Here’s AP’s latest report on David Safavian’s testimony today. I’ll have some observations up shortly, but this is the meat of it. Safavian floated his excuses for why he misled investigators, and the prosecuto, incredulous, poked at them:
[Under the prosecution’s questioning] Safavian insisted he hadn’t intentionally misled GSA and Senate officials.
Safavian also acknowledged that he told an FBI agent that he had advised Abramoff on two GSA properties in the fall of 2002, rather than as it actually happened in the weeks before he took a luxury-filled golf trip to Scotland that Abramoff arranged in August 2002.
“I was just mistaken about the time frame,” Safavian testified.
With seeming disbelief, Zeidenberg asked if Safavian had forgotten that Abramoff first asked about one of the properties just eight days after Safavian joined GSA. And had he forgotten two dozen e-mails they exchanged about the properties in July 2002 and forgotten arranging and attending a meeting with Abramoff’s representatives and GSA officials the day before he left on the trip, the prosecutor demanded.
Each time, Safavian insisted he had forgotten the dates and was not trying to conceal information from the agent.
Zeidenberg got Safavian to acknowledge that he did not know that the FBI agent already had copies of the July 2002 e-mails at the time of the interview.
