Abramoff blows open business as usual in D.C.

Lobbyists, legislators, campaign fundraisers and presidential appointees frequently wear different hats over the course of their careers. It’s been pretty much that way since the nation’s beginning. Even public integrity watchdogs acknowledge that lobbyists, properly regulated, are important advocates in the American system of government.

The ethical boundaries get blurred when people play two or more parts, often in the same day.

Quid pro quo
Rainmakers raise colossal amounts of money that candidates need to wage and win campaigns. Lobbyists try to persuade lawmakers and presidentially appointed officials to take actions that benefit their clients. Often they are one and the same.

What is hard to prove is whether lobbyists press officials — and whether the officials agree — to pony up these official acts out of gratitude for campaign money or other gifts of value, such as skybox seats and exotic trips. The law says such a quid pro quo only can be proved when explicitly uttered or written down.

Hence, the unwritten rules: Whatever events or contributions might have preceded a public policy decision that benefits the lobbyist’s clients, don’t talk about it and don’t put anything in writing that isn’t required.

Abramoff violated both, and the law, in vivid detail.

“Is life great or what!!” he exulted in an e-mail to an associate with whom he pocketed $66 million from six American Indian tribes seeking influence in Washington.

‘$2 million for each of us’
In a series of e-mails and other documents, Abramoff explained that in 2002 he and an associate secretly funneled millions of dollars to consultant Ralph Reed, a former Christian Coalition leader, to help shut down a Texas casino operated by the Tigua Indians.

Then Abramoff persuaded the Tiguas to hire him and his associate, public relations consultant Michael Scanlon, to help reopen the casino.

“The annoying losers are the only ones which have this kind of money and part with it so quickly,” Abramoff wrote to Scanlon.

Abramoff also explained how some of the money would be doled out: “He (Scanlon) divided the $5 million into three piles: $1 million for actual expenses and $2 million for each of us.”

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