Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) says he is not worried that the Justice Department is looking into his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and is voluntarily cooperating with the investigation.
“These questions have been asked and answered 100 times,” Feeney said in a brief interview. “The Scooter Libby case showed that you must be careful when dealing with the [Department of Justice (DoJ)]. We’re giving them everything they need and more.”
But Feeney denied having any kind of relationship with Abramoff.
“There’s no relationship,” he said flatly.
Feeney’s ties to Abramoff came under scrutiny this week for the second time after he was cited as “Representative #3” in a DoJ document filed in court Monday charging a former House aide with helping Abramoff in his conspiracy to defraud the public.
In the document, Feeney was mentioned as attending the same 2003 golfing trip to Scotland as the House aide, Mark Zachares. Former GOP Reps. Tom DeLay (Texas) and Bob Ney (Ohio), who both resigned last year, also traveled to Scotland with Abramoff on separate trips.
A statement issued by Feeney’s office yesterday acknowledged that DoJ has contacted Feeney “to request more information regarding” the Abramoff investigation and “he is pleased to voluntarily cooperate.”
When media reports noted that the Scotland trip was paid for by Abramoff clients, not a nonprofit group as the lawmakers originally reported in their travel filings, Feeney asked the House ethics committee for guidance about what to do.
Earlier this year, the ethics panel asked Feeney to reimburse the treasury for the cost of the trip, totaling $5,643.
“In January, the Committee on Standards made no findings to suggest that Rep. Feeney violated any House rules and closed their file on this matter,” his office’s statement said. “Rep. Feeney considers this an embarrassing episode in his 17-year career as an elected official and an expensive lesson for him as a public servant.”
Zachares, a former House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee staffer who also had worked for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), pleaded guilty to corruption charges yesterday.
He solemnly and politely answered the judge’s questions, replying only “yes, your honor,” when she asked him if the charges against him were true.
Afterward, his lawyer, Ed MacMahon refused to answer reporters’ questions.
“The only thing I want to say is my client is a good man and he’s taking responsibility for what he did,” MacMahon said, adding that Zachares would cooperate fully with the federal government.
Zachares faces a maximum sentence of five years in jail and a $250,000 fine, but the judge said she would recommend a sentence of 18 to 24 months if he provides “substantial assistance” to prosecutors in the broader Abramoff investigation.
He is the 11th person to plead guilty in the wide-ranging investigation into Abramoff’s conspiracy to bribe public officials.
The judge also said that the DoJ had decided not to prosecute Zachares’s wife, Cynthia, after she agreed in a Feb. 23 interview to cooperate fully with authorities.
Mark Zachares was the lynchpin to Abramoff’s connection to the CNMI, a U.S. commonwealth that paid Abramoff $7 million to block attempts to Congress to impose federal minimum-wage laws there.
Zachares’s ties to the CNMI — he worked for the former attorney general in the commonwealth and served as secretary of labor and immigration for the islands —helped Abramoff gain garment industry factories in the islands as clients.
Zachares, who worked for Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) on the transportation panel, hatched a “two-year plan” with Abramoff to help him from within Congress and then reap the financial rewards by joining Abramoff’s firm afterward, according to the DoJ filing.
The 12-page DoJ document alleges that Zachares threw business Abramoff’s way and provided a “stream of favorable official action” to Abramoff in exchange for the promise of future employment, a 2003 golfing trip to Scotland, free meals and drinks at Abramoff’s restaurant, Signatures, and approximately $30,000 worth of tickets to sporting events and concerts.
Abramoff tried to win Zachares an appointment to become the director of the Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs, which has jurisdiction over CNMI and other territories’ issues. When that failed, Abramoff helped Zachares become a staffer on the transportation panel in June 2002.
Among the charges, the government accused Zachares of using his position as a staffer on the Coast Guard and Maritime subcommittee to assist Abramoff’s SunCruz casino cruise line, and later, when he joined Abramoff’s lobbying operation, to try to establish a maritime lobbying practice.
Young’s office declined to comment Tuesday.
A spokesman for Rep. Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.), who chaired the maritime subcommittee, said Abramoff never approached LoBiondo about getting Zachares a job on the panel.
Young, who chaired the full transportation panel at the time, was “solely in charge of the hiring, firing and daily management of staff, including Mark Zachares,” LoBiondo spokesman Jason Galanes said.
“Despite being a subcommittee chair, Congressman LoBiondo had no input in the selection or management of staff members for the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Subcommittee,” he added. “At no time did Mark Zachares make a request of then-Chairman LoBiondo on behalf of Jack Abramoff. I would refer questions about Mark Zachares’s employment to Rep. Young’s office …”
In January and February 2002, when Abramoff was trying to help him find a job in Washington, Zachares asked for and received $10,000 in payments through an interstate electronic wire transfer from an account assigned to the Capital Athletic Foundation, a nonprofit group that Abramoff controlled.
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