Abramoff and Capito: A Missed OpportunityFor the most part, we’ve made our way through the first trial of the Abramoff scandal without too much damage to Members of Congress. Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH), of course, was a frequent topic, but few others were even touched. One of those touched was Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV).
Here’s what her case boils down to: Capito had a chief of staff who was a close friend of Neil Volz, a member of Team Abramoff. Her staffer, Mark Johnson, gladly used her name to run Volz a favor. But when the going got rough and Abramoff needed the Congresswoman herself to weigh in, Volz didn’t even ask her because, he complained, she was too politically weak to risk getting caught shilling.
Fortunately, from Abramoff’s emails released during David Safavian’s trial, we can put the whole story together.
In July of 2002, Abramoff wanted land for his Jewish school. And since the federal government had a nice chunk of land near his home in Maryland and he had a buddy (David Safavian) who was chief of staff of the agency that administered the property, Abramoff thought it would be the perfect place. So he and Safavian got to work on how to get him a chunk of it.
Now, in order for Abramoff to get his share, he had to make an end run around the General Service Administration’s normal land distribution process. And to do that, he needed a Member of Congress to insert a line into legislation that would wrap up his school’s claim to the property.
Sounds easy enough. Neil Volz called on his old boss Bob Ney for the favor – Abramoff’s plan was to “craft something oblique” and slip into an election reform bill. According to Volz’s guilty plea, Ney agreed.
But there was a snag: Abramoff needed to get detailed information from the GSA about the property in order for Ney to slip the line into the bill.
Here’s where Capito’s chief of staff, Mark Johnson, comes in: Volz called on him for this favor.
Early signs showed the gambit working: Safavian (apparently proud of himself for devising this scheme) wrote Abramoff “I hope to have something this afternoon for you…uh…I mean…for Ms. Capito.”
But then came trouble. In an email titled “SHIT!” Neil Volz wrote that GSA had told Capito’s aide that the Congresswoman would need to make her request by letter. He fretted that Capito was too politiically weak to risk being caught shilling so shamelessly:
…we can’t ask the most vulnerable Republican incumbent Member of Congress in the House to put something in writing that can be made public. The Congresswoman’s office has already put the request in and you would think that woudl be enough!!!… it is now Wednesday afternoon and we still don’t have information from the GSA yet – and getting anything into a bill now is going to be impossible anyway with the House adjourning in two days and bills needing to be closed by the end of tomorrow……..THIS SUCKS!
Volz was right to worry. The measure never made it into the election reform bill.
Capito, for her part, says that she never knew anything about Abramoff’s bid for the property, and there is no evidence otherwise.
Reps. Steven Latourette (R-OH) and Don Young (R-AK), on the other hand, who wrote letters to the GSA for Abramoff, were in seats safe enough to run Abramoff a favor.
