The highest-ranking Bush administration official to plead guilty in connection with the Jack Abramoff investigation was sentenced to prison Tuesday, with the judge adding time because, she said, he violated the public trust.

Griles pleaded guilty in March to lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee about the access and influence he had given to Abramoff, a Bush “pioneer” fundraiser, on Indian casino issues.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) led the probe. Italia Federici, a former campaign aide to former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, has also pleaded guilty to lying to the committee.

Griles’s guilty plea had indicated that he would likely have to serve five months in jail. But Huvelle had warned Griles that she might not accept the prosecutors’ recommendation. The judge had also increased the sentence of former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) because of the trust placed in him as an elected official.

Griles’s attorneys had argued that a sentence of five months in prison would be too harsh, saying the crime was minor and citing their client’s history of public service. They advocated a sentence of community service to be served at the American Recreation Coalition, an industry group Griles had worked with at Interior that supports motorized recreation on public lands.
Norton wrote a letter in support of Griles and asked for leniency.

Griles’s attorneys noted that while other Abramoff defendants took money from the lobbyist, Griles had not. Griles noted that he had been invited on Abramoff’s now-infamous golf trip to Scotland with former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), but “expressly and affirmatively rejected” the offer.

Prosecutors replied that five months was a fitting punishment, and offered up new details about how Griles helped Abramoff’s Indian casino clients. They said Griles “was not shy” about seeking favors in return. The favors included asking Abramoff to raise money for the group run by Federici, then Griles’s girlfriend, and trying to get jobs at Abramoff’s firm for other women with whom he had “close, personal” relationships.

For his part, Griles berated an official who did not want to send federal school construction funds intended for poor tribes to a wealthy casino tribe that had hired Abramoff, and worked to block a casino that would compete with one of Abramoff’s clients, the brief said.

They also compared the case to that of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was given a two-and-a-half-year sentence for lying to investigators about the outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.