I Cogitate

WASHINGTON - In a report released today by the Department of Justice's Inspector General, Glenn Fine writes that Jack Abramoff wanted to take the credit for getting rid of the chief federal prosecutor for U.S. territories in the Pacific Ocean - a man who opposed immigration exemptions for his client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas. The report concludes that Abramoff actually played no role at all in replacing Frederick Black, the interim U.S. attorney for the territories...

...The report also contained evidence of Abramoff's strong ties to the Bush White House. One White House political official, Leonard Rodriguez, told Fine's investigators he kept Abramoff aware of information relevant to Guam "at the behest of Ken Mehlman, the White House Political Director," the report said. There was no explanation of why Mehlman would have wanted the information shared with Abramoff...

Mehlman also has some interesting connections to the GOP-involved 2002 election day phone jamming scheme in New Hampshire:

By Thomas B. Edsall and David A Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 14, 2006; A06

A three-year-old political scandal in New Hampshire -- where Republican operatives conspired to jam Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002 -- has suddenly become a national headache for GOP leaders, who are being pressed to explain why one author of the scheme was repeatedly calling the White House.

A Democratic activist group, combing through evidence from a trial last year in which the former New England regional director of the Republican National Committee was convicted, uncovered 22 calls from New Hampshire officials to the White House political office on Nov. 5-6, 2002. During the same time, according to prosecutors, state GOP officials started -- and then frantically sought to stop -- a plan to have a telemarketer bombard the phone banks of Democrats and a local firefighters association that was offering voters rides to the polls.

The nuisance calls were blamed for paralyzing part of the Democratic operation during the first hours of a close-fought Senate race that Republican John E. Sununu eventually won against then-Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D). With the revelation of the calls, a state-level scandal has become a national issue, and a top political hand to President Bush has been pressed for answers.

Ken Mehlman, former director of the White House political office and current chairman of the Republican National Committee is fighting Democratic efforts to force him to testify under oath in a civil suit about the New Hampshire scandal. Mehlman said the calls from James Tobin -- a consultant who in 2002 led the RNC's New England effort -- were for the White House to get the latest information about a close race, which would be unexceptional on election night. He said none of the calls to him or his staff involved the phone-jamming operation.

Jon: Just two guys talking... I have sympathy for you . . . you're the guy that has to spray perfume on these turds. . . What happened. . . you guys became parsers when did that happen?

Ken: I think greed, cynicism, all those things caused us to do it.

Jon: Really, did we get that on camera.

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