Via the Austin Statesman, John Cornyn is the latest Republican to be embarrassed by the expanding Abramoff scandal:
WASHINGTON — Former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed claimed in a 2001 e-mail to a lobbyist that he choreographed John Cornyn’s efforts as Texas attorney general to shut down an East Texas Indian tribe’s casino.
The lobbyist was Jack Abramoff, who is under federal investigation, along with his partner Michael Scanlon, on allegations of defrauding six Indian tribes of about $80 million from 2001 to 2004. The e-mail, along with about a dozen others, was released last week as part of the investigation.
In 2001, Abramoff was working as a lobbyist for the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana to prevent rival gaming casinos from siphoning off its Texas customers. He paid Reed as a consultant, and Reed lobbied to get the Alabama-Coushatta and Tigua casinos closed in Texas.
In the Nov. 30, 2001, e-mail, Reed told Abramoff that 50 pastors led by Ed Young, of Second Baptist Church in Houston, would meet with Cornyn to urge him to shut down the Alabama-Coushatta tribe’s casino near Livingston. He said Young would back up the request in writing.
“We have also choreographed Cornyn’s response. The AG will state that the law is clear, talk about how much he wants to avoid repetition of El Paso (where the Tigua casino was) and pledge to take swift action to enforce the law,” Reed wrote. “He will also personally hand Ed Young a letter that commits him to take action in Livingston.”
You can find a useful rundown of the most prominent Abramoff-tainted politicians here, via wikipedia.
As I said before this scandal has the potential to bring down an amazing variety of Republican politicians and party activists. Some Democrats stand to go down as well, which anybody who cares about weeding sleaze out of government should see as a good thing.
***Update***
And another reason why the confiscation of Abramoff’s records makes Republican leaders very, very nervous:
E-mail unearthed in Abramoff investigation reveals the contempt in which lobbyists held the Christian conservatives they wooed as allies
E-mail unearthed in Abramoff investigation reveals the contempt in which lobbyists held the Christian conservatives they wooed as allies
Two federal investigations of the activities of Washington, D.C., lobbyist Jack Abram-off provide a window into the mindset of the cynical group of influence peddlers that received $45 million from Indian tribes to further their gambling interests.
Judging by the sentiments of Mike Scanlon, a former spokesman for U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land, and Abramoff’s secret partner, conservative Christians provided an essential and unwitting tool in the lobbyists’ fight in Louisiana on behalf of the Coushatta tribe against rival gambling operations. Scanlon composed a memo in October 2001 that he sent to Coushatta lawyer Kathy VanHoof and Abramoff describing the role religious radio could play in the effort:
“Simply put,” Scanlon wrote, “we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them. The wackos get their information from the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the Internet and telephone trees.”