It looks like lawmakers on both sides of the aisle could be in deep kimchee regarding possible "donations" to the respective lawmakers' causes. The AP is reporting this morning of a number of legislators in both the House and Senate receiving money from the Louisiana Coushatta Indiana in exchange for letters of recommendation and a word on their behalf.

A lawyer for the Louisiana Coushatta Indians told The Associated Press that Abramoff instructed the tribe to send $5,000 to Sen. Byron Dorgan (news, bio, voting record)'s political group just three weeks after the North Dakota Democrat urged fellow senators to fund a tribal school program Abramoff's clients wanted to use.

The check was one of about five dozen the Coushattas listed in a tribal ledger as being issued on March 6, 2002, to various lawmakers' campaigns and political causes at the instruction of Abramoff, tribal attorney Jimmy Fairchild said Monday.

Many of the recipients were lawmakers who had just written letters to the Bush administration or Congress supportive of Abramoff's tribal causes, documents show.

[...]

Dorgan's staff said Dorgan believes the letter was drafted by Sen. Conrad Burns (news, bio, voting record), R-Mont., who also signed it and got similar donations from Abramoff's clients in the same time frame.

For instance, the Coushattas' check ledger shows the tribe on March 6, 2002, wrote checks for $5,000 to Dorgan's political group, called the Great Plains Leadership Fund, and $25,000 to Burns. That money ultimately landed in Burns' Friends of the Big Sky political group, records show.

Other checks listed as being issued that day were made out to groups or campaigns associated with Sens. Trent Lott, Mary Landrieu, Harry Reid and John Breaux and Reps. Tom DeLay, Charles Taylor and Pete Session, all of whom wrote letters favorable to Abramoff tribal client causes, the ledger shows.

Those lawmakers, like Dorgan, have denied any connection between the letters and the donations.

"The suggestion in the story that I may have supported that school construction program because of Jack Abramoff or because of campaign contributions from Indian tribes is clearly and despicably wrong," Dorgan said.

We've got to do better than this. Of course Abramoff wouldn't be a successful lobbyist if he didn't work both sides of the aisle.

posted by Stithmeister @ 8:23 AM
 
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