Abramoff blows open business as usual in D.C.

updated 4:32 p.m. ET Jan. 7, 2006

WASHINGTON - A luxury skybox for sports fans in Congress. A dinner party that raises thousands of dollars for a political candidate. Helpful suggestions on how the guest of honor might phrase a letter to the president or a Cabinet secretary.

Alone and even in modest combinations, all are examples of business as usual in Washington’s billion-dollar world of government, lobbying and campaign finance.

What makes it work is discretion.

What’s blown the lid on it now is lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s excesses.

It’s the unwritten rules as much as the written ones that Abramoff broke: Don’t gloat, don’t be too greedy, don’t say out loud what you’re doing, and don’t ever, ever, put in writing what you don’t have to.

‘A big difference’
There is one other clear difference between Abramoff’s actions and those of other lobbyists.

“He defrauded his clients. That’s a big difference,” said Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University law school in St. Louis.

Abramoff, who faces up to 11 years in prison after pleading guilty last week to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion charges, also got caught. A maze of campaign finance laws and lobbying rules makes it hard to prove a lawmaker took an official action under a “quid pro quo” agreement with a generous lobbyist.

“The scandal with Abramoff is just the enormity of it,” said Roberta Baskin, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, a private ethics watchdog group. “Who knows if there are others like him out there or not.”

If so, it’s unlikely they had all of Abramoff’s trappings:

• Foreign golf trips arranged for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and the chairman of the House Administration Committee, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio.
• Fundraisers at his skybox or at his upscale Signatures restaurant on Pennsylvania Avenue exactly half way between the Capitol and the White House.
• Job offers for top Bush administration officials and senior aides of congressional leaders and committee chairmen.

“He’s exceptional in that he was pushing so many levers at once,” said Frank Clemente, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.

Abramoff’s plea deal
More may be known soon.

Under a plea deal with federal prosecutors, Abramoff’s e-mails and other documents will be the stuff of federal court proceedings that will expose the mysterious and protected world of Washington lobbying.

Because the law requires limited transparency of lobbyist-lawmaker dealings, the differences between Abramoff and other lobbyists are not entirely clear.

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