Daily Kos: Jack Abramoff's Tentacles Reach Ken Mehlman And The White House

by DemFromCT
Sun Oct 15, 2006 at 07:01:06 AM PDT

On the eve of the midterms, more ethical woes for the GOP. From the LA Times:

For five years, Allen Stayman wondered who ordered his removal from a State Department job negotiating agreements with tiny Pacific island nations -- even when his own bosses wanted him to stay.

Now he knows.

Newly disclosed e-mails suggest that the ax fell after intervention by one of the highest officials at the White House: Ken Mehlman, on behalf of one of the most influential lobbyists in town, Jack Abramoff.

The e-mails show that Abramoff, whose client list included the Northern Mariana Islands, had long opposed Stayman's work advocating labor changes in that U.S. commonwealth, and considered what his lobbying team called the "Stayman project" a high priority.

"Mehlman said he would get him fired," an Abramoff associate wrote after meeting with Mehlman, who was then White House political director.

A currently recommended diary by smintheus gives plenty of detail. Ken Mehlman was WH political director at the time, and the reason this scandal is a little different than that of the disgraced (but still serving) Bob Ney and other corrupt congressmen. While Connecticut R voters, for example, can cluck their tongues at the rogue Republicans in Ohio, Mehlman and David Safavian mean that this is a national pay-for-play scandal and an order of magnitude more important.