Wampum

A number of people, having read my various ramblings on the Indian Trust Fund scandal and my suspicions that it was covered with Abramoff's fingerprints, have expressed concern that while it's fun speculating, there's not a hell of a lot more than circumstantial evidence. To be honest, that's been keeping me up at night as well. I've gone through all the exhibits released by Senate Indian Affairs, and while it's very clear that Abramoff had a more than causal relationship with Deputy Secretary of the Interior Steven Griles, all the money that went to lubricating Congressional wheels seemed related to Abramoff's tribal gaming clients. Griles, however, as I've mentioned previously, "volunteered" in late 2001 to oversee the "reform" of the Indian Trust Fund and reorganization of the BIA's management of Trust lands, despite his vast experience in plundering federal lands, not protecting and "managing" them.

This morning, I was reviewing yet again Griles' numerous testimonies in front of the House Resources and Senate Indian Affairs committees, which are directly responsible for legislation effecting Indian issues, including the Trust Fund. What I had not noticed previously was Griles' testimony in March 2003 before the House Appropriations Committee, whose only connection to Indian Affairs is funding of Interior programs. From the Indianz.com archives, here's the bombshell Griles dropped during his testimony,

Appropriators question historical accounting plan
Thursday, March 13, 2003

The cost of an historical accounting of Indian funds can be reduced significantly if a federal judge agrees to curtail the already limited project or if Congress imposes a settlement, a top Bush administration official said on Wednesday.

Testifying before a House subcommittee, Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles said a motion pending in federal court eliminates the need to spend $335 million over five years. He told lawmakers, anxious to rid themselves of the ongoing trust fund lawsuit, that a favorable ruling would reduce the cost by at least $100 million. (Ed. note: That ruling actually went against Interior.)

...

Interior appropriations members, including chairman Rep. Charles Taylor (R-N.C.), indicated they were willing to support the effort. But Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), the panel's ranking member, questioned whether it would be successful. He noted that Congress has approved "every single" dollar that the Bush and Clinton administration have sought to fix the broken system.

...

In response to several rounds of questions, Griles said the summary judgment motion, which relies on a statue of limitations theory, will stop the accounting at 1984. Transactions dating farther back will not be examined, he testified.

Griles also said there are other ways to resolve the dispute. "Potentially, you can dictate a settlement from Congress," he told the lawmakers. (emphasis mine)

Charles Taylor (R-NC) was rather new to the chairman's job, which had previously held by Rep. Joe Skeen (R-N.M.). Taylor did not have strong record on supporting the Indian Trust Fund, as one of the few to have voted against the very bi-partisan American Indian Trust Reform Management Act of 1994. It's not surprising that he would consider taking Griles' hint to heart, particularly if properly persuaded. Within three months, Taylor had drafted an amendment to the appropriations bill which would have Congress impose a settlment, despite the ongoing Cobell v. Norton lawsuit.

Again from the Indianz.com archives:

House bill targets Cobell trust fund lawsuit again
Friday, June 20, 2003

A House panel this week approved legislation that would allow the Bush administration to settle certain trust fund accounts without going through the federal judge overseeing the Cobell case and subject the rest to a statistical sampling, a method overwhelmingly rejected by Indian beneficiaries.

The measure is part of the Department of Interior's $19.6 billion spending bill that cleared an appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday. According to supportive lawmakers, it would provide a "prompt, fair resolution" of the trust fund lawsuit, a seven-year-old case that seeks to provide an accurate accounting of funds owed to more than 500,000 American Indians.

Yes, I know, you're chomping at the bit, wondering where Abramoff fits in.

Charles Taylor was a relatively new name to me, so I did what I do for everyone I suspect have been cozy with Abramoff, I sent out the Googling monkeys. Press accounts had Taylor as the recipient of some Abramoff cash, which they tied to his co-signing a letter Senator Dorgan sent to Interior on behalf of the Saginaw Chippewa in mid-May, 2003. Wanting to know more about that contribution, I ran their names through Opensecrets.org's donor database, and not surprisingly, there it was, an Abramoff check for 2K on April 11, 2003.

But the press accounts I'd pulled up failed to mention the other Greenberg Traurig contributions on the very same day, probably because both the FEC and Opensecrets default to sorting by name. I changed the sort to date, and came up with this:

Greenburg Traurig's PAC donated another $2000 on April 13th, bringing the total to $7000. What is particularly interesting is that during this same time, none of Abramoff's tribal clients contributed to Charles Taylor, which is completely contrary to Abramoff's usual modus operandi.

But Taylor did have an unusual number of financial supporters during the months leading up to the vote on his Trust Fund amendment, none of them with tribal ties. From March through June, 2003, more than two dozen oil, gas, mining and forestry companies and associations donated over $15,000 to Taylor, including some of Griles' former clients, e.g. Occidental, Chevron, Arch Coal, Edison Electric, etc. Other lobbying firms with natural resource interests, including natural gas giant Dutko, also contributed heavily to Taylor at that time. All of these organizations would benefit immensely should the Indian Trust Fund case be closed without a full audit.

While Taylor's amendment passed in the House subcommittee, it failed in front of the full House, and was stripped from the 2004 Appropriations bill. I knew, however, from Wampum archives, that bad amendments never say never. In late October, 2003, I posted a short piece entitled "The Midnight Rider Strikes Again", where I noted the last minute insertion of a section of Chairman Taylor's original Trust Fund language, that which put a one-year moratorium on a court-ordered accounting of the Individual Indian Money trust was injected into the final Appropriations bill, at the last minute. It passed, with a little arm-twisting from Tom Delay and the White House,

I've run through other possible reasons for the $7K in Abramoff & Co. contributions on April 11, and all fall short, While Abramoff's Saginaw Chippewa clients were seeking federal cost-sharing on a school project which Taylor eventually co-signed a letter in May 2006 with Sen. Dorgan, in April, the project was tied up in Interior. Besides, Taylor had written a similar letter the previous year for free. The lack of any tribal money used to grease the wheel also points against the cost-share as the motivation. Checking Abramoff's donation history, while it wasn't unusual for the Greenberg Traurig crew to give en mass to the House Resources Committee (which oversees Indian affairs) or even to House leadership, they'd never targeted the Appropriations subcommittee chair, even in the previous year when a number of gaming issues were before the subcommittee.

The timing for Abramoff's largess couldn't be better for Griles; four days earlier, Sen. Lieberman sent a letter to Justice requesting an investigation of Griles due to his close ties to his former oil & gas, mining and chemicals friends. A call to any of them for help with Taylor would have been suspicious (note: most of the aforementioned natural resource interest donations came in June, close to the vote and buried in other donations.) But Abramoff et all, due to their gaming focus, were mostly invisible to investigators, as they didn't fit the corporate environment plunderer profile.

This also puts Abramoff's July 2003 whine to Italia Federici that Griles couldn't or wouldn't talk to either he or Federici in somewhat different light. If Griles' long-term goal was to protect natural resources companies from guilt by association from auditing due to Trust Fund legislation, he would have wanted to distance himself from Abramoff and the Greenberg Traurig contributions. After the fix was in and the midnight rider inserted into the final Appropriations bill, Griles and Abramoff were back in contact, with the offer for Griles to join Greenberg Traurig on the table.

The short version: Long-time partner in crime Griles needed a favor. Abramoff paid off Taylor to write the fix. Fix passed, with a little help from some other Abramoff buddies, aka Delay et al., Indians screwed. Corporate malfeasance protected. Bush and Cheney happy.

Addendum: When Sen. John McCain initiated the investigation into Abramoff screwing his tribal clients, he reassured his Congressional colleagues that they would not be in danger - he promised he would find out what happened to the money Abramoff bilked the tribes out of, and then he would stop. This is the reason so many of the documents released during the hearings are heavily redacted, e.g. Abramoff having dinner with Congressman [redacted] and Senator [redacted]. I believe that there are probably emails and exhibits which have not been released, which implicate Congressional members and their staffs in wrongdoing, but add very little to the tribal gaming issue. If I can figure out how to do an FOIA for those Abramoff emails, I'll find out.