Mr. Volz Goes to Washington (And Narrowly Avoids Jail)Neil Volz, who recently was sentenced to probation for accepting bribes while a staffer with ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) and giving bribes while working with Jack Abramoff, explained to The Columbus Dispatch this weekend how it all fell apart. The short version: moral scruples are no match for sweet court-side tickets:
“I came to Washington this total idealist,” Volz told The Dispatch last week in his first public comments since he began working with federal prosecutors in 2005. “But it’s kind of like I took on this mind-set that there was a machine at work and I was just a cog in the machine. And, therefore, I need to get mine.”
It was a world of trying to justify accepting gifts that he knew were wrong, in exchange for legislative favors that he knew never should have been granted.
“It is a lot easier to rationalize something away when you are in the front row watching Michael Jordan play basketball,” Volz said. “That’s sad to say, but if I can kind of spend the next many years at least being honest about what’s happened ⦠hopefully, whatever does come about, for my life, I can live with that.”
An interesting entry in the TPMmuckraker Where Are They Now file: evidently trying to erase his moral deficit, Volz now works at U.S. Vets, a nonprofit group that helps homeless veterans.
