Former deputy Interior secretary pleads guilty

Abramoff directed his tribal clients to give $500,000 to Federici’s Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy from March 2001 to May 2003, about the time when Griles and Federici ended their romantic relationship. They began dating in 1998.

Federici co-founded the advocacy council with Norton — before Norton joined the Bush administration — and with Grover Norquist, a conservative GOP activist, college friend of Abramoff and a close ally of Bush.

Griles’ office calendars, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, show frequent meetings with Federici occurring within days of them being discussed in e-mails between Federici and Abramoff.

Abramoff also sent e-mails to aides about meetings with Griles that don’t appear on Griles’ office calendars. Federici and Abramoff regularly exchanged e-mails from 2001 through most of 2003, seeking meetings with Griles or favors from him. Griles routinely passed on departmental information to Federici, who passed it on to Abramoff, according to e-mails and other evidence obtained by the Senate committee.

Griles acknowledged in the plea agreement that he lied when he told the Senate committee that it was “outrageous and is not true” that Abramoff had any special access to him at Interior and that no “special relationship” existed between them. He also conceded that he misled the committee’s investigators when he told them his relationship with Abramoff was “no different” than with other lobbyists.

Griles now admits those statements were untrue because Abramoff was the only lobbyist he ever met while at Interior through a woman that Griles was dating. Griles and Federici had a romantic relationship between 1998 and mid-2003, the documents say. They met through Norton, for whom Federici once did campaign work.

Griles lied in trying to “conceal the true nature” of how he met Abramoff and “did not testify fully and truthfully” about his relations with Federici or Abramoff’s access to him, the documents say.

The Justice Department says Federici’s introduction gave Abramoff “more credibility as a lobbyist than Abramoff ordinarily would have had with Griles,” quickly putting them on terms “that ordinarily would have taken years to develop.”

Prosecutors in January had outlined other possible charges against Griles. They included “honest services” fraud, based on his meetings with Abramoff; lying to Congress about information favorable to Abramoff that Griles had passed on to other Interior officials; and lying to Congress and criminal conflict of interest over a job that Abramoff had offered to Griles.

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