GOPers Vouch for Convicted Bush Official

Two sitting congressmen and an administration official close to President Bush were among those who recently penned letters in support of David Safavian, the former administration official recently convicted for lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to Jack Abramoff.

As part of a defense motion seeking probation or house arrest instead of jail time, Safavian recently offered letters from family members, friends, and others testifying to his good character. Prosecutors have asked that Safavian be sentenced to three years in prison.

Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT), for whom Safavian worked as chief of staff, wrote that Safavian had worked “tirelessly” for him, according to an excerpt from the letter in the defense motion. Cannon’s spokesperson declined to release the entirety of the letter, saying that the excerpt “speaks for itself.”

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) offered a testimonial about Safavian’s attention to the transfer of a lighthouse in Jones’ district during Safavian’s term as chief of staff of the General Services Administration. Jones’ spokeswoman said that Jones had been asked to write the account and offered the full text of the letter, which is after the jump.

Clay Johnson, the Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget, and also one of President George W. Bush’s oldest friends, described Safavian as a “real professional” who “recused himself at even the slightest possibility of the appearance of a conflict of interest.”

Safavian was tapped by President Bush to be the head of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy in the OMB under Johnson; he stepped down in September of last year shortly before his indictment.

Safavian’s conviction related to a golf junket to Scotland that Safavian took with Abramoff in 2002. He told GSA ethics officials at the time that Abramoff had no business before the GSA, when in fact he was busily helping Abramoff acquire the two GSA properties. He later repeated that lie to Senate investigators. Prosecutors argued during the trial that Safavian had been Abramoff’s inside man at the agency and hammered him during a cross-examination about his supposed ignorance about Abramoff’s motives for bringing Safavian on the trip.

He’s due to be sentenced October 27. And we should note that in what is turning into an epidemic of alcoholism among corrupt officials, Safavian’s lawyer noted in her motion that a pre-sentencing report by a probation officer “recommended an alcohol assessment” for Safavian.

Here’s the entirety of Jones’ letter:

September 22, 2006
The Honorable Paul Friedman
U.S. District Judge
E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Court House
333 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001

Dear Judge Friedman:

Several years ago, I became involved with an issue regarding the potential transfer of a federal property in my congressional district to a non-profit entity.

During the course of my involvement, my office uncovered documentary evidence that the non-profit in question – which had been leasing the property from the government for a number of years – had been systematically withholding rent payments over the entire period of its lease. We calculated that the amount owed to the government easily amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Amazingly, I was unable to find anyone in the affected agencies willing to halt the transfer of the property to the non-profit in question. Further, the inconvenient truth that they had been unaware that they were being ripped off was something the bilked agencies seemed most happy to sweep under the rug.

Thankfully, before the General Services Administration affected the actual transfer of the property, David Safavian made the transfer conditional upon an audit. That audit resulted in the taxpayers recovering over $100,000 in unpaid rent from the non-profit. While I believed that amount owed to be much higher than that, it was a win for taxpayers.

My point is that David Safavian was the only member of the Executive Branch that exhibited any level of apparent concern for the well-being of the taxpayers in this incident. He was certainly the only member of the Executive Branch to take concrete steps to perform his fiduciary responsibility to the citizens of this country.

As you deliberate over Mr. Safavian’s future, I hope that you will take this incident into consideration. In doing so, it is my belief that it will assist you in reaching a conclusion that is both evenhanded and just. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Walter B. Jones
Member of Congress