Griles will look oh so good....in an orange jumpsuit
Yahoo! I knew it would happen eventually! From the NYTimes:
Former Official Is Said to Be a Focus of Lobbyist Inquiry
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 -The former No. 2 official in the Interior Department has been notified by federal prosecutors that he will most likely be indicted for lying about his relationship with the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, people with knowledge of the investigation said Wednesday.
A lawyer for the former official, J. Steven Griles, said Mr. Griles was recently told by the Justice Department that he was a target of the investigation as a result of his testimony about Mr. Abramoff to a Senate committee in 2005.
"We are shocked and disappointed at this turn of events," the lawyer, Barry M. Hartman, said in a statement. "No one has suggested that Mr. Griles ever took anything of value from Mr. Abramoff or any other lobbyist, and he never did."
Mr. Abramoff, once one of the most powerful Republican lobbyists in Washington, entered prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to corrupt public officials.
In his November 2005 testimony to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. Griles insisted he had done no special favors for Mr. Abramoff while he was deputy secretary of the interior in President Bush's first term. But Mr. Griles acknowledged that he had been approached about leaving the department to join Mr. Abramoff's lobbying firm. Mr. Griles did not take that job, and now works elsewhere as a corporate lobbyist.
Mr. Abramoff's internal e-mail messages show that he referred to Mr. Griles as "our guy" at the Interior Department, and repeatedly sought to bring pressure on Mr. Griles to do favors for Mr. Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. In a report last year, the Indian Affairs Committee said it could not "definitively conclude what, if anything, Griles did to assist Mr. Abramoff's clients."
For my background on J. Steven Griles, see most of the posts in Abramoff and the Injuns
So happy, I could dance! Expect there might be some dishing on the Cheney Energy Plan hijinx in some kind of plea agreement - that was the real reason Griles was tapped by Bush/Cheney. He was a mega-lobbyist for the mining/gas/oil industry.
For extra points, which top contributor to Rahm Emanuel just hired Griles firm to lobby for them?