The Super-Lobbyist's 'Friend'

American Prospect: Rep. Bob Ney Is In Ethics Hot Seat

(The American Prospect)  This column was written by Art Levine. It is excerpted from an examination of congressional corruption that will appear in the June issue of The American Prospect.

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Take pity on poor Bob Ney, who insists he's just another victim of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and public-relations consultant Michael Scanlon. Unlike the half-dozen Indian tribes that paid about $82 million to that scamming duo, however, the U.S. representative at least got campaign donations and a lavish trip to Scotland's legendary St. Andrew's golf course out of them. Whether he got more than that is now a matter of interest to Justice Department investigators, according to a knowledgeable source who says that the probers are seeking to discover whether Ney received any illegal donations from Abramoff.

An affable, 50-year-old conservative Republican from Ohio, Ney now portrays himself as a "dupe" of Abramoff and Scanlon, the pair of rapscallions targeted by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and the Justice Department for their alleged defrauding of tribes seeking increased clout.

Both Abramoff and a lawyer for Scanlon have repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Yet the lobbyists' operation looks like such a breathtaking scam that it stuns even veteran observers of Washington scandals. Last November, the Indian Affairs Committee detailed how they took $4.2 million from the Tigua tribe of El Paso, Texas, while doing little to help reopen the tribe's casino with federal legislation that Ney had ostensibly championed. Abramoff and Scanlon had previously worked with the cherubic religious-right consultant Ralph Reed to prod Texas authorities to shut down the Tigua casino and another sought by a Houston-area tribe, while using at least $4 million of a rival Louisiana tribe's money. When they began the subsequent wooing of the Tigua tribe in early 2002, Abramoff wrote to Scanlon, "I'd love us to get our mitts on that moolah!!"

And so they did, even as Abramoff derided the Indians as "moronic" -- and worse -- in his e-mail messages.

The working-both-sides ploy wouldn't have been possible, though, without the phony reassurances offered to the Tigua tribe by Representative Ney as chairman of the House Administration Committee. Thanks to Abramoff, Ney received more than $30,000 in campaign donations from the Tigua tribe. In August 2002, he also was treated to a trip to Scotland costing at least $100,000 -- plus travel on a private jet -- that included the St. Andrew's golf jaunt. Along for the ride were Abramoff, Reed, and Neil Volz, a former top Ney staffer working for Abramoff. All expenses were paid by Abramoff's tribal clients, but reported by Ney as the largesse of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank.

House rules forbid members from accepting trips from lobbyists. But last March the Ohio congressman said that Abramoff had fooled him, claiming the lobbyist told him that the trip was paid for by the center, which has denied any role in that junket. (The center did acknowledge sponsoring two earlier Tom DeLay trips.)