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http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/12/15abramoff.html Groups listed as beneficiaries of more than $330,000 in gifts say they never got themAMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Thursday, December 15, 2005 Capital Athletic Foundation, a charity run by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff now at the center of an influence-peddling investigation on Capitol Hill, told the IRS it gave away more than $330,000 in grants in 2002 to four other charities that say they never received the money. The largest grant the foundation listed in its 2002 tax filing was for $300,000 to P'TACH of New York, a nonprofit that helps Jewish children with learning disabilities. "We've never received a $300,000 gift, not in our 28 years," a surprised Rabbi Burton Jaffa, P'TACH's national director, told the Austin American-States- man. "It would have been gone by now. I guess I would have been able to pay some teachers on time." Federal investigators have not contacted P'TACH about the grant, Jaffa said. Representatives of three other nonprofits that supposedly received Capital Athletic money also said they have not been contacted. The grant-reporting discrepancy raises further questions about Abramoff's use of the foundation's finances as he built one of the most successful and well-connected lobbying practices in Washington. Abramoff's dealings already have led to the indictment of a Bush administration official, a subpoena for a GOP committee chairman and investigations by the Justice Department, Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Senate. The discrepancy also follows e-mails between Abramoff and members of his lobbying team that say then-House Republican Leader Tom DeLay of Sugar Land wanted to raise money through Capital Athletic for an unspecified purpose. In one of those e-mails, Abramoff announced a $200,000 fundraising goal. DeLay does not recall making such a request, his lawyer, Richard Cullen, said Wednesday. Capital Athletic's tax return does not indicate whether Abramoff reached his $200,000 goal. But around the time Capital Athletic's tax form was filed in fall 2003, listing the $300,000 donation P'TACH says it didn't get, a DeLay-created charity called Celebrations for Children was begun with $300,000 in seed money. Celebrations for Children was a short-lived effort to raise money for children's charities by providing donors with special access to DeLay, plus yacht trips and other enticements, during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. Watchdog groups protested, claiming the fundraiser violated a new ban on accumulating unlimited "soft" money, and DeLay dropped it in May 2004. E-mails and documents released so far in the ongoing investigations do not detail where Capital Athletic's elusive $300,000 went, or if it was money raised at DeLay's behest in possible violation of federal law. Abramoff, who knows the answers, is not talking. Abramoff spokesman Andrew Blum declined to comment on whether Capital Athletic donated to Celebrations for Children. Blum also refused to discuss the missing grants. "No comment on your entire set of questions," he said. DeLay lawyer Cullen, asked Wednesday afternoon if Capital Athletic gave $300,000 to Celebrations for Children, said he could not reply, noting there was not enough time to track that information down. The ultimate answers may be important for DeLay. Federal law prohibits members of Congress from requesting "anything of value" from anyone seeking official action from the House or doing business with the House. Lobbyists in particular should not be solicited, according to an ethics committee memo explaining the House Ethics Manual. An exchange of e-mails in the summer of 2002 between Abramoff and lobbying partner Tony Rudy, DeLay's former chief of staff, demonstrate that the men were not shy about using DeLay's name to solicit money for Capital Athletic, particularly from Indian tribe clients that had proven lucrative to Abramoff's lobbying practice. Capital Athletic's financial records also show that the foundation spent money on political endeavors unrelated to the foundation's stated mission of promoting sportsmanship. In June 2002, Abramoff told Rudy in an e-mail that DeLay wanted Capital Athletic to raise some money for him, and Abramoff suggested hitting up one of the six casino-operating Indian tribes that enriched Abramoff and a partner with $82 million in lobbying fees. "I recommend we hit everyone who cares about Tom's requests. I have another few to hit still, " Abramoff wrote. "I think that, if we can do $200K, that would be good." Abramoff suggested that Rudy contact the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe of Michigan, saying, "it'll look better coming from you as a former DeLay (chief of staff). We'z gonna make a bundle here." Rudy, however, made a mistake, passing off the task of approaching the tribe to Todd Boulanger, an Abramoff team lobbyist who was out of the loop. Boulanger replied: "What is it? I've never heard of it." Rudy: "It is something our friends are raising money for." Boulanger: "I'm sensing shadiness. I'll stop asking." Rudy: "If you have to say Leadership is asking, please do. I already have." When the e-mail exchange was copied to Abramoff, he replied to Rudy with an expletive-punctuated tirade: "I did not want you to bring Todd into this!!! . . . You should have followed my request to get in touch with (the tribe) directly. Dammit. Now this is out." Despite Abramoff's concern, the tribe did contribute $25,000. Bernie Sprague, subchief for the Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, opposed the contribution. While the tribal council was told Capital Athletic was a worthy charity that helped needy children in the Washington area, "my response was we have our own kids that we need to take care of, we shouldn't be worrying about the kids in D.C.," he said. The majority of tribal council members, however, agreed to the contribution, warming to the sales pitch that the organization "was supported by Tom DeLay and others, and they would appreciate the tribe's donation in the future if we had issues that had to go before them," Sprague said in an interview this week. Capital Athletic's tax return also shows a $50,000 donation from the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of East Texas, but that money was solicited to pay for U.S. Rep. Bob Ney's golf outing to Scotland, said Fred Petti, a lawyer for the tribe. That 2002 trip, financed by Capital Athletic, also included David Safavian, then chief of staff at the General Services Administration. Safavian has been charged with lying to federal investigators about his dealings with Abramoff and is scheduled to stand trial in April. Ney, R-Ohio and chairman of the House Administration Committee, has said he has not been formally notified that he is a target of federal investigators, but a plea agreement entered last month by former Abramoff business partner Michael Scanlon asserts that Ney accepted meals and trips "in exchange for a series of official acts and influence." P'TACH's $300,000 grant is the largest of four listed on the foundation's 2002 tax filing that representatives of nonprofit groups told the American-Statesman they had no records of receiving: •$20,000 for Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish center in Potomac, Md. •$6,000 for the Waldorf School, a private school with fewer than 200 students in Atlanta • $5,452 for Taylor University, an evangelical Christian college in Fort Wayne, Ind. A $6,000 donation would have been big news at the Waldorf School, business manager Debra Kahn said. "That's so weird. Why would (Abramoff) even know us?" Kahn said. "The interesting thing about it is if we had a grant it would have been an unsolicited one because we weren't writing grant proposals back then. We're in the process of getting accredited, so we really can't qualify for a lot of foundation grants anyway." According to an archived version of Capital Athletic's Web site, it did not accept unsolicited grant proposals. Abramoff and his wife, Pamela, are the sole managing members of the charity, according to tax records. For Craig Holman, campaign finance lobbyist with Public Citizen in Washington who also monitors nonprofits, the discrepancies raise troubling questions. "Those charitable contributions have to show up (accurately) in IRS records. If they don't show up there, something terribly wrong has happened," he said. IRS spokesman Phil Beasley in Dallas, while prohibited from discussing specific cases, said charities that misrepresent tax return information risk losing their nonprofit status. "Depending on the intent and severity, an organization or individual could find themselves under criminal investigation by the IRS," Beasley said. Other charities did receive the listed grants, including $14,500 for the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Academy in Maryland, and $2,500 for a Washington film festival by the Voice Beyond, a faith-based media concern. Capital Athletic reported making $2.3 million in charitable grants in 2002, including almost $1.9 million for Eshkol Academy, Abramoff's Jewish school for boys, and $97,000 for Kollel Ohel Tiferet in Israel to purchase military gear for an Orthodox Jewish settlement in the West Bank. There is no public listing for the Kollel group, and the town's mayor said he did not know of the organization, according to Newsweek magazine. For 2002, Capital Athletic reported almost $2.6 million in revenue. [EMAIL PROTECTED], 912-2569 http://warandpiece.com/ December 15, 2005Wow. Reading this, I'm fairly certain now, that DeLay is going to prison. Abramoff was his chief money launderer: Go read the whole thing. (Via Atrios). Complete archives at http://www.sitbot.net/ Please let us stay on topic and be civil. OM
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