ABC News: Rep. Ney Becomes Example in Abramoff Probe

Rep. Bob Ney Held Up As Prosecutors' Prime Example in Bribery Probe
By PETE YOST
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Identified in new court documents as "Representative No. 1," Republican Rep. Bob Ney of Ohio has become the poster boy in the Jack Abramoff bribery probe, a beneficiary of trips, tickets and campaign donations, allegedly in exchange for official acts.

Ney denies doing anything wrong, and he would hardly appear to be in the top tier of likely targets for Washington lobbyists.

He is chairman of the House Administration Committee. The panel's work is often mundane, but important to everyone on the Hill from overseeing the distribution of office furniture to protecting the Capitol after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As low-profile as his duties might seem to be, Ney appears to face serious legal problems, has a legal defense fund and has hired a well-known Washington defense attorney, Mark Tuohey, a former deputy in Independent Counsel Ken Starr's criminal investigation of the Clintons.

Ney's relationship with Abramoff could end up hurting him on the political front back home, where Democrats hope to mount a strong challenge to the six-term congressman. He won re-election by a 2-1 margin in 2004.

"There's absolutely no question we're going after this seat; I think we can take it," Susan Gwinn, the Athens County, Ohio, Democratic Party chairwoman, said Tuesday night.

"I would love to see a close race," said Democrat Roxanne Groff, who lost to Ney in a 1992 state Senate campaign.

Among the candidates are Chillicothe Mayor Joe Sulzer, a Vietnam veteran, running on a platform of returning ethics to Ney's eastern Ohio congressional district.

"Given what has come out, it seems very likely that Bob Ney would draw a strong opponent," said University of Akron political science professor John Green. "If one were tempted to run against Bob Ney, this would certainly be seen as the time."

The unwelcome notoriety Ney faces raises an intriguing question: Who else on Capitol Hill is in the prosecutors' gun-sights?

One man who may have some answers is Michael Scanlon, the former partner in Abramoff's lobbying firm. Scanlon, an ex-aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, has become a government witness in the Abramoff investigation.

But for now, Ney is Exhibit A. Three full pages in the court papers in Scanlon's guilty plea Monday itemize things of value to Ney or his staff and official acts allegedly performed in return.

Ney has ready responses for all of them.

The congressman says he was misled by Abramoff about who was paying for a 2002 golf trip to Scotland. Ney said "I was told point blank" that a conservative policy group was footing the bill.

Ney said he backed a measure to help reopen an Indian-operated gambling casino in Texas after being assured by Abramoff that Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., supported it. Dodd said neither Abramoff nor Scanlon ever contacted him about it.

When evidence emerged that Abramoff and Scanlon had collected $80 million for representing six American Indian tribes with casinos, Ney said, "You do something that is in good faith how did I know what they were charging their clients? Why would I hurt anyone, especially an Indian tribe?"

Ney has interesting historical connections to another Ohio congressman, the late Rep. Wayne Hays, who chaired the same committee that Ney now heads.

Hays put his mistress on his payroll as his secretary, and when the arrangement was publicly disclosed, Hays was forced out of his chairmanship and eventually Congress.

Elected to the Ohio House, Hays then lost a bid for re-election to Ney.

When Ney was elected to Congress in 1994, he asked to be on Hays' old committee. He wanted to be chairman. He got his wish.


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Rep. Ney Becomes Example in Abramoff Probe - Yahoo! News

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer


Identified in new court documents as "Representative No. 1," Republican Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record) of Ohio has become the poster boy in the Jack Abramoff bribery probe, a beneficiary of trips, tickets and campaign donations, allegedly in exchange for official acts.

Ney denies doing anything wrong, and he would hardly appear to be in the top tier of likely targets for Washington lobbyists.

He is chairman of the House Administration Committee. The panel's work is often mundane, but important to everyone on the Hill ? from overseeing the distribution of office furniture to protecting the Capitol after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

As low-profile as his duties might seem to be, Ney appears to face serious legal problems, has a legal defense fund and has hired a well-known Washington defense attorney, Mark Tuohey, a former deputy in Independent Counsel Ken Starr's criminal investigation of the Clintons.

Ney's relationship with Abramoff could end up hurting him on the political front back home, where Democrats hope to mount a strong challenge to the six-term congressman. He won re-election by a 2-1 margin in 2004.

"There's absolutely no question we're going after this seat; I think we can take it," Susan Gwinn, the Athens County, Ohio, Democratic Party chairwoman, said Tuesday night.

"I would love to see a close race," said Democrat Roxanne Groff, who lost to Ney in a 1992 state Senate campaign.

Among the candidates are Chillicothe Mayor Joe Sulzer, a Vietnam veteran, running on a platform of returning ethics to Ney's eastern Ohio congressional district.

"Given what has come out, it seems very likely that Bob Ney would draw a strong opponent," said University of Akron political science professor John Green. "If one were tempted to run against Bob Ney, this would certainly be seen as the time."

The unwelcome notoriety Ney faces raises an intriguing question: Who else on Capitol Hill is in the prosecutors' gun-sights?

One man who may have some answers is Michael Scanlon, the former partner in Abramoff's lobbying firm. Scanlon, an ex-aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, has become a government witness in the Abramoff investigation.

But for now, Ney is Exhibit A. Three full pages in the court papers in Scanlon's guilty plea Monday itemize things of value to Ney or his staff and official acts allegedly performed in return.

Ney has ready responses for all of them.

The congressman says he was misled by Abramoff about who was paying for a 2002 golf trip to Scotland. Ney said "I was told point blank" that a conservative policy group was footing the bill.

Ney said he backed a measure to help reopen an Indian-operated gambling casino in Texas after being assured by Abramoff that Sen. Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., supported it. Dodd said neither Abramoff nor Scanlon ever contacted him about it.

When evidence emerged that Abramoff and Scanlon had collected $80 million for representing six American Indian tribes with casinos, Ney said, "You do something that is in good faith ? how did I know what they were charging their clients? Why would I hurt anyone, especially an Indian tribe?"

Ney has interesting historical connections to another Ohio congressman, the late Rep. Wayne Hays, who chaired the same committee that Ney now heads.

Hays put his mistress on his payroll as his secretary, and when the arrangement was publicly disclosed, Hays was forced out of his chairmanship and eventually Congress.

Elected to the Ohio House, Hays then lost a bid for re-election to Ney.

When Ney was elected to Congress in 1994, he asked to be on Hays' old committee. He wanted to be chairman. He got his wish.

Salon.com News | Is the end near for Ney?

Mounting evidence of the Republican congressman's unseemly dealings in the Abramoff corruption scandal bodes ill for the "mayor of Capitol Hill."
By Michael Scherer

Nov. 22, 2005 | To hear his spokesman tell it, Rep. Bob Ney is a dupe, but not a criminal. The Ohio Republican did favors for disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his business partner Michael Scanlon, but they were nothing more than "official actions" taken in the course of a "normal, appropriate government process" involving no "improper influence."

"Any allegation that Representative Ney did anything illegal or improper is false," announced Ney's spokesman, Brian Walsh, on Monday, in one of the many recent releases to reporters. "It appears, unfortunately, that Representative Ney was one of the many people defrauded."

That's the cover story, at least. A quick look at the Congressional Record, however, suggests the truth is a bit more damning. In fact, the betting money in Washington sees Ney, who is known by colleagues as "the mayor of Capitol Hill," as a pol whose days are now numbered. He may not be the only Republican in Congress to lose his job as a result of the Abramoff investigation, but he is likely to be first in line if congressional indictments come down. "If Bob Ney is not nailed to the wall here, given everything we know right now, it will be quite a surprise," says Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

In recent days, the Justice Department claimed a "Representative #1," later identified as Ney, was a major player in a conspiracy of political corruption. According to court filings, Abramoff and Scanlon provided Ney with "a stream of things of value," including "a lavish trip to Scotland to play golf on world famous courses, tickets to sporting events and other entertainment, regular meals at [Abramoff's] upscale restaurant, and campaign contributions." Ney or his staff also received tickets to the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., frequent golf expenses for greens around Washington, D.C., and a 2000 trip to the Northern Mariana Islands, an American territory in the Pacific that had hired Abramoff as a lobbyist. In an apparent exchange, prosecutors claim that Ney agreed "to perform a series of official acts" like placing statements in the Congressional Record, meeting with Abramoff's clients and trying to arrange a cellphone business deal for one of the lobbyist's clients.

These court filings are part of a plea deal for Scanlon, who was Abramoff's partner in a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud a series of Native American tribes. On Monday, Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, admitted to conspiring to corrupt Ney and other "public officials"; he faces up to five years in prison and agreed to pay more than $19 million in restitution to the tribes. Prosecutors likely offered Scanlon a plea so that they could use his testimony to bring charges against others involved in Abramoff's lobbying business, including possibly Ney and DeLay, the former House majority leader, who is now fighting separate criminal charges for money laundering in a Texas court.

"DeLay and Ney are the big ones right now," says Sarah Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which is hoping to make an issue of Republican ethics in the 2006 elections. "Whatever happens is going to happen to these guys."

Prosecutors are investigating the role of DeLay, who once described Abramoff as one of his closest friends, a fact that was revealed in a recent filing with the British government asking for information about a trip that Abramoff organized for DeLay in 2000. Dozens more senators and congressmen benefited from Abramoff's largess in recent years, and many of them later supported initiatives for Abramoff's clients. Rep. J.D. Hayworth, R-Ariz., and Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., held fundraisers in Abramoff's skyboxes at sporting events without properly disclosing the in-kind contribution, a possible violation of campaign finance rules. Others, like Sen. Conrad Burns, R-Mont., received $137,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff and his tribal clients, and then helped one of Abramoff's clients obtain federal grant funding, a relationship that was first reported by the Washington Post.

"We know we have a number of members here, and that number may be more than two or three or four," says Ornstein, referring to the scope of the inquiry. "Right now I would be sweating bullets."

Documents released by the Senate implicate no politician as strongly as Ney. In June 2002, for instance, Abramoff sent an e-mail to one of his clients, the Tigua tribe of El Paso, Texas, asking for money. According to Abramoff, a person referred to as "our friend" had asked "if we could help (as in cover) a Scotland golf trip for him and some staff (his committee chief of staff) and members for August."

"The trip will be quite expensive," Abramoff continued. "I anticipate the total cost -- if he brings 3-4 members and wives -- would be around $100k or more." The recipient of the e-mail, a Tigua consultant named Marc Schwartz, testified before the Senate that the person called "our friend" was Rep. Bob Ney. Weeks after the e-mail, Ney and his chief of staff traveled to Scotland and the bill was apparently picked up with the help of Abramoff. Another participant in the trip, former White House official David Safavian, has been indicted on charges that he lied to federal investigators about his relationship to Abramoff.

The Tiguas considered Ney a friend because just months earlier he had agreed, according to another e-mail, to help reopen a shuttered Tigua casino. "Just met with Ney!!! We're fucking gold!!!! He's going to do Tigua," Abramoff wrote to his partner Scanlon in March 2002. The deal to reopen the casino later fell apart.

In 2000, Ney also inserted statements into the Congressional Record at the behest of Scanlon. One statement praised the "track record as a businessman and as a citizen" of another business partner of Abramoff's, Adam Kidan. Kidan and Abramoff have since been charged with fraud in connection with a casino purchase in Florida, which was followed by the gangland-style shooting of the casino's former owner.

In a recent e-mail to reporters, Ney's spokesman wrote that many of the claims contained in Scanlon's plea agreement were "unsubstantiated allegations." "In fact, many of the things suggested to have occurred did not actually take place," the statement reads. (Ney's office did not return calls asking for more specifics.)

As a public relations strategy, such denials may hold off demands for Ney's resignation. But without clear evidence to contradict Abramoff's e-mails and the testimony of Scanlon, such claims will likely carry little weight in a court of law.


-- By Michael Scherer