Mr. Abramoff's Quid Pro Quo With Mr. DeLay And Mr. Blunt On The Guam Legislation

In 2002, Jack Abramoff was working to kill H.R.  521, a bill that would have reorganized the judiciary on the tiny island of Guam.

Mr. Abramoff's real client was the Superior Court of Guam, but for reasons as yet unknown, on his lobbyist disclosure reports, Abramoff instead indicated that his client on this matter was Howard Hills, a Los Angeles-based attorney.

Mr. Hills was also a donor to an Abramoff controlled PAC, NewStar PAC.  This was a relatively small PAC, with only a handful of donors, and  very strategic giving patterns.

Abramoff had established the PAC with funding largely from the Franco family and a few others, like Raul Ubarri Benitez, in Puerto Rico, and the fund was mostly used by Abramoff to help him with his lobbying efforts on matters affecting Puerto Rico. 

But in 2001, Mr. Hills, whose ties to Abramoff link to his Guam work, contributed a substantial sum to the PAC, as did Abramoff's wife, Pamela.  This suggested that the PAC's mission was about to broaden to include some of Mr. Abramoff's other client interests. 

Mr. Abramoff was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for his efforts to kill H.R. 521, and those fees stirred no little controversy on Guam, as they were public funds.*  So Mr. Abramoff was anxious to prove that his fees were worthwhile.

On May 22, 2002, the House Resources Committee voted unanimously to recommend the bill to the full House for its passage.  In addition, the bill was also supported by the Bush administration, via the Department of the Interior.

So on May 22,2002, the bill looked like it had a very bright future, which was an unacceptable outcome for Mr. Abramoff.

No matter what the Committee recommended, Mr. Abramoff knew that the leadership would determine if, and when, the bill would receive a vote in the full House.

On May 27, 2002, the Abramoff-controlled NewStar PAC wrote two checks for $5,000, one was to Rep. Tom DeLay's re-election committee, and the other was to the re-election committee of Rep. Roy Blunt.

Despite the unanimous support of the House Committee on Resources, H.R. 521 never received a full vote of the House.
 

* Both the NY Time and the LA Times have reported that this contract is what triggered the interest of Frederick A. Black, the U.S. Attorney on Guam, into Mr. Abramoff's activities.  Mr. Black had begun a public corruption case into Mr. Abramoff's activities on Guam, having proceeded so far as to issue subpoenaes, when Black was abruptly demoted and a new U.S. Attorney was appointed.  That investigation then died.

Fired Up! will go into the background on this matter in greater detail in subsequent installments.