The Many Scandals of Harry Reid (Part 3)

Over the course of 2001 through 2005, Reid collected nearly $68,000 in contributions from Jack Abramoff’s lobbying partners and clients. Reid took actions to support positions on issues that Abramoff promoted as a paid lobbyist.

Reid received money from Abramoff associates after opposing a minimum wage law in the Marianas which was defeated in the Senate. He also wrote letters and spoke out against the creation of Native American casinos which would have competed with casinos that Jack Abramoff represented.

Reid received money from these casinos at around the same time

Abramoff is a former businessman and con man who was convicted of both defrauding Native American Casinos and trading gifts, meals, sports events tickets, and trips for political favors. He was sentenced to a four year prison term for these actions, which was served concurrently for his convictions of defrauding Native American casinos.

These casinos include: Michigan’s Saginaw Chippewas, California’s Agua Caliente, the Mississippi Choctaws, and the Louisiana Coushattas. The charges against Abramoff included schemes where he would lobby certain laws which would hurt the casino’s business, and thus increase the demand for his services to defeat the legislation or proposal.

Abramoff was the top lobbyist for the Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig firms and a director of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, and Toward Tradition. Abramoff also worked for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands from 1995 to 2001.

Although Reid and Abramoff never personally met and Abramoff never directly contributed to Senator Reid’s campaign, there was a great deal of contact between aides of the two offices and Abramoff did ask for donations to be made by the institutions that employed him as a lobbyist. According to documents and those familiar with the Abramoff team’s methods, the lobbyists devised lengthy lists of lawmakers to whom the customers should donate and then delivered the lists to the customers.

The entities, in turn, wrote checks to the recommended campaign committees and in the amounts the lobbyists prescribed. Much of the contact between Abramoff’s lobbying company and Reid’s office dealt with the Marianas Islands.

The Marianas, U.S. territorial islands in the Pacific Ocean, were one of Abramoff’s highest-paying clients and were trying to keep their textile industry exempt from most U.S. laws on immigration, labor and pay, including the minimum wage. Many Democrats have long accused the islands of running garment sweatshops. The islands in 2001 had their own minimum wage of $3.05 an hour, and were exempt from the U.S. minimum of $5.15.

In February 2001, Senator Ted Kennedy introduced a bill that would have raised the U.S. hourly minimum to $6.65 and would have covered the Marianas. The legislation, which eventually failed, would have given the islands an initial break by setting its minimum at just $3.5, nearly $3 lower than any other territory or state, and then gradually increasing it.

Within a month, Ronald Platt — an Abramoff deputy — began billing for routine contacts and meetings with Reid’s staff, starting with a March 26, 2001, contact with Reid chief of staff Susan McCue to “discuss timing and status of minimum wage legislation,” the billing records say.

In all, Platt and a fellow lobbyist reported 21 contacts in 2001 with Reid’s office, mostly with McCue and Reid’s Senate counsel Jim Ryan. One of the Marianas contacts, listed for May 30, 2001, was with Edward Ayoob, Reid’s legislative counsel.

Within a year, Ayoob had left Reid’s office to work for Abramoff’s firm, registering specifically to lobby for the islands as well as several tribes. Reid spokesman Jim Manley confirmed Ayoob had subsequent lobbying contacts with Reid’s office.

Manley cast doubt on some of the contacts recorded in the billing records, saying Reid Chief of Staff Susan McCue was out of Washington for a couple of the dates. But he acknowledged the contacts could have occurred by cell phone.

Reid himself, along with Ryan, met with Abramoff deputy Ronald Platt on June 5, 2001, “to discuss timing on minimum wage bill” that affected the Marianas, according to a bill that Greenberg Traurig, Abramoff’s firm, sent the Marianas.

Three weeks before the meeting, Greenberg Traurig’s political action committee donated $1,000 to Reid’s Senate re-election committee. Three weeks after the meeting, Platt himself donated $1,000 to Reid.

Manley said Reid’s official calendar doesn’t list a meeting on June 5, with Platt, but he also said he couldn’t say for sure the contact didn’t occur. Manley confirmed Platt had regular contacts with Reid’s office, calling them part of the “routine checking in” by lobbyists who work Capitol Hill.

As for the timing of donations, Manley said, “There is no connection. This is just a typical part of lawful fundraising.”

In January 2002, McCue took a free trip, valued at $7,000, to Malaysia with several other congressional aides. The trip, cleared by Senate ethics officials, was underwritten by the U.S. Malaysia Exchange Association, a group trying to foster better relations between the United States and Malaysia.

The trips were part of a broader lobbying strategy by Malaysia, which consulted with Abramoff and paid $300,000 to a company connected to him, according to documents released by Senate investigators. The arrangements included a trip by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his wife to Malaysia in October 2001.

While Abramoff worked behind the scenes, the Alexander Strategy Group run by two former DeLay aides, Ed Buckham and Tony Rudy, publicly registered to lobby for the U.S. Malaysia Exchange Association.

Rudy, who was cited in Abramoff’s court case, had worked temporarily for Abramoff before joining Buckham at Alexander Strategy, and the three men were friendly. In January 2002, Alexander Strategy arranged two congressional trips to Malaysia underwritten by the association.

One trip took a delegation of Republican congressmen. A Democratic consultant hired by Alexander Strategy, former Clinton White House aide Joel Johnson, invited McCue and went on the second trip with congressional staffers.

Johnson said he invited McCue on behalf of Alexander Strategy and went on the trip with her but said he knew of no connections to Abramoff. “My interest was in getting Democrats to travel to the country and to learn more about Malaysia,” Johnson said.

On March 5, 2002, Reid sent a letter to the Interior Department pressing the agency to reject a proposed casino by the Jena band of Choctaw Indians in Louisiana. Fellow Nevada Senator, John Ensign, also signed.

The Jena’s proposed casino would have rivaled one already in operation in Louisiana run by the Coushattas, and Abramoff was lobbying to block the Jena. The day after Reid’s letter, the Coushattas wrote a $5,000 check to Reid’s Searchlight group at Abramoff’s suggestion.

Reid and Ensign later wrote the Senate Ethics Committee to say their letter had nothing to do with Abramoff or the donation and instead reflected their interest in protecting Las Vegas’ gambling establishments. Reid authored the law legalizing casinos on reservations, and has long argued it does not allow tribal gambling off reservations.

“As senators for the state with the largest nontribal gaming industry in the nation, we have long opposed the growth of off-reservation tribal gaming throughout the United States,” Ensign and Reid wrote.

On November 8, 2002, Reid signed a letter with California Senator Dianne Feinstein urging Interior Secretary Gale Norton to reject a proposal by the Cuyapaipe Band of Mission Indians to convert land for a health clinic into a casino in southern California. The casino would have competed with the Palm Springs gambling establishment run by the Agua Caliente, one of Abramoff’s tribes.

Two weeks later, Reid went to the Senate floor to oppose fellow Senator Debbie Stabenow’s effort to win congressional approval for a Michigan casino for the Bay Mills Indians, which would have rivaled one already operating by the Saginaw Chippewa represented by Abramoff.

“The legislation is fundamentally flawed,” Reid argued, successfully leading the opposition to Stabenow’s proposal.

The next month, Reid joined six other Democratic senators in asking President Bush in mid-December 2002 to spend an additional $30 million for Indian school construction. Several Abramoff tribes, including the Saginaw and the Mississippi Choctaw, were seeking federal money for school building. Six weeks after that letter, three Abramoff partners, including Platt and Ayoob, donated a total of $4,000 to Reid’s Senate re-election campaign.

Later in 2003, the Agua Caliente contributed $13,500 to Reid’s political groups while the Saginaw chipped in $9,000. Reid ten sent a fourth letter on April 30, 2003, joining Ensign a second time to urge Interior to reject the Jena casino.

Two months later, Abramoff’s firm threw a fundraiser for Reid at its Washington office that netted the Nevada senator several more donations from Greenberg Traurig lobbyists and their spouses. Ayoob was instrumental in staging the event, Reid’s office said.

Reid had separate meetings in June 2003 in his Senate offices with two Abramoff tribal clients and Edward Ayoob, a former staff member who went to work with Abramoff.