Another Country Heard From

I know it's hard to keep track of the Republican scandals without a scorecard, but there was a very important development today in the Jack Abramoff case. Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Tom DeLay and an associate to lobbyist Abramoff, pleaded guilty today to conspiring to bribe public officials, in what was clearly a plea bargain:

Scanlon, 35, is the second person to face criminal charges in connection with the Justice Department-led probe of the 46- year-old Abramoff. In October, a federal grand jury indicted the White House's former chief procurement officer, David Safavian, once an Abramoff associate, for obstruction and making false statements.

Beyond the potential legal concerns, Scanlon's cooperation with authorities may spell political jeopardy for Republicans leading into next year's elections, especially if he helps draw other lawmakers into the investigation. "He knows where all the bodies are buried,'' said a congressional aide who worked with Scanlon.

One of those bodies has apparently already been named in the indictment report:

The Justice Department on Nov. 18 charged Scanlon with conspiring with "Lobbyist A'' -- identified by a person close to the investigation as Abramoff -- to defraud Indian-tribe clients and corrupt federal officials. Those officials included a lawmaker identified only as "Representative #1.''

(Ohio Rep. Bob) Ney, chairman of the House Committee on Administration, who took an Abramoff-sponsored trip to Scotland in 2002, said earlier this month that prosecutors had subpoenaed records. A spokesman for Ney, 51, said the lawmaker hasn't been told he's a target.

They don't put "Representative #1" in an indictment unless he's open to being charged later. It's the same as Karl "Official A" Rove in the Libby investigation.

Scanlon is extremely well-connected, clearly knows every GOP official in Washington, and has apparently been cooperating with the investigation since June. The prosecutors probably have a voluminous amount of material from those discussions.

The Abramoff story involves multiple investigations and examples of wrongdoing, and apparently Scanlon was there all along. The main case is that Abramoff would convince Indian tribes (for whom he was a lobbyist) to hire Scanlon as a consultant, and Scanlon would charge ridiculous fees, half of which he would kick back to Abramoff. Abramoff also put major money into financing campaigns against allowing Indian casino gambling in Georgia, to note one example, deriding it as "sinful and ungodly," when in actuality he was protecting the interests of the Indian casino for which he was already working.

And if you didn't know it from those schemes, these guys are class acts:

What came next was laid out by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which has released transcripts of hundreds of e-mails and documents during five committee hearings in the last 18 months. The e-mails are laced with derogatory references by the two men toward their tribal clients. In one December 2001 e- mail, for example, Abramoff referred to their Saginaw Chippewa clients as "troglodytes.''

"What's a troglodyte?'' Scanlon asked. "A lower form of existence, basically,'' Abramoff replied.

The very money structure of how Republicans and lobbyists worked in a symbiotic way, passing cash for access, influencing policy in untold ways, ripping off whoever they could to get the job done, is all at stake in this investigation. The name Michael Scanlon will be an important one when you look back on this chapter of American politics.