Taylor’s Free RideWhy is Rep. Charles Taylor (R-N.C.) getting a free ride on his shilling for Jack Abramoff?
Yesterday’s AP story about Abramoff’s work for the Saginaw Chippewa had some damning stuff.
In 2002, Abramoff’s team was trying hard to land their client, the Saginaw Chippewa of Michigan, a $3 million grant to build a new school. Here’s where Taylor came in. First, Taylor wrote a forceful letter prodding reluctant Interior officials to endorse the grant. Then he helped Abramoff bypass a troublesome member of his own staff, who was holding up the deal. In return, Abramoff put on a fundraiser and threw some contributions his way.
Officials at the Interior Department were opposing the grant, because “the money was intended to improve dilapidated tribal schools, not build new ones for wealthy tribes.” To help with that problem, Taylor co-wrote a letter with Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) to Interior, criticizing them for their obstinance. The letter was pretty clearly penned by Abramoff’s team – among other things, it included information leaked from the Interior Department to Abramoff. The AP says federal agents are investigating that leak.
The single staffer holding things up in the House was Joel Kaplan, a Republican staffer for the House Subcommittee of the Interior. A good portion of the AP’s piece yesterday details Abramoff’s team’s efforts to convince Kaplan to let the grant through – one tactic was to show how generous the Saginaw had been to GOP campaign funds. But Kaplan wasn’t swayed. So they went to his boss, who’s – you guessed it – Charles Taylor, chairman of the subcommittee.
Taylor was swayed. And Abramoff’s team followed up on that promise of Saginaw generosity:
A month before [Taylor co-wrote the letter to the Interior Department], Abramoff’s firm threw Taylor a fundraiser on April 11, 2003, that scored thousands of dollars in donations for the lawmaker’s campaign, including $2,000 from Abramoff and $1,000 from the Saginaw. The tribe donated $3,000 more to Taylor a month after the letter.
So what’s Taylor’s explanation?
His story on this has always been that he backed the Saginaw’s grant so that a tribe in his state, the Cherokee tribe, could get similar funding. The AP reported in November that “Taylor said he intervened because he wanted to preserve the program so the Eastern Band of Cherokee in his state could eventually win money.” But it would seem that preserving the program and abusing the program so that a wealthy tribe got free money should be two different things.
The Saginaw have since given the school funding back after all the uproar – that’s how much they needed it.
But Taylor’s not giving his Abramoff money back, no sir. Says he: “the $2,750 that [Abramoff] and his wife contributed over a period of six years has been spent, so I won’t be giving it back.” Taylor got a total of $19,750 from Abramoff, his associates and his tribal clients from 2000 to 2004.
So how much longer will Taylor get by without much more attention? Probably not very long – he’s in a dead heat against former NFL quarterback and Democratic candidate Heath Shuler down in North Carolina.
