New York “It was congress’s 2000 Memorial Day holiday, and [House Majority Whip Tom] DeLay’s staff thought the boss and two top aides deserved a respite from the arduous hours they had been putting in doing the people’s business,” TIME’s Karen Tumulty reports. They wanted to make sure DeLay’s little delegation had the finest of everything on its weeklong trip to Britain: from lodging at the Four Seasons Hotel in London, to dinners at the poshest restaurants with the most interesting people, right down to the best tickets for The Lion King—at the time one of the hottest shows playing on the West End, and one for which good seats usually meant a six-month wait. So DeLay’s congressional office turned to someone they trusted far more than any travel agent or concierge: lobbyist Jack Abramoff. “He ran all the trips,” recalls one former top DeLay aide. “You ask where the itineraries came from, who made all the travel arrangements—it all came out of Jack’s shop,” TIME reports.
Previous trips had taken DeLay and members of his staff all over the world, but none had been quite as meticulously planned as this one. Three sources who worked with Abramoff at the time say the majority whip’s office ran one of Abramoff’s assistants ragged with its constantly changing requests. Indeed, say two of those sources, the whole idea for the expensive London jaunt had originated with DeLay aides as an additional stop to a golf outing that Abramoff had proposed at Scotland’s famous St. Andrew’s course, TIME reports.
DeLay’s travel arrangements may be drawing the interest of the Justice Department. Sources tell TIME that at least one former assistant to Abramoff who was involved in setting up the 2000 trip to England and Scotland is scheduled to be deposed this week by the FBI, whose Washington field office has assigned half a dozen agents to an investigation into the dealings of Abramoff and his business associate, former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon...
The President’s team is increasingly frustrated by the majority leader’s inability to mount a defense more persuasive than blaming his problems on a liberal conspiracy. DeLay, says one senior Administration official, “is handling this like an idiot,” TIME reports.
As an aside, let me chastize Time for having stupid fucking headline writers. The headline is:
Abramoff: Orthodox Jew Refuses to Drive or Use Electricity on Sabbath; Yet Indulges Love of Gadgets, Buying $30,000 Golf Simulator and Insisting His BMW Come Equipped with Flat Screen TV
The headline is based on a much more reasonable profile paragraph which just shows different sides of the man. But, the headline implies these things are in contradiction - No electricity on Sabbath, but lots of electricity every other day!!!
morons