Former White House
Aide Convicted
in Abramoff Inquiry
By PHILIP SHENON,
NYTimes on the Web, June 20, 2006
WASHINGTON -- A former White
House aide was convicted today of lying to government investigators about his
ties to the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, in the first trial to result from
the influence-peddling inquiry centered on Mr. Abramoff.
The former aide, David H. Safavian, who resigned from the White House budget
office days before his arrest last September, was convicted of four counts of
lying and obstruction of justice in his statements to investigators about Mr.
Abramoff and about a 2002 golf trip to Scotland that the lobbyist arranged for
Mr. Safavian and others. Mr. Safavian was acquitted on an additional obstruction
charge.
The verdict was hailed by Justice Department officials as a victory in their
wide-ranging criminal investigation of the lobbying operations run by Mr.
Abramoff, a Republican fundraiser who pleaded guilty in January to conspiring to
go bribe public officials, including members of Congress, and is cooperating
with prosecutors.
The criminal inquiry has created alarm on Capitol Hill, with several Republican
lawmakers facing difficult re-election battles this November because of
questions about their ties to Mr. Abramoff. Congressional aides said the
influence-peddling scandal was a major factor in the decision of Tom DeLay, the
former House majority leader and an ally of Mr. Abramoff, to retire from
politics this year.
Mr. Safavian, 38 years old and a member of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying staff before
joining the Bush administration, showed little emotion as the guilty verdicts
were read in federal district court in Washington. He could be given 20
years in prison on the four counts, although federal sentencing guidelines
suggest he will face a much lighter sentence.
After four days of deliberation, the jury agreed with prosecutors that Mr.
Safavian lied to investigators when he insisted there was no ethical conflict in
joining Mr. Abramoff's August 2002 golfing trip to Scotland since, Mr. Safavian
claimed, the lobbyist did "no business" with the General Services
Administration. Mr. Safavian was then the chief of staff of the G.S.A.,
which functions as the government's real-estate manager.
The jury saw e-mail traffic from the summer of 2002 in which Mr. Abramoff
repeatedly asked Mr. Safavian for help in acquiring two real-estate parcels that
were controlled by the G.S.A., including the Old Post Office Building on
Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, close to the White House. Mr. Safavian
arranged a meeting at G.S.A. for Mr. Safavian's wife to discuss the properties
on the day before he left for Scotland.
According to the prosecution's case, Mr. Safavian's lies were initially told in
the summer of 2002 to the G.S.A.'s ethics office and then repeated to
investigators for the agency's inspector general office and for the Senate
Indian Affairs Committee, which investigated Mr. Abramoff's lobbying contracts
with Indian tribe casinos. Mr. Safavian left the G.S.A. in 2004 to join
the White House budget office as the director of federal procurement policies.
Although Mr. Safavian was the first person to go to trial as a result of ties to
Mr. Abramoff, four other Abramoff associates, including two former top House
aides to Mr. DeLay, have pleaded guilty to criminal charges and face prison
sentences.
Mr. Safavian's lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, said he would appeal the conviction.
In a meeting with reporters after the verdict, she suggested, as she did in the
trial, that Mr. Safavian was a victim of guilt by association with Mr. Abramoff,
whose name has become synonymous in Washington with the worst abuses of
corporate lobbyists. "I've always been perplexed as to why the Justice
Department decided to take out the howitzers against Mr. Safavian," she said.
Defense lawyers representing other subjects of the Abramoff investigation said
they were chilled by the verdict against Mr. Safavian, suggesting that it might
embolden the Justice Department to bring charges against much more prominent
public officials who were close to Mr. Abramoff.
"Safavian was a little fish," said a lawyer for a former government official who
has also become entangled in the investigations of Mr. Abramoff. The
lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to bring
unnecessary attention to his client, added, "I think this makes it easier for
the prosecutors to ask permission at the Justice Department to go for the bigger
fish."
Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher, the head of the Justice Department's
criminal division, said in a statement that "the message of this verdict is
clear: in answering questions posed by Congress and by federal agencies,
public officials have the same obligation as does the public for which they
serve — to tell the truth."
Among the other lawmakers under close scrutiny by the Justice Department is
Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who joined Mr. Abramoff and Mr.
Safavian on the 2002 trip to Scotland, where they played on the fabled course at
St. Andrews.
Mr. Ney's former chief of staff, Neil G. Volz, was a government witness against
Mr. Safavian and was questioned in detail about the golf trip. He
testified as a result of a guilty plea in which Mr. Volz confessed to conspiring
with Mr. Abramoff to corrupt public officials, including Mr. Ney.
After learning of Mr. Safavian's conviction, Mr. Ney's office said in a
statement today that "the reality" is that Mr. Safavian's trial "had absolutely
nothing to do with Congressman Ney" and that the lawmaker "remains absolutely
confident that the lies and deception of Jack Abramoff will continue to be
revealed."
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