Rohrabacher rues support for Abramoff

Amid new Justice Department activity in the Jack Abramoff case, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) says he regrets a personal favor for the fallen lobbyist, a friend of more than 20 years.

Rohrabacher said if he knew back in 2000 what he knows now about Abramoff’s illegal activities, he would not have agreed to serve as a reference for Abramoff’s loan application for $60 million to purchase SunCruz Casinos. Abramoff is serving time in jail for wire fraud relating to a false claim that he and a partner had $23 million to purchase the fleet, whose former owner was murdered.

{mosads}“Now that I know that he was wheeling and dealing and making a lot of bad decisions, I certainly wouldn’t have done it,” Rohrabacher said in an interview, noting that the reference was for Abramoff and not his partner, Adam Kidan, who is alleged to have mafia ties. “He clearly stepped over the line and now he’s serving time for those decisions and those mistakes.”

The expression of regret is a marked change from Rohrabacher’s previous comments about the reference and his views about Abramoff’s character. Rohrabacher was the only member of Congress to provide a letter asking Abramoff’s sentencing judge for leniency.

In 2005, the Washington Post quoted Rohrabacher as saying about the reference: “I don’t remember it, but I would certainly have been happy to give him a good recommendation” and “He’s a very honest man.”

Rohrabacher continues to refuse to say whether Abramoff gave him and his wife a gift for the birth of their triplets, and if he did, how much the gift was worth.

Back in December 2004, the California Republican was granted a waiver from the ethics committee to accept gifts in relation to the birth of their triplet daughters. He also asked for and received a separate ethics committee waiver on the disclosure requirements for the gifts so he would not be forced to list exactly who had given him gifts and what their value was.

Abramoff and his wife, Pam, were two of eight hosts of a Washington shower before the triplets were born. The names of Abramoff and his wife appeared on the invitation, along with Reps. George Radanovich (R-Calif.) and Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) and their wives. Former Rep. David McIntosh (R-Ind.), who left Congress in 2001 and became a lobbyist at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, and his wife also were listed as hosts.

Abramoff had been friends with Rohrabacher since the early 1980s, when the future lawmaker was a White House speechwriter and Abramoff was chairman of the College Republicans.

Abramoff allowed the couple to use his restaurant, Signatures, between lunch and dinner for the shower. Only hors d’oeuvres were served.

At least some guests at the shower contributed to a fund for nanny service provided by After the Stork, a 24-hour childcare service based in Rohrabacher’s California district.

When asked, Rohrabacher said he couldn’t recall whether Abramoff gave to the fund or gave him and his wife a present of any kind related to the girls’ birth. He also declined to look through his personal financial records or call After the Stork to find out whether Abramoff had done so.

“It’s not my job to prove or disprove people who are making allegations, basically to do research to try to prove my innocence to anybody,” he said. “I’m satisfied that the rules of the House were followed, that we were following the [waiver] letters and the rules at the time.

“Abramoff is a longtime, dear friend of mine and he is very much entitled to give my three children a baby gift as part of the baby shower-type thing,” Rohrabacher continued. “When he gave the gift to my babies he was not under indictment. He was a very upstanding businessman.”

Rohrabacher, however, was not just a friend of Abramoff’s. On numerous occasions, he used his legislative office to assist Abramoff clients, such as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI).           

He also participated in several Abramoff-organized trips. One was to the CNMI in the late 1990s, and another was to Malaysia in 2002 organized by Tony Rudy, an Abramoff lobbying associate who had previously worked for Rohrabacher and former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas). Rudy’s wife, Lisa, also had worked for Rohrabacher.

Rohrabacher has said anything he did that benefited Abramoff clients was done because he supported the policies on principle, not because they were Abramoff clients.

For instance, on Sept. 30, 1997, in the early days of Abramoff’s tenure as the CNMI’s lobbyist in Washington, Rohrabacher made a speech on the House floor taking issue with plans to spend more money on law enforcement in the U.S. territory. He also defended the government’s record on enforcing U.S. labor laws.

That legislation had come under fire in media reports and from Democrats such as Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who argued that the garment industry on the islands imposed sweatshop conditions and was guilty of subjecting the workers to human rights abuses.

“That speech I made on the CNMI is a perfect example of why these trips are vitally important,” he said when asked why he made the speech. “It wasn’t a vacation. It was a situation where we met union leaders, we saw the living conditions of the workers, and I was able to because of that…participate in the debate in a meaningful way.

Rohrabacher could not recall if Abramoff or Rudy had asked him to make the speech or whether he talked about it with either of them beforehand. He did say that he was not active on territory issues before CNMI became a client of Abramoff’s, although he said he had been very involved with emerging economies in developing parts of the world.

“It is very possible that I had called him for specific information or he called me for specific information,” Rohrabacher said.
“I don’t remember that at all — it was 10 years ago.”