Edwin Buckham paid Christine DeLay

According to the AP, former Department of Interior official Steven Griles will plead guilty to obstruction of justice. In previous posts, I speculated that the Griles investigation was related to suspicious payments to an organization co-founded by former Interior Secretary Gale Norton from sources linked to Jack Abramoff.

The AP article hints that my speculation may be on the right track, but there is nothing dispositive to hang my hat on:

The extent of Abramoff's reach at Interior is still somewhat unclear. The court papers echo the Senate committee's account of events.

Abramoff directed his tribal clients to give $500,000 to [Italia] Federici's Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy from March 2001 to May 2003, about the time when Griles and Federici ended their romantic relationship. They began dating in 1998.

Federici co-founded the advocacy council with [former Interior Secratary Gale] Norton — before Norton joined the Bush administration — and with Grover Norquist, a conservative GOP activist, college friend of Abramoff and a close ally of Bush.

Griles had a dating relationship with Italia Federici? Wow! Anyone that guy dates gets in trouble. Remember that his current squeeze, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, had to resign from the Justice Department recently over this matter.

There was one disappointing sentence from the AP:

The [plea] agreement does not require Griles to help investigators with their grand jury probe.

Does this mean that the investigation into Interior is over with Griles? Maybe, maybe not. This portion of the scandal has only interested me at the margin. And it is still as murky as ever.