Former Doolittle Aide Resigns from Lobby FirmIt’s a bad, bad sign when a subject of the Jack Abramoff investigation suddenly and without explanation resigns from his job. And that’s what Kevin Ring did Friday, according to The Politico.
Ring, who worked as a lobbyist with Abramoff from 2000 until Abramoff was forced to close up shop in 2004, has come up again and again over the course of the Abramoff investigation. But he had a singular and important role in Abramoff’s organization — he was Abramoff’s access to Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), for whom Ring had been a senior staffer. Whenever Abramoff wanted Doolittle’s help with anything — and that happened often –, Ring was the man.
But Abramoff, being Abramoff, didn’t expect help for nothing. And so it was Ring who served as the intermediary when Abramoff hired Doolittle’s wife for consulting work, an arrangement that lasted for approximately two years. The payments suspiciously align with actions Doolittle took on behalf of Abramoff’s clients.
Doolittle has been in investigators’ sights since 2005. But it looks like they’re finally closing in — because if anyone could deliver Doolittle, it would be Ring.
As The Politico notes, Ring seems poised to follow the path of other aides who’ve pled guilty in the Abramoff scandal — pleading guilty to lesser charges in return for delivering their former bosses to investigators. Ex-Rep. Bob Ney’s (R-OH) former chief of staff Neil Volz, who also worked with Ring with Abramoff and then later at Barnes & Thornburg, resigned abruptly from that firm in January last year. He pled guilty to corruption charges in May, agreeing to cooperate and implicating Ney.
