Of Course They Lied
May 10th, 2006 at 10:43 pm by Susie
The Secret Service records about how many times Jack Abramoff visited the White House are (surprise, surprise!) incomplete! They say he was only there twice. Raw Story has the details.
Abramoff was a $100,000 fundraiser for Bush and lobbying records obtained by the AP show his lobbying team logged nearly 200 meetings with the administration during its first 10 months in office on behalf of one of his clients, the Northern Mariana Islands.
The contacts between Abramoff’s team and the administration included meetings with Attorney General John Ashcroft and policy advisers to Vice President Dick Cheney, the AP reported last year.
And here’s just a little more background:
The records from Abramoff’s firm, obtained by The Associated Press from the Marianas under an open records request, chronicle Abramoff’s careful cultivation of relations with Bush’s political team as far back as 1997.
In that year, Abramoff charged the Marianas for getting then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to write a letter expressing support for the Pacific territory’s school choice proposal, his billing records show.
“I hope you will keep my office informed on the progress of this initiative,” Bush wrote in a July 18, 1997, letter praising the islands’ school plan and copying in an Abramoff deputy.
White House spokeswoman Erin Healy said Thursday that Bush didn’t consider Abramoff a friend. “They may have met on occasion, but the president does not know him,” she said.
As for the number of Abramoff lobbying team contacts with Bush officials documented in the billing records, Healy said: “We do not know how he defines ‘contacts.’”
There is a difference between Abramoff *himself* and “his lobbying team”.
I only read your summary, and while it does warrant a closer look, it doesn’t contradict the notion that he was there only twice *himself*. As I said, it should be looked at and verified, nonetheless.
Does W mean he does not know Jack in the biblical sense?