ABRAMOFF: "MY SO-CALLED RELATIONSHIP WITH BUSH"
Byron York
The Corner
One of the major questions of the Jack Abramoff affair is whether there is more of a connection between President Bush and the disgraced lobbyist than the White House has let on. Democrats have worked overtime to suggest that there is, and there has been speculation that photographs of Abramoff with the president would be politically damaging. But a new article in Vanity Fair, based, in part, on an interview with Abramoff, suggests that there isn't much there.
The White House has said that Bush's contacts with Abramoff were of the grip-and-grin variety, mostly at fundraisers. In Vanity Fair, writer David Margolick outlines Abramoff's rebuttal of the president's story. And this is it:
<<< "I, frankly, don’t even remember having my picture taken with the guy," [Bush] has said. But how about those 10 or so photographs of him with Abramoff, or with Abramoff’s sons, or of Laura Bush with Abramoff's daughters, apparently taken during all of those meetings that never took place? And the time when the president joked with Abramoff about his weight lifting: "What are you benching, buff guy?" How about the invitation to the ranch in Crawford, where Abramoff would have joined all of the other big Bush fund-raisers? Abramoff didn’t go to that -- it fell on the Sabbath, which, as an Orthodox Jew, Abramoff observes -- but how about that speech Bush gave to big donors in 2003, when Abramoff sat only a few feet away, between Republican senators George Allen (Virginia) and Orrin Hatch (Utah), and was the only lobbyist on the dais? >>>
The description of the pictures suggests the kind of grip-and-grin photo opportunities that the White House has described. The "buff guy" quote suggests Bush's grip-and-grin photo-opportunity patter. And the invitation to the ranch, we know, was one in which Abramoff was invited, along with 350 other Bush donors, to a fundraiser -- not exactly an intimate get-together.
Then, later in the article, Abramoff himself downplays his contacts with Bush, referring to his "so-called relationship" with the president and the "very few times" he was at the White House. Discussing the brouhaha over photographs of him with Bush, the article says of Abramoff:
He blames the Bush administration for the fuss. "My so-
called relationship with Bush, Rove, and everyone else at
the White House has only become important because, instead
of just releasing details about the very few times I was
there, they created a feeding frenzy by their deafening
silence," he says. "The Democrats, on the other hand, are
going overboard, virtually insisting I was there to plan
the invasion of Iraq. This is why this nonstory grabbed
headlines for weeks."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/06_03_05_corner-archive.asp#091891 |
