Fake Children's Charities

There's been a significant amount of water-muddying in the past 24 hours over the Jack Abramoff plea bargain, and we'll see if it lasts. But you really have to dig into the heart of this story to understand what a foul series of crimes this guy committed, and for what reason.

The Austin American-Statesman details just one of the, apparently, several slush funds Abramoff used to funnel money to his select circle of friends in the legislature. And money of these front groups were children's charities.

Capital Athletic Foundation, a charity run by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff now at the center of an influence-peddling investigation on Capitol Hill, told the IRS it gave away more than $330,000 in grants in 2002 to four other charities that say they never received the money.

The largest grant the foundation listed in its 2002 tax filing was for $300,000 to P'TACH of New York, a nonprofit that helps Jewish children with learning disabilities.

"We've never received a $300,000 gift, not in our 28 years," a surprised Rabbi Burton Jaffa, P'TACH's national director, told the Austin American-States- man. "It would have been gone by now. I guess I would have been able to pay some teachers on time."

So where exactly did that money go, if not to the children's charity?

But around the time Capital Athletic's tax form was filed in fall 2003, listing the $300,000 donation P'TACH says it didn't get, a DeLay-created charity called Celebrations for Children was begun with $300,000 in seed money.

Celebrations for Children was a short-lived effort to raise money for children's charities by providing donors with special access to DeLay, plus yacht trips and other enticements, during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Watchdog groups protested, claiming the fundraiser violated a new ban on accumulating unlimited "soft" money, and DeLay dropped it in May 2004.

They used money supposedly directed to children to fund perks for DeLay cronies like yacht trips, parties at the Republican National Convention, and more. This is the perfect microcosm of this scandal. The Republican machine that unleashed Jack Abramoff and his ilk on the world will go to any lengths, even faking charity donations to needy children, to reward their political friends. Most of these charities weren't even asking Abramoff for money: he simply used them to throw everyone off the money trail. It's almost to the point that you don't want this guy to plea bargain, so great were his crimes.

Another slush fund that Abramoff and DeLay set up was called The US Family Network, and Russian oil money was funding it in part:

During its five-year existence, the U.S. Family Network raised $2.5 million but kept its donor list secret. The list, obtained by The Washington Post, shows that $1 million of its revenue came in a single 1998 check from a now-defunct London law firm whose former partners would not identify the money's origins.

Two former associates of Edwin A. Buckham, the congressman's former chief of staff and the organizer of the U.S. Family Network, said Buckham told them the funds came from Russian oil and gas executives. Abramoff had been working closely with two such Russian energy executives on their Washington agenda, and the lobbyist and Buckham had helped organize a 1997 Moscow visit by DeLay (R-Tex.) [...]

There is no evidence DeLay received a direct financial benefit, but Buckham's firm employed DeLay's wife, Christine, and paid her a salary of at least $3,200 each month for three of the years the group existed. Richard Cullen, DeLay's attorney, has said that the pay was compensation for lists Christine DeLay supplied to Buckham of lawmakers' favorite charities, and that it was appropriate under House rules and election law.

Some of the U.S. Family Network's revenue was used to pay for radio ads attacking vulnerable Democratic lawmakers in 1999; other funds were used to finance the cash purchase of a townhouse three blocks from DeLay's congressional office. DeLay's associates at the time called it "the Safe House."

So when the traditional media goes on Hardball or Meet the Press and tries to paint this as a bipartisan scandal, remember this stuff. Remember that a Bush Pioneer and former College Republicans President set up a lobbying firm, got millions of dollars out of his clients, sometimes getting money from one client to compete against another client, and funneled this money into benefits and perks for his friends. There's a major difference between political contributions, which are legal, and kickbacks with a quid pro quo expectation, which is not. The same Republicans that decry the "criminalization of politics" and say that taking money from a lobbyist is not a crime are the ones that are pointing to Abramoff client donations to Democrats and saying "See, they took money too." That's ridiculous.

This comprehensive Kos diary puts it completely in perspective:

All the efforts to paint this as a bipartisan scandal are done in by one salient fact: the GOP has set up the game to systematically exclude the Democrats. Right there is the fatal flaw in the whole thing. The GOP set up an updated version of the old-fashioned political machine, and, like all machines, it needs to press the boundaries of legality and propriety to fund the large apparatus it needs to perpetuate itself. Plus, the people who set up and run these machines are invariably corrupt and arrogant, and we all know what happens to folks like that when you give them power. Basically, this all has roots in the K Street Project.

I've written about the K Street Project several times, the odious attempt by DeLay and friends to systematically place Republicans into lobbying positions and exclude Democrats. This worked brilliantly for a while, until people like Abramoff got greedy. The Justice Department was finally roused to look at this and wonder if the entire machine was illegal. That's where we are right now. And if you excluded Democrats from the lobbying dollar then, you're going to have to take the fall now. Sorry. The question is not who got donations but who broke the law. That fact has sent Republican members of Congress scurrying to their defense attorney rollodexes this week.