In an extremely detailed 2891-word page one Washington Post report today by James V. Grimaldi and Susan Schmidt, Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) is tied to at least four different aspects of ongoing probes being carried out by criminal investigators looking into the corruption of GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay — both of whom have been indicted recently on charges relating to the various investigations.
Ney has not yet been indicted, but the WaPo exposé ties him to several different scandals including the SunCruz casino boat fraud/murder investigation (for which Abramoff has recently been indicted), several illegally funded overseas vacations, support of Indian gaming in apparent trade for favors received in the form of cash contributions and other gifts from Abramoff and — yes — the apparent “fixing” of an election administered by Ney of telecommunications companies to determine who would receive a large contract at the U.S. Capital building.
Ney is chairman of the powerful U.S. House Administration Committee. BRAD BLOG readers will remember Ney’s committee as holding a “show hearing” earlier this year on “Election Irregularities in Ohio” during the 2004 Presidential Election. That hearing, which attempted to whitewash the thousands of troubling reports calling the Ohio election into question, called just one witness from a “voting rights” group. That witness turned out to be Mark F. “Thor” Hearne of the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), self-described “non-partisan” organization which had appeared out of the blue just days prior to the hearing. Hearne, identified himself in the hearings as a “long time voting rights advocate”, but failed to mention that he was actually the National General Counsel for Bush/Cheney ’04 Inc. The other “non-partisan” founder of ACVR was Jim Dyke, former RNC Communcations Director, and recently installed White House spokesman for Dick Cheney.
(BRAD BLOG’s full special coverage of ACVR, the so-called “non-partisan” GOP front group masquerading as a “voting rights” organization, can be found here.)
The WaPo story reports that Ney is currently “under investigation by Florida federal prosecutors looking into Abramoff’s acquisition of SunCruz, according to sources familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.”
Excerpts from the full WaPo report follow…
Concerning Ney’s involvement and support for the remarkably sleazy and suspect SunCruz deal and resultant murder…
In March 2000, Ney used the Congressional Record to assail Boulis.
“On the Ohio River we have gaming interests that run clean operations and provide quality entertainment,” Ney wrote. “I don’t want to see the actions of one bad apple in Florida, or anywhere else to affect the business aspect of this industry or hurt any innocent casino patron in our country.”
…
A few months later, Boulis agreed in principle to sell SunCruz to Abramoff and Kidan for $147.5 million. The deal closed in the fall. But Abramoff and Kidan failed to make good on a $23 million payment owed to Boulis, court records show.
When Boulis was being difficult in the negotiations, Ney again made an official statement, this time heaping praise on Kidan.
“Since my previous statement, I have come to learn that SunCruz Casino now finds itself under new ownership and, more importantly, that its new owner has a renowned reputation for honesty and integrity,” Ney said in the Congressional Record on Oct. 26, 2000. “The new owner, Mr. Adam Kidan, is most well known for his successful enterprise, Dial-a-Mattress, but he is also well known as a solid individual and a respected member of his community.
“While Mr. Kidan certainly has his hands full in his efforts to clean up SunCruz’s reputation, his track record as a businessman and as a citizen lead me to believe that he will easily transform SunCruz from a questionable enterprise to an upstanding establishment that the gaming community can be proud of.”
But Kidan’s “track record” included a string of lawsuits, judgments, liens, bankruptcies and failed businesses. His Dial-a-Mattress franchise in the District was in bankruptcy. He had filed personal bankruptcy, and he had surrendered his law license in New York after being accused of fraud. One of his mentors, Anthony Moscatiello, was alleged by law enforcement to be an accountant for New York’s Gambino crime family.
Ney later said he did not know about Kidan’s background.
Four months after Ney’s remarks in the Congressional Record, Boulis was murdered in Fort Lauderdale. Police did not make any arrests in the case until September, when they charged four men in the slaying, including Moscatiello and a business associate of Moscatiello’s whom Kidan had paid $250,000 as catering consultants.
Five weeks after the Boulis killing, SunCruz officials, including Kidan, threw a $1,000-a-head fundraiser for Ney at Abramoff’s skybox at the MCI Center, according to Abramoff’s fundraising log.
Concerning support for a Texas-based Indian tribe’s gambling legislation and the donations and trips apparently given in exchange…
“Just met with Ney!!! We’re f’ing gold!!!! He’s going to do Tigua,” Abramoff told Scanlon in a March 20, 2002, e-mail.
Six days later, Abramoff directed tribal officials to make three contributions totaling $32,000 to Ney’s campaign and political action committees. A Ney spokesman recently said that money has been donated to Ohio charities.
On June 7, 2002, Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Tigua consultant Marc Schwartz that “our friend” had “asked if we could help (as in cover) a Scotland golf trip for him and some staff.”
The e-mail does not name “our friend,” but Schwartz testified in the Senate last fall that it was Ney.
…
Ney’s report to Congress listed as a purpose of the trip: “speech to Scottish Parliamentarians.” However, there is no record of Ney’s speech in the Scottish Parliament’s register of official visits kept by the external liaison office, which is available on the Web. In addition, at the time of Ney’s trip, the Scottish Parliament was out for its August recess.
Concerning the contract for cellphone antennas to be installed in the U.S. Capital building…Plans had been in the works since 1999 for American company LGC Wireless to install the system in the U.S. House until Ney entered the picture and an Israeli company was ultimately granted the contract after what appears to have been a phony hearing of proposals and a fixed “election”…
…
Also that same year, a decision was delayed on the antennas, which caught House staff by surprise.
“We were really surprised, given all the work we put in with LGC in designing the system,” said Henry F. “Bud” Collins Jr., the senior network systems engineer for the House. “Then, all of a sudden this other company showed up. We had to go through this whole thing again.”
…
LGC Chief Operating Officer Alex Gray wrote to Ney to complain about the “highly politicized selection process” that favored the Israeli company despite the House’s “Buy American” posture. “Only Foxcom was permitted a full and fair hearing on the merits of its proposal — essentially a ‘back room’ deal based on political expediency alone,” Gray wrote.
Assistant House Counsel Carolyn Betz, replying on behalf of Ney, said in a letter to LGC that in the fall of 2001 the major wireless companies were receiving ballots to vote on who should get the contract.
In a letter to Betz, LGC president and chief executive Ian Sugarbroad called the election process “deeply flawed and unfair.” He said each wireless company was sent a ballot and allowed to vote for LGC, Foxcom or “no preference.” There were no details on the bid proposals, such as cost, security features, band capacity or critical performance metrics, Sugarbroad said.
Brian Walsh, Ney’s spokesman, provided The Post redacted copies of the ballots. Three show checkmarks in a box next to Foxcom. The other three ballots are marked “no preference.”
But representatives of all six companies said they voted no preference, according to interviews and documents. Five of them were interviewed by The Post, and the sixth made its preference known in a letter obtained by The Post.
…
Ney awarded the license to Foxcom on Nov. 26, 2002, Walsh said. He declined to make public a copy of documents relating to the agreement, noting that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to Congress.
…
After the contract was awarded, Foxcom listed Abramoff as its lobbyist. Over the next two years, Foxcom paid Abramoff’s team $280,000.
(Thanks to BRAD BLOG commenter, “Floridiot” for the link to this story.)
This "Thor" character seems to be everywhere, too. Popping up as a convenient fake voters’ rights activist, fake witness for Republicans, etc…he’s all over the place, like horseshit!
Wow, this one just about sums it up for the right-wing:
Rampant campaign finance abuse, ties to organized crime, election rigging, and political expediency over principle.
Its hard to imagine how the rush-ites will try to spin this favorably. Presumably, they’ll just try to bury it.
I hope Rep. Doolittle is sweating, too.
When two scandals collide…Plamegate and the Abramoff/DeLay mess..what happens..? Big Bang..? Shouldn’t be to many left standing if these investigations, indictments and (hopefully) prosecutions, get all the people involved….a damn good chance to purge the government of all crooks, including any Dems….we don’t want them, we don’t need that kind of government….Curious, even though the Plamegate scandal seems to be including just about every one in the WHIG..even Cheney..there is an assumption that Bush and Rice will be untouched…(some are mentioning Rice as a possible replacement, rightfully I guess, for Cheney..yet she was also "in" on the WHIG..so do we get a few out and leave the others in? I don’t think thats a fair trade, at all.
Oh, here, for example, re: Doolittle.
Bob Ney should also be recognized for stalling in his House Administration Committee the Rush Holt bill that would have outlawed unauditable voting machines.
Also, he (along with DeLay and Safavian) took that golf trip to Scotland that Jack Abramoff financed….
Ah, good ol’ Ney. He’s had his dirty little fingers in things for a while, hasn’t he? Y’know, I can’t help but wonder, what with the Florida connection and all, what kind of links to Feeney might be found?
I have a sneaking suspicision that the Republicans just don’t care about governing any more.
It occurs to me that perhaps they know that their time is about up and all they want to do now is to cut benefits (Medicaid, Basic Food, farmers’ subsidies, etc.), lower taxes for the richest, and gouge the public (e.g. gasoline, energy and health insurance premiums, etc.) as much as they can in their waning days left.
Regrettably, they still have over a year to do this….
This is an edited scene from Monty Python’s ‘Holy Grail’ movie.
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/grail-13.htm
The Knights of Ney
[spooky music]
[music stops]
HEAD KNIGHT OF NEY:
Ney!
KNIGHTS OF NEY:
Ney! Ney! Ney! Ney! Ney!
ARTHUR:
Who are you?
HEAD KNIGHT:
We are the [Ohio] Knights Who Say… ‘Ney’!
RANDOM:
Ney!
ARTHUR:
No! Not the [Ohio] Knights Who Say ‘Ney’!
HEAD KNIGHT:
The same!
BEDEVERE:
Who are they?
HEAD KNIGHT:
We are the keepers of the sacred words: ‘Ney’, ‘Peng’, and ‘Neee-wom’!
RANDOM:
Neee-wom!
ARTHUR:
Those who hear them seldom live to tell the tale.
HEAD KNIGHT:
The Knights Who Say ‘Ney’ demand a sacrifice.
ARTHUR:
Knights of Ney, we are but simple travellers who seek the enchanter who lives beyond these woods.
HEAD KNIGHT:
Ney!
KNIGHTS OF NI:
Ney! Ney! Ney! Ney! Ney!…
ARTHUR:
Ow! Ow! Ow! Agh!
HEAD KNIGHT:
We shall say ‘ney’ again to you if you do not appease us.
ARTHUR:
Well, what is it you want?
HEAD KNIGHT:
We want… a [White House ] shrubbery!
[dramatic chord]
ARTHUR:
A what?
KNIGHTS OF NI:
Ney! Ney! Ney! Ney!
ARTHUR and PARTY:
Ow! Oh!
ARTHUR:
Please! Please! No more! We will find you a [White House] shrubbery.
HEAD KNIGHT:
You must return here with a [White House] shrubbery, or else, you will never pass through this [Ohio] wood… alive.
ARTHUR:
O Knights of Ney, you are just and fair, and we will return from [Washington, D.C.] with a shrubbery.
HEAD KNIGHT:
One that looks nice.
ARTHUR:
Of course.
HEAD KNIGHT:
And not too expensive.
ARTHUR:
Yes.
HEAD KNIGHT:
Now… go!
I’ve always known politicians are crooks, 99% are, but these slime buckets are just not too bright, are they? The numbers grow every week lately.
I sure hope we can get a fair election this time and I sure hope the American public studies the PEOPLE running for office, not just the PARTY. Both sides have evil. We’ll be a lot better educated from now on, come that November morning, believe me.
Why do all these Republican fucks look like humans morphing into lizards. I wouldn’t buy a used car from this guy let alone vote for him, if I had to go by appearances alone.
All of the commentors seem to believe this will make some difference to people who voted for Bush in the last election. I don’t think it will, those people don’t pay attention to anything unless it is Sunday morning. They are destined to vote right wing for the rest of thier lives. Unfortunately more of them than us vote.
Arry #3
Matsui is my district, wish I could vote against that idiot Doolittle though!
Can’t believe he is still trying push the Auburn Dam! That thing would make me have to move to about 1200′ elevation or learn to swim real fast!
Love the website (#5)
Of course my current elevation of 52′ isn’t going to stand up to the melting of the Greenland and Antartic ice caps which cover their respective land masses.
Ney seems to have his finger in just about every rotten pie there is.
Can’t wait for the whole bunch to go down!
Maybe we could ask Ney and Abramoff who does their murdering for them. Maybe we could all chip in and have them pay their employers a visit.
Bailiff: Please state your name for the court.
Witness: Ney.
Bailiff: You must state your name.
Witness: I told you, Ney.
Bailiff: Does that mean "no?"
Witness: I’m not Noe, I’m Ney.
Judge: "Ney" and "Noe" mean the same thing.
Ney: No.
Judge: Noe is our next witness. Never mind him.
Ney: Yea.
Judge: This isn’t something to cheer about, Mr. Ney.
Ney: No.
Judge: You’re in contempt of court.
Ney: Oh.
chimera #7
feeney to jeb then reopen Lemme investigation, that would be interesting
Half Empty:
That’s bullshit I say. Know why? Bush’s horrid approval ratings and that of the republicans are down to 30%!!!
Approval down to 30%!!!!
Nearly nobody trusts these fools anymore except the racist freaks who were always republicans. I think that makes a big difference, wouldn’t you? AND the convictions aren’t even OVER yet!!!
Doug E.
Doug:
His approval ratings are very low, but approval ratings are a passive measure. People call you to aks what you think. You don’t have to get out and vote which is what every good hearted christian does now because the religious supremacists have done an execellent job of linking themselves with Jesus. If don’t vote republican God will hate you. That is the clear message here in the buckle of the Bible Belt. I wish I was wrong, but it just ain’t so. Maybe the rest of the country is not so stupid, but it sure doesn’t look that way from here.
#13 — Bluebear2 — Here’s to hoping he gets dragged down with the rest, along with his little California empire. He’s right in there with Abramoff, DeLay, and gang methinks.
(How long has he been pushing that Auburn Dam, anyway? Somebody stands to profit.)
It was immediately obvious right after the election, from his behavior, that Ney not only knew about the stolen election but was one of its architects. Look at the code of ethics of Mafioso in the Godfather–Don Corleone’s moral code is way above these thugs.
WaPo infuriates me with their schizy behavior–running actual journalism sporadically and then intermixing it with crap like Dana Milbanks’ slam piece of the Conyers hearings. But today they’re back in the plus column with this piece. But the real heroes are the guys from the Toledo Blade who have been relentlessly chipping away at this. Those guys are real patriots. When the smoke has cleared from the razing and raping of America by the NeoCons, and fingers are finally pointed at the media for letting America down, I hope President Gore gives the brave reporters at The Blade medals.
The bible belt is falling apart…
They are full of pure racists and idealogues, a tiny minority, compared to all 70% of the rest of us…
Doug E.
Arry # 21
In April 1976, the Association of Engineering Geologists, Seismic Hazards Committee, issued a report stating that a moderate earthquake like the 1975 event near Oroville would cause the proposed dam at Auburn to fail. Concerns about dam safety were further heightened in June 1976, when the Teton Dam in Idaho failed.
More here – scroll down the first page to find "Plan"
RLM #17… hahahahahahaha! Great wordplay! Oh, BTW, who’s on Frist?
Bob Ney is from the district just south of where I live.
Remember Bob was the fearless leader from the House who made the House restaurant change the name of french fries to freedom fries.
Thanks, Unirealist. "Who’s on Frist?" "Watt’s in the Interior Department."
The second day in court went like this:
Bailiff: Your Honor, Thomas and Bernadette Noe have both failed to appear in court.
Judge: No Noes.
Bailiff: I’d agree, Your Honor. Big no-nos.
Judge: Send the sheriff out. Noes might have blown.
Bailiff: I have a handkerchief, Your Honor.
Judge: No, No. Did we find Blackwell?
Bailiff: Right. No Noe, and we found Black in perfect health, Your Honor.
Judge: And the Noes…blown?
Bailiff: You’d have to ask him, sir.
Judge: What’s new with Ney?
Bailiff: Nothing new with Ney or Noe, as far as I know.
Judge: Can’t we bring them nigh?
Bailiff: Nay, I don’t think so.
etc. etc. etc.
We need a new WMD search. Remember all the weapons Ollie sent to Iran during Iran-Contra?
Was there ever a list produced? I think bu$hit ought to get a list … before he thinks invasion.
I mean Ollie and the other patriots might have sold Iran nukes … gas … viruses … or other WMD thingies. They did that for Saadam, after all.
The righteous panel could include Ney, Rove, Libby, Scottie, and jeffie gannon.
They would be sure to get to the bottom of things.
Cave In
Raw Story is reporting that two Cheney aides are co-operating with the Plame outing investigation.
The rumor is that they have been given some or total immunity for testifying against Cheney, Libby, et. al.
This admin is toast when all they have to offer is cronyism, and it is rank cronyism that pisses all the wannabees off.
Ney, DeLay, Abramoff, Rove, Libby, and Cheney being gone, Bush must rely on his own prowess, "listen to God talk" more, and "stay the course" (be stubborn).
So, as his final pissoff he appoints Meir, knowing from private talks that she will vote to overturn Roe v Wade, will support his "enemy combatant" orders in upcoming cases, and will rule on the side of corporations.
Why are they pissed then? They can’t trust him to know Meir … he can’t figure anything out on his own, so they want a Bork, Thomas, or the like who has a long judicial record. Right wing credentials.
In a world where all the cronies are going down cause the MSM is letting a little light shine thru (imagine what would happen if they let it all hang out), and its real bad in there.
In a short span of time we have gone from absurdly following the president to absurdly not following the president.
Our political structure is unstable.
What this blog has advocated for so long is balance. We welcome the words of republicans (but we dislike the disingenuous words of the neoCons). Reasonable give and take, and above all, intellectual honesty.
The Ney sayer, DeLay preyer, and that ilk have none of that. Ney, Delay, and that ilk have committed frauds and crimes against america.
Some of y’all here who persist in linking Southerners to racists need to understand that there are WAY more white Southerners who are NOT racist than who are. KKK, white militias, etc. are more often found in the North these days.
There are plenty of Bible-thumpin’ Southern White folks who are not racists, but may appear to vote racist, when what they’re really doing is voting pro-life. My family is like that. We certainly came from (what was normal then) racist background; if you wanna say that accepting what we were taught – that we were better/smarter/cleaner/etc. – and deserved to have "seperate but equal" facilities which were neither seperate nor equal, was racist.
But we would have never dreamed of being KKK or even using "the N word." If I used it I’d have had my mouth washed out with soap. My grandma would say, "The correct pronunciation is ‘nigra’, and they’re people, too. They have to be respected. Nigras have their place."
I’m not saying that was right, but it was a far cry from the lynching, MLK killin’ white folks that some Northerners depicted all of as as being. My Mama broke down and cried when she heard of MLKs death. Why? Because she doesn’t believe in violence, and didn’t believe that we all should be depicted as violent, when it was just the deranged few doing such dirty work. Mom’s a Christian lady, and naively believes any politician who is pro-life is great.
Most White Southerners are more comfortable with Blacks than Northerners who wanna judge us, as we have lived and worked with Blacks (and lately Hispanics) our whole lives. I’m of the age that I grew up in schools with blacks for only part of my school career, and had my eyes completely opened by integration. It worked, like it was supposed to do.
Yet, in the first 70 years of the 20th century, what passed as just in the South clearly was not. And today there are definately some hold-outs in the white southern aristocracy and some in the poverty filled white areas (who still buy what the racists are selling), but most of us are not that way.
So, I’ll thank any of y’all to get off the "White Southerners are all racists" implications.
peace out,
shw
Shannon,
I’m here in the South too. I don’t think all white woutherners are racist. No, no. The racists here all joined the Republican party though. Just a bad break that the white Christian Evangelicals also joined the Republicans. Now they are in bed together, along with the Corps and the disgustingly greedy rich.
"Asst. House Counsel Carolyn Betz" defends Ney’s actions in the Washington Post story.
This link to the Congressional Record
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r108:16:./temp/~r108F7ymj4::
Ney inserted a nice little laudatory speech into the Congressional Record 2 years ago praising Betz.
You have got it. The connection between Ney and the two to three million dollars appropriated by HAVA mandating the country chaange to electronic voting and the complete refusal to allow any kind of monitoring of the election voting process, no paper records, no auditing all blocked in the congress. How can we get this into papers like NYTimes or WAshingtonPost. This is a national scandal of huge proportions. Please reply.
You have got it. The connection between Ney and the two to three million dollars appropriated by HAVA mandating the country chaange to electronic voting and the complete refusal to allow any kind of monitoring of the election voting process, no paper records, no auditing all blocked in the congress. How can we get this into papers like NYTimes or WAshingtonPost. This is a national scandal of huge proportions. Please reply.