posted on March 23, 2007 07:47:39 AM
Ex-Deputy to Plead Guilty in Lobbyist Case
Updated 9:44 AM ET March 23, 2007
By JOHN HEILPRIN
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles has decided to plead guilty to one count of obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation, The Associated Press has learned.
Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became an architect of President Bush's energy policies while at the Interior Department between July 2001 and July 2005, is the highest ranking Bush administration official implicated in the Washington lobbying scandal.
The former No. 2 official at the Interior Department has agreed to a felony plea admitting that he lied five times to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and its investigators about his relationship with Abramoff, people involved in the case told the AP.
Griles will admit in federal court Friday that he concealed that he had a unique relationship with Abramoff, people involved in the case said on condition of anonymity, because a federal judge had not yet approved the plea deal. Griles and Abramoff met on March 1, 2001, through Italia Federici, a Republican environmental activist whom Griles had been dating.
That was just one week before Griles, who had been serving on Bush's transition team for Interior, was nominated by the president as deputy to Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Second in rank only to Norton, Griles effectively was Interior's chief operating officer and its top representative on Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force.
Prosecutors dropped earlier allegations that Griles did anything improper to help Abramoff or gained anything of value from the former Republican lobbyist, the AP was told. The agreement does not require Griles to help investigators with their grand jury probe.
In exchange for the plea, federal prosecutors will seek no more than a 10-month prison sentence for Griles _ the minimum they could seek under sentencing guidelines _ but they will agree to let him serve half that in home confinement, according to one person involved in the case.
Griles lives in Virginia with Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who until January was an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's environmental division.
The AP reported in February that Wooldridge, as the nation's environmental prosecutor, bought a $980,000 vacation home last year with Griles and Donald R. Duncan, the top Washington lobbyist for ConocoPhillips. Nine months later, she signed an agreement giving the company more time to clean up air pollution at some of its refineries.
The Justice Department filed papers Friday morning proposing the plea deal with Griles. He was scheduled to appear Friday before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle in Washington. Huvelle will likely decide Friday whether to accept or reject the plea. A court decision on sentencing is likely to come two to three months later.
In government papers, Griles acknowledges he obstructed the Senate committee's investigation into Abramoff and his associates' dealings with Indian casino clients. Griles admits he testified falsely four times to the committee on Nov. 2, 2005, and once to the panel's investigators two weeks earlier.
Abramoff persuaded his Indian clients to pay him tens of millions of dollars to influence decisions coming out of Congress and the Interior Department. Part of his pitch to clients was that he had serious pull at the department, especially with Griles.
Awaiting sentencing in the bribery scandal, Abramoff already is serving six years in prison for a bogus Florida casino deal. Others convicted so far in the wide-ranging, influence peddling include former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and former White House official David Safavian.
The extent of Abramoff's reach at Interior is still somewhat unclear. The court papers echo the Senate committee's account of events.
Abramoff directed his tribal clients to give $500,000 to Federici's Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy from March 2001 to May 2003, about the time when Griles and Federici ended their romantic relationship. They began dating in 1998.
Federici co-founded the advocacy council with Norton _ before Norton joined the Bush administration _ and with Grover Norquist, a conservative GOP activist, college friend of Abramoff and a close ally of Bush.
Griles' office calendars, obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, show frequent meetings with Federici occurring within days of them being discussed in e-mails between Federici and Abramoff.
Abramoff also sent e-mails to aides about meetings with Griles that don't appear on Griles' office calendars. Federici and Abramoff regularly exchanged e-mails from 2001 through most of 2003, seeking meetings with Griles or favors from him. Griles routinely passed on departmental information to Federici, who passed it on to Abramoff, according to e-mails and other evidence obtained by the Senate committee.
Griles acknowledged in the plea agreement that he lied when he told the Senate committee that it was "outrageous and is not true" that Abramoff had any special access to him at Interior and that no "special relationship" existed between them. He also conceded that he misled the committee's investigators when he told them his relationship with Abramoff was "no different" than with other lobbyists.
Griles now admits those statements were untrue because Abramoff was the only lobbyist he ever met while at Interior through a woman that Griles was dating. Griles and Federici had a romantic relationship between 1998 and mid-2003, the documents say. They met through Norton, for whom Federici once did campaign work.
Griles lied in trying to "conceal the true nature" of how he met Abramoff and "did not testify fully and truthfully" about his relations with Federici or Abramoff's access to him, the documents say.
The Justice Department says Federici's introduction gave Abramoff "more credibility as a lobbyist than Abramoff ordinarily would have had with Griles," quickly putting them on terms "that ordinarily would have taken years to develop."
Prosecutors in January had outlined other possible charges against Griles. They included "honest services" fraud, based on his meetings with Abramoff; lying to Congress about information favorable to Abramoff that Griles had passed on to other Interior officials; and lying to Congress and criminal conflict of interest over a job that Abramoff had offered to Griles.
I see you didn't choose to post the recent indictment of that N.J. congressional DEMOCRAT.
Wouldn't be intentionally overlooking ALL the corrupt dems now would you? lol lol lol
No, of course not
"While the democratic party complains about everything THIS President does to protect our Nation": "What would a Democrat president have done at that point?"
"Apparently, the answer is: Sit back and wait for the next terrorist attack."
