So Bob Ney says, “I never acted to enrich myself or to get things I shouldnât, but over time, I allowed myself get too comfortable with the way things have been done in Washington, D.C. for too long.”
Never? On the score of trying to “enrich [himself]” and “get things [he] shouldn’t,” I think Ney’s acceptance of “thousands of dollars worth of gambling chips” from Syrian-born businessman and notorious gambling man Fouad “The Fat Man” al-Zayat might qualify. In his guilty plea, Ney admitted to accepting the chips for a couple high-flying nights in a London casino. With Zayat’s help, Ney walked away with “more than $50,000.”
Because Ney wanted more money than he was willing to publicly declare when he re-entered the country, he had one of his staffers tell U.S. Customs that $5,000 of it was his — Ney then re-collected the money once they were safely back in the country.
In return for Zayat’s generosity, Ney helped Zayat get a U.S. travel visa. And since Zayat had a company that was seeking to sell U.S.-made airplanes and airplane parts to Iran, Ney also tried to get an exemption to U.S. laws that ban the sale of such parts to Iran.
I guess that’s what Ney means by getting “too comfortable with the way things have been done in Washington?”