Just yesterday a TPM Reader asked me if the Abramoff operation wasn’t mainly restricted to the House of Representatives, rather than both the House and the Senate. Mainly, I said. But senators were in the mix too. And I suggested Montana Sen. Conrad Burns (R) as at least one senator who was tangled up in the Abramoff web. Not to the point of legal jeopardy, I figured, but at least to the point of potentially substantial political damage (here’s a run-down I wrote in August about the Burns-Abramoff connection).
Well, seems I spoke too soon.
An article out in today’s Wall Street Journal (sub.req.) names Burns as one of four members of Congress DOJ lawyers are looking at in the Abramoff scandal — the other three being Reps. DeLay (R-TX), Doolittle (R-CA), Ney (R-OH).
(Come to think of it, that’s sort of comment on the GOP hegemony in the House: delay, do little and ney!)
In any case, the Journal expresses what seems like an odd level of surprise that the Abramoff investigation goes well beyond bilking those Indian casinos and has spawned inquiries into multiple members of Congress, “more than a dozen current and former congressional aides and two former Bush administration officials.” I strongly suspect that understates the scope of the inquiry.
