Jack Abramoff, Bill Frist, Kit Bond And The Wives Club

The Jackson Sun reports that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has accepted contributions from the tribal clients of GOP superlobbyist Jack Abramoff.  Yesterday, Abramoff entered a guilty three on three felony charges.

A congressional watchdog group is linking Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to the expanding scandal involving former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to three felony counts of fraud, conspiracy and tax evasion, agreeing to help prosecutors in a corruption investigation that could involve more than a dozen members of Congress, their aides and Bush administration officials.

The Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group based in Washington, D.C., listed Frist as having received a $2,000 contribution from one of the Indian tribes that Abramoff represented.

The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, based in Mount Pleasant, Mich., made the donation Oct. 8, 2003, to Volunteer Political Action Committee, which is controlled by Frist, a Tennessee Republican.

The contribution to Frist's PAC was made by Team Abramoff lobbyist Todd Boulanger.  Boulanger, who moved from firm to firm with Abramoff, is married to Jessica Boulanger, the spokeswoman for House Majority Leader Roy Blunt.  Boulanger is also a friend of Trevor Blackann, a former staffer to Senator Kit Bond of Missouri.  Blackann is married to the spokeswoman for Rep. Doolittle, another GOP member under scrutiny for ties to Abramoff.  Rep. Doolittle's wife, Julie.....well, you get the picture.

Frist's fundraising has already drawn recent scrutiny as vast sums of the money he was supposedly raising for his charity in fact went to pay a highly connected political fundraising firm run by Senator Kit Bond's wife, Linda.

In an Abramoff related story today in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Senator Bond claimed:

Bond said he had no recollection of ever meeting Abramoff or any of his lobbying associates and wasn't sure why Abramoff would have steered his tribal clients to the Millennium Fund.

I don't guess Senator Bond was speaking for his wife.  At the time Frist's PAC took the contribution from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, via Team Abramoff Lobbyist Todd Boulanger, Linda Bond was handling the fundraising for Senator Frist's PAC.    Here are her VOLPAC fees for 2003-04 and here are her expenses for the same period.

Who knows, maybe all this will jog Kit's memory and he will be able to remember why Abramoff clients gave $50,000 to the Missouri Millennium Fund and the Missouri GOP.