
Messages seized from Abramoff's computer told a story of racism, front groups, secret kickbacks, manipulated tribal elections and political payoffs.
IT WAS DECEMBER 2001, Jacob Abramoff (pictured) was one of New York City's richest and best-connected lobbyists. His former personal assistant had gone to work for Karl Rove, the new president's top political adviser; he was close friends with the powerful Republican congressman from Texas, Tom DeLay, a relationship most of his competitors would kill to boast of. He was making millions on fees of up to $750 per hour; he was the proprietor of two city restaurants; and he was the founder of a yeshiva school in the Maryland suburbs.
But he was still expanding. The scent of money was coming from the Saginaw Chippewa, the owners of the Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort -- a $400-million-a-year enterprise in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, a public-relations consultant who had been a spokesman in DeLay's Congressional office, had begun to specialize in representing Indian tribes with casino operations. They hoped for a contract with this tribe.
"Did we win it?" Scanlon wrote in an email.
"The [expletive] troglodytes didn't vote on you today," Abramoff responded.
"What's a troglodyte?" Scanlon asked.
"It's a lower form of existence, basically," Abramoff wrote. "They are plain stupid... Morons. These mofos are the stupidest idiots in the land for sure."
In another e-mail message he wrote, "we need to get some $ from those monkeys!!!! Can you smell money?!?!?!"
Ultimately, the lower life forms would pay Abramoff and Scanlon $14 million -- just a fraction of the $66 million the two men's businesses would take in from six different Indian tribes over the next three years. (Abramoff would offer his lobbying services to tribes at relatively modest rates, but then tell them that they couldn't afford not to hire Scanlon, who charged astronomical amounts for his P.R. services and then subcontracted much of the work at budget rates; he also supposedly kicked back millions to Abramoff.)
By last September, however, the ride was over. That's when dozens of Abramoff's "Sopranos"-like e-mail messages were released at a hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. The e-mail messages, seized from Abramoff's computer, told a story of front groups, secret kickbacks, manipulated tribal elections and political payoffs. "What sets this tale apart, what makes it truly extraordinary, is the extent and degree of the apparent exploitation and deceit," an outraged John McCain said at the hearing. Nearly as shocking as the sums was the coarseness of the e-mail messages, especially given that Abramoff was a devout Orthodox Jew who posed as a man of conservative values.
As the assembled senators lambasted his dealings -- "a pathetic, disgusting example of greed run amok," said one -- Abramoff would merely invoke his right not to testify. After the hearing, Abramoff said that the experience reminded him of "that scene in 'Braveheart,' when he's brought in on a gurney to be cut up, with the crowd assembled."
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