The More Things Change . . .
Washington lobbyists are still getting rich off Indian casinos.
by Matthew Continetti
The Weekly Standard
01/30/2006
IN 2003, AT THE height of his influence in Washington, the ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff represented seven Indian tribes, among them the Mississippi Choctaw, the Louisiana Chitimacha, the Louisiana Coushatta, the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla, and the Saginaw Chippewa. Each tribe operated a casino. Three years later, Abramoff has pleaded guilty, in his dealings with those tribes, to charges of mail fraud, tax evasion, and conspiracy, and has agreed to cooperate with Justice Department lawyers as part of their wide-ranging, and open-ended, congressional corruption probe. Abramoff is on his way to jail. The tribes he represented, however, still pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to K Street lobbyists.
In 1995, shortly after he returned to the capital after an unsuccessful stint as a movie producer, Abramoff, then at the firm Preston Gates, registered as a lobbyist for the Choctaw, who had opened the Silver Star Resort and Casino in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the previous year. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 opened the door for casino gambling, and it took no time at all before many tribes stepped right in.
Abramoff enjoyed a long-term, and lucrative, relationship with the Choctaw. In 2001, the Choctaw followed him, along with most of his other clients and his team of lobbyists, to the firm Greenberg Traurig. Also that year, Abramoff directed the Choctaw to hire his former colleague, Michael Scanlon, to perform "grassroots" work on the tribe's behalf. From June 2001 to April 2004, the Choctaw paid Scanlon's company, Capital Campaign Strategies, some $14,765,000.
Scanlon, as per a secret arrangement known as "Gimme Five," then split the money with Abramoff. (Last November, Scanlon also pleaded guilty to conspiracy.)
Last year, the Choctaw hired Barnes & Thornburg LLP, an Indiana firm with branches throughout the Midwest as well as in Washington, to "protect tribal sovereignty and to ensure federal funding for critical tribal programs," according to Senate disclosure forms. Protecting sovereignty and ensuring funding are both expensive. In the first half of 2005, the Choctaw paid Barnes & Thornburg around $200,000.
Several of the lobbyists who work on the account are familiar with the tribe, since they also represented the Choctaw alongside Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig. Edward Ayoob, for example, worked for Harry Reid before joining Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig. Kevin Ring left Greenberg Traurig in October 2004, when that firm discovered he had received payments from Capital Campaign Strategies. Ring is a former legislative director for California Republican congressman John Doolittle, who is under scrutiny in the Justice Department's Abramoff investigation. Ring is also an author; Regnery published his Scalia Dissents: Writings of the Supreme Court's Wittiest, Most Outspoken Justice in November 2004.
Another Barnes & Thornburg lobbyist mentioned in the firm's disclosure forms is Neil Volz, a former chief of staff to Ohio Republican congressman Bob Ney. In 2002, Volz left Capitol Hill to work with Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig. Ney, who last week resigned from his chairmanship of the House Administration Committee, has the dubious honor of being the only lawmaker mentioned in Abramoff's and Scanlon's plea agreements. And Volz has the equally dubious honor of being one of two former congressional staffers mentioned in the Abramoff plea agreement, where he is identified as "Staffer B."
The plea agreement, also known as a criminal information, says that shortly after he arrived at Greenberg Traurig, Volz violated the one-year ban on former staffers' lobbying their bosses by contacting Ney and others "for the purpose of influencing official action on behalf of defendant ABRAMOFF's and Staffer B's clients." Volz, it should be noted, was also Ney's chief of staff in 2000, when the congressman, at Michael Scanlon's behest, entered two statements into the Congressional Record that helped Abramoff and his partner Adam Kidan purchase the SunCruz Casino cruise line.
Volz is no longer working on the Choctaw account. A spokesman for Barnes & Thornburg told me last week that Volz had resigned from the firm on January 16. The spokesman would provide no reason for Volz's departure.
In 2004, another former Abramoff client, the Louisiana Chitimacha tribe, hired the firm Cassidy & Associates to "monitor general Indian matters," according to disclosure reports. For this, the tribe paid Cassidy & Associates $40,000 in the first half of 2004. In the first half of 2005, the amount increased to $60,000. In charge of the account is Todd Boulanger, a former legislative aide to retired senator Bob Smith, the New Hampshire Republican. Boulanger worked with Abramoff at both Preston Gates and Greenberg Traurig, and followed him to Cassidy & Associates when Greenberg Traurig fired Abramoff in early 2004, after an internal investigation into his business practices.
Also registered to lobby on the Chitimacha's behalf is Shana Tesler, a Democrat who worked with Abramoff at Greenberg Traurig. Tesler's husband, Sam Hook, also worked at Greenberg Traurig, where he was a registered lobbyist for Grassroots Interactive, one of Abramoff's front companies. Tesler no longer works for Cassidy & Associates. Last July, shortly after the Senate Indian Affairs Committee held its third public hearing into Abramoff's lobbying practices, she and her husband left the United States for Israel.
Not all of Abramoff's former clients have signed contracts with his former lieutenants. At present, for example, the Louisiana Coushatta have no lobbyists in Washington, though last year they briefly employed the services of Hance Scarborough Wright Woodward & Weisbart, an Austin-based law firm. In 2004, the Agua Caliente band of Cahuilla Indians, who operate a casino in California, hired Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, one of the capital's lobbying giants. The firm has six lobbyists working the account, according to disclosure forms. They are well compensated. In the last six months of 2004, the Agua Caliente paid Akin Gump approximately $320,000.
Finally, the Saginaw Chippewa tribe, which operates the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, has hired not one, not two, but three different lobbying firms. There is IETAN Consulting, which declares, on its website, that its primary responsibility is "protecting inherent sovereign rights of tribes." The Chippewa's primary contact at IETAN is Larry Rosenthal, the former chief of staff of the National Indian Gaming Commission. The Chippewa also employ Holland & Knight, a massive, 1,200-lawyer firm that, according to its website, offers "service without boundaries." The Chippewa's lobbyist there is Aurene Michele Martin, a lawyer with extensive tribal experience, including a stint working for former Colorado Republican senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, and another as acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs at the Interior Department.
The third firm the Chippewa employ is Chesapeake Enterprises, which helped the tribe navigate the Senate Indian Affairs Committee's investigation of Abramoff. For this, the tribe paid Chesapeake Enterprises $36,000 in the last half of 2004, and another $20,000 in the first half of 2005. The chairman of Chesapeake Enterprises is Scott W. Reed, who ran Bob Dole's 1996 presidential campaign.
Until an unidentified lobbyist called Washington Post reporter Susan Schmidt in the fall of 2003 to draw attention to his business excesses, Abramoff was Reed's chief rival for Indian casino clients. Now that Abramoff is gone, however, Reed is the unquestioned impresario of Indian gambling. According to Senate filings, at one time or another his firm has lobbied on behalf of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux, the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation, the Mashantucket Pequot, the Pokagon tribe, the Buena Vista Rancheria of Me-Wuk Indians, the Tunica-Biloxi tribe, the Florida Seminoles, the Catawba Indian Band, and the Oneida tribe of Wisconsin. His firm is flush with casino money.
In early January, Reed talked about his former rival with a reporter for Business Week. "Jack Abramoff," he said, "brought a microscope to the whole industry." It's Reed's industry now.
Matthew Continetti is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
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