Jack Abramoff has pled guilty to wire fraud, failure to pay income tax on some of his income and bribery of government officials, and has been working with the federal investigators for 18 months. Yahoo News has a roundup of recent stories on Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. One that hasn't gotten a lot of media play and which may be key with respect to Tom DeLay is the Alexander Strategy Group. Many of the links which follow show connections to Tom DeLay through the Alexander Strategy Group. The article comes from The NY Times:
The firm, Alexander Strategy Group, is of particular interest to investigators because it was founded by Edwin A. Buckham, a close friend of Mr. DeLay's and his former chief of staff, and has been a lucrative landing spot for several former members of the DeLay staff, people who are directly involved in the case have said.It is clear that the Alexander Group is central to the relations of Tom DeLay and the K-Street lobbyists, and that investigations into the operations of the Alexander Group will connect a lot of other Republicans to the operations of DeLay and Abramoff.
Although the firm's name has circulated in connection with the case for many months, prosecutors' questions about Mr. Buckham and Alexander Strategy - which did not respond to requests for comment - have intensified recently, participants in the case said.
The firm openly promoted the idea that it could deliver access to Mr. DeLay, who has denied any wrongdoing but abruptly announced Saturday that he would not try to regain his leadership post. Now the very connections with Mr. DeLay that formed the backbone of Alexander Strategy, put together with Mr. Abramoff's help, have put the future of the firm in doubt.
While doing business with lobbyists is routine for most lawmakers, investigators are looking at the extent to which Mr. DeLay and other lawmakers may have accepted trips, campaign donations and other favors from Alexander Strategy, and in turn tried to help the business.
[snip]
Details of the ties between Alexander Strategy, Mr. DeLay and Mr. Abramoff - who pleaded guilty last week in federal court and is cooperating with investigators - have already begun to trickle out. Alexander Strategy paid Mr. DeLay's wife $115,000 in consulting fees while conducting business with Mr. Abramoff's firm. Mr. Abramoff also referred clients to Mr. Buckham.
Mr. Buckham and the firm also shared clients - among them an entity in Malaysia and the Choctaw Indian tribe in Mississippi - with Mr. Abramoff, who in his plea agreement admitted to using corrupting tactics with lawmakers on behalf of his clients. Mr. Abramoff also admitted to having defrauded his Indian clients of millions of dollars. At one point, Mr. Buckham even sought to hire Mr. Abramoff himself, participants in the case said.
Mr. Buckham and at least one member of his firm worked with domestic and overseas clients who prosecutors suspect helped funnel money and perks to Mr. DeLay, his fund-raising operations and other lawmakers in ways intended to curry favor with the Republican leadership.
And at one time, Americans for a Republican Majority, or Armpac, the leadership committee that raised money for Mr. DeLay, was run out of the offices of Alexander Strategy.
But the firm's web of contacts on Capitol Hill reaches past Mr. DeLay, making Alexander Strategy a potentially useful resource as investigators examine other lawmakers.
The firm's name surfaced at the periphery of the corruption investigation into Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California and Josh Marshall on Randy Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham resigned after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from a defense contractor that did business with Alexander Strategy.
For years, Alexander Strategy was one of the crown jewels of the so-called K Street project, an effort Republicans began after taking control of Congress in 1994 to dominate the lobbying industry. The hope, exemplified by Mr. Buckham's company, was for Republican lobbyists to harness the power of their corporate clients to help keep the party in power for years to come.
The successful history of Alexander Strategy since its founding in the late 1990's offers a window into the nexus of Mr. Abramoff, Mr. DeLay and the lobbying world over the last decade or so of Republican control of Congress. [See The K-Street Project]
[Snip]
Mr. DeLay, so intertwined with the lobbying world that his extensive network of allies and former aides scattered throughout town is nicknamed "DeLay Inc.," responded more quickly to calls from Alexander Strategy than he did for any other firm, former aides of his said.
One element prosecutors are trying to understand is what role Mr. DeLay played in sending business to the company. There is evidence, one participant in the case said, that it was "you hire these guys because Tom DeLay tells you to."
Mr. Buckham also ran the U.S. Family Network, [Also see U.S. Family Network WaPo and Washington Monthly]a self-styled grassroots organization tied to Mr. DeLay that, according to The Washington Post, was financed almost entirely by clients and associates of Mr. Abramoff. People involved in the case said they expected investigators to examine whether Mr. DeLay cast a vote in Congress in exchange for donations to the network.
Another critical component of the investigation is the activities of Tony C. Rudy, a former DeLay deputy chief of staff who went to work with Mr. Abramoff as a lobbyist before joining Mr. Buckham at Alexander Strategy, where he still works. Mr. Rudy is mentioned - named only as "Staffer A" - in Mr. Abramoff's plea agreement, and investigators are looking into whether he helped secure legislative favors for Mr. Abramoff's clients in exchange for gifts and the promise of a future job while he was still on the DeLay staff.
[Snip]
As a result of Mr. Buckham's ties with Mr. DeLay and Mr. Abramoff, investigators are "keenly interested" in him, especially in connection with deals he may have brokered with Mr. DeLay and other lawmakers after going into the private sector, one participant in the case said.
"He allows the connection to be made to DeLay," another participant said of Mr. Buckham. All participants in the case were granted anonymity in interviews because Justice Department officials do not want people talking about it publicly.
Alexander Strategy's name has also surfaced in the course of a corruption investigation that implicates the defense lobbyist Brent Wilkes, [See also Josh Marshall, Daily Kos, Sourcewatch, Daily Kos, USA Today, and The San Diego Union.] who is an unnamed co-conspirator in the criminal case against former Representative Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham pleaded guilty in December to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from Mr. Wilkes and others. Mr. Wilkes's firm, Group W, also hired Alexander Strategy to do lobbying work, and Mr. DeLay used a plane partly owned by Mr. Wilkes.
The scandals swirling around the Alexander franchise, composed of roughly two dozen lobbyists at its offices on the waterfront in Georgetown, have delighted its former rivals while triggering concerns in the lobbying community that the entire business may be tarred.
[Snip]
"Tom DeLay sent Buckham downtown to set up shop and start a branch office on K Street," Mr. [Dick] Armey said. "The whole idea was, 'What's in it for us?' That's what I thought at the time, and I've seen nothing in the way they've conducted themselves since then to dissuade me from that point of view."
[Snip]
Mr. DeLay was rebuked by the House ethics committee in 1999 after allegedly badgering a trade association that chose a Democrat as its president, rather than the Republican candidate he favored.
Mr. DeLay's political action committee paid Alexander Strategy more than $300,000 for fund-raising and consulting services from 2000 to 2003, according to the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit group that tracks money in politics. In addition to Mr. Rudy, the firm also employed Karl Gallant, [See also Karl Gallant] who headed Mr. DeLay's political action committee.
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