Safavian is indicted.

The investigation into Abramoff, DeLay and Ney continues with this indictment of Safavian. From an AP report published by The Washington Post.

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 5, 2005; 6:52 PM

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration's former chief procurement official was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements and obstructing investigations into high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The five felony counts in the indictment charge David H. Safavian with obstructing Senate and executive branch investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property controlled by the General Services Administration around the nation's capital.

Both probes looked into an August 2002 golf outing that Safavian took to Scotland with Abramoff, former Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and others.

Safavian, a former lobbying associate of Abramoff, is the first person beyond Abramoff himself to face charges arising out of the probe of the lobbyist, who is a major Republican fundraiser with close ties to GOP leaders in Congress.

The indictment covers May 16, 2002, until January 2004, when Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, the government housekeeping agency. From November 2004 until late last month when he resigned three days before his arrest, he was the government's top procurement officer, in the Office of Management and Budget.

This is a little fish. The investigators are pushing their way up to get the guys at the top. Tom DeLay probably has more to worry about in this investigation than he does from the indictments Ronnie Earle's grand juries in Austin, Texas.

Also from the Associated Press we get an interesting discussion of how Tom DeLay and Roy Blunt, the Congressman from Missouri who replaced DeLay as Majority Leader when DeLay was indicted, obtained donations for parties to be given during the 2000 Republican National Convention. They obtained more than was needed for the parties, then distributed some of the excess to state-level Republican candidates. Some more of the excess ended up in consulting firms run by their children. They also shifted money between different organizations, probably to prevent people from identifying the sources and ultimate destinations. This is the classic definition of money laundering, although it may not have been illegal in 2000.