Edwin Buckham paid Christine DeLay

It occurred to me recently that I have only focused on one side of Tom DeLay's corruption. We've known for some time about Tom DeLay's suspicious trip to St. Andrews with Jack Abramoff. I've written repeatedly about strange payments made to DeLay's wife Christine and daughter Dani DeLay Ferro. But I haven't really written much on what Team Abramoff got out of the deal.

Sure, I've written about Tom DeLay's actions in blocking a bill to ban internet gambling. That was an easy call. After all, DeLay crony Tony Rudy basically told the courts in his plea bargain what he and DeLay did. Is that all I'm hanging my hat on? Absolutely not!


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Naftasib

Russian energy interests paid $1 million to entities controlled by Ed Buckham. In return, Tom DeLay supported an IMF bailout that benefitted the same Russian energy interests. Conservative Republicans (i.e. Integrity Republicans) in Congress balked at the funding that helped the Russians. DeLay provided his vote to those who supplied the money.

Two former Buckham associates said that he told them years ago not only that the $1 million donation was solicited from Russian oil and gas executives, but also that the initial plan was for the donation to be made via a delivery of cash to be picked up at a Washington area airport.

One of the former associates, a Frederick, Md., pastor named Christopher Geeslin who served as the U.S. Family Network's director or president from 1998 to 2001, said Buckham further told him in 1999 that the payment was meant to influence DeLay's vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it possible for the IMF to bail out the faltering Russian economy and the wealthy investors there.

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Tinian Breakwater

Some long time readers may wonder why I like to write about the far-away US territory of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Well, there's a quid pro quo story to be told there.

Jack Abramoff needed a new majority in the legislature of the CNMI. In order to sway some fence-sitting legislators, Abramoff arranged for a pork-barrel breakwater to be built on the CNMI island of Tinian. Former DeLay COS Tony Rudy admits that DeLay was the legislator to help Abramoff:

In December 1999, Buckham and Scanlon--who was still DeLay's press secretary--went to the Marianas. They were there to help Abramoff's favored candidate win election as speaker of the commonwealth's House of Representatives. That candidate, Ben Fitial, had previously worked for Willie Tan, the factory tycoon who employed Abramoff. Rudy was aware of, and helped to coordinate, the visit. Buckham and Scanlon met with members of the Marianas legislature and determined that two of its members would side with Fitial if DeLay supported a variety of projects in their districts. After Buckham and Scanlon returned to the United States, the representatives they had met with--Alejo Mendiola and Norman Palacios--announced their support for Fitial, who was elected speaker in January 2000.

That month, Rudy arranged for another DeLay staffer to visit the Marianas alongside Scanlon, according to Rudy's plea agreement. The aide reportedly was Brett Loper. His job was to look around the commonwealth for opportunities for pork. He found some, and in May 2000 Congress passed an appropriations bill that made the construction of an airport on the Marianas island of Rota--home to Rep. Mendiola--a spending priority. In October 2000, in a separate appropriations bill, Congress directed $150,000 to a breakwater project on the Marianas island of Tinian, home to Rep. Palacios. In his plea agreement, Rudy admits that he "worked with others to secure certain appropriations projects for the [Marianas] which he knew would help Abramoff's lobbying business and that had been sought by Abramoff and Lobbyist B," aka Buckham.

[Note that in the same article, the Weekly Standard reports on Tom DeLay's efforts to influence policy at the US Post Office to help an Abramoff client. This clearly belongs on an exhaustive list of DeLay's misdeeds, but I am observing the Rule of Three in this post.]

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Congressional Record

We all know that one of the official actions to which Rep. Bob Ney pleaded guilty was the insertion into the Congressional Record of a statement meant to harm one of Jack Abramoff's business rivals. Well, Tom DeLay did something eerily similar.

Trevor Potter is a Republican election law and ethics experts. Potter wrote a memo to Jack Abramoff's then lobbying firm, Greenburg Taurig. In the memo, Potter criticized Abramoff's means of lobbying, specifically Abramoff's highly unethical arrangement with former DeLay staffer Michael Scanlon and Scanlon's "non-profit" organization, American International Center (AIC). In the instance investigated by Potter, Abramoff was using AIC to disguise lobbying income from Malaysia so that it didn't appear that the funding was coming from a foreign country. This enraged Abramoff:

In mid-January 2002, Abramoff started sending e-mails to Tony Rudy and other colleagues that attacked Potter's position on the think tank [AIC] and referred to him as "pothead". Abramoff decided to retaliate against Potter and, with Rudy's help, succeeded in getting DeLay to put a brief statement in the Congressional Record that disparaged Potter, a leading advocate of campaign finance reform, for some of his views on limiting campaign contributions. On January 25, 2002, Rudy e-mailedDeLay's office suggesting language for a statement on Potter that was "very similar to what DeLay put in the Congressional Record on February 13, 2002, according to a source familiar with the Rudy e-mail. The DeLay statement, which was only three sentences long, contained two factual erros: it referred incorrectly to Potter as a lobbyist for the Campaign Finance Institute and as a board member if Common Cause. (pp. 135-136)

Quote from Heist by National Journal journalist Peter Stone