a lot more fall out from the Abramoff explosion. Congressmen are scrambling.
Probably. It's Congress- what can you expect?
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