In the fifth day of deliberations the jury ruling on the David Safavian trial found the former Bush administration official and acolyte of Jack Abramoff guilty on four counts. The Safavian trial was the first trial in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal and sets a precedent for future trials, (cough cough) Bob Ney (cough cough). Safavian’s testimony did nothing to help him and most likely hurt him more than anything. As Paul Kiel notes, the “Forrest Gump” defense is not going to fly.

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The New York Times reports that a juror has been dismissed from the federal corruption trial of David Safavian. The jury has been deliberating for one day over the verdict.

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• The federal government spent over $1.4 billion on fraudulent assistance to fake victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One man spent 70 days at a hotel in Hawaii on taxpayer money.
• [sw: Alan Mollohan] (D-WV), who resigned his seat on the House Ethics Committee after he became the subject of a federal inquiry, released corrections to his financial disclosure forms yesterday, according to the New York Times. Mollohan "filed some two dozen corrections to his past six annual financial disclosure forms, saying his accountant had uncovered ‘a relative handful of unintentional and immaterial mistakes.’" He had left out one major transaction in which in he took out a "$2.3 million ‘back-to-back loan’". Mollohan stated that he did not feel that he had to report this previously because the net value was zero.
• The judge ruling in the David Safavian trial is weighing whether to toss a juror because she spoke to persons outside of the juror pool about the case. The prosecution wants her tossed, while the defense wants her to stay.
• The Defense Appropriations bill for FY 07 contains $1 billion less in earmarks than the previous year’s bill did. Well, they did get rid of [sw: Duke Cunningham], so that’s about what I’d expect.
• Yesterday Redstate reported that [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA), under fire for earmarking and connections to lobbyists, inserted a $500,000 earmark to renovate the swimming pool in Banning, California. Today, the San Bernardino Sun picks up the story along with criticism of Lewis from his fellow caucus members. Jeff Flake (R-AZ): "It’s just ridiculous. Cities ought to pay for their own pools." Banning is represented by lobbyist David Turch, who has lost numerous county and municipal clients to the now-radioactive lobbying firm of Copeland Lowery Jacquez and White.

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A judge threw out part of a charge against former Bush administration official David Safavian in the first trial related to the Jack Abramoff scandal:

The judge threw out language from the indictment that said Safavian lied by telling a GSA ethics officer Abramoff had no business with the GSA and was not seeking to do business with the agency. There was no evidence during the trial that Safavian ever made such statements to the GSA, Friedman said. The judge left intact the remainder of the count that Safavian concealed his assistance to Abramoff, and deletion of the language was expected to have little substantive impact.

This move is “inconsequential” to the outcome of the case.

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• The Club for Growth Blog reports that Rep. [sw: Jim Moran] (D-VA) is really excited about earmarking. “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the s—t out of it,” Moran buoyantly told a crowd of 450 attending the event.” Can we please get earmarking transparency — QUICK!
• The David Safavian trial is about to be handed to the jury to decide the former Bush administration official’s fate. Did Safavian abuse his position to help Jack Abramoff? Was it a mistake for the prosecution to not send Abramoff to testify? Will Safavian’s bumbling testimony lead to a guilty verdict as Ken Lay’s did? I’m putting my money on the latter.
• CongressDailyAM reports that the Democratic Caucus will vote on Thursday on the Steering Committee’s recommendation that [sw: William Jefferson] be stripped of his seat on the Ways and Means Committee.
• Also in CongressDailyAM, Speaker [sw: Dennis Hastert] (R-IL) plans on naming conferees to the lobbying and ethics reform conference committee. Don’t expect much of the conference committee or the legislation that they create. Whatever comes out of that committee it will not be reform.
• The Washington Post’s Jeff Birnbaum reports that Congress is about to make it infinitely more difficult to lobby members of Congress through email. If you wish to send an email to your representative you will now have to complete a math problem. I’m going to go with MoveOn’s Eli Pariser’s statement about this: "We should be living in the golden age of politics — an age in which every member of Congress can easily have a two-way conversation with his or her most engaged constituents. Instead, we’re seeing bunkerization." Exactly. And why don’t we have instant, searchable Internet disclosure of all information reported in Congress? This is the 21st Century isn’t it?

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• Rep. [sw: William Jefferson] (D-LA) secured a $100,000 bribe for the Vice President of Nigeria to get leverage in dealing with the Nigerian state phone company, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Jefferson received the $100,000 from Lori Mody, the woman who wound up turning on the congressman, and promptly hid $90,000 in his freezer while telling Mody that he had given the money to the Vice President. The money was recovered in an FBI raid of Jefferson’s house. The big question here is whether Jefferson was ripping off Mody and is that why she decided to turn him in?
• All eyes are on the congressional race to fill [sw: Duke Cunningham]’s (R-CA) House seat. Cunningham resigned last year and subsequently pled guilty to accepting bribes and was sentenced to 8 years and 8 months in prison.
• Another big race will test how Abramoff-related charges are affecting the image of Sen. [sw: Conrad Burns] (R-MT) as he faces a state Sen. Bob Keenan in the Montana Senate Republican primary.
• The Associated Press rewards bad journalism.
• Closing arguments in the David Safavian case will be held next Monday, according to the Associated Press.
• And finally, House Minority Whip [sw: Steny Hoyer] (D-MD) asserted that Jefferson should step down from the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. When asked why he gave this reason, "I think the reason is because he sits on a tax-writing committee and he had $90,000 found in his freezer … I think he’s got a tax problem, if nothing else." (CongressDailyPM)

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• The San Bernardino Sun reports that two more cities have been subpoenaed in the federal investigation of Appropriations Chairman [sw: Jerry Lewis] (R-CA) and his ties to the lobbying firm Copeland Lowery Jacquez Denton & White. The subpoenas issued to the two cities, Loma Linda and Twentynine Palms, push the total number of subpoenas issued so far to six in the investigation of Lewis’ earmark practices.
• David Safavian, aside from testifying that he is a doofus, also stated that he provided "a lot of insight and advice" to Jack Abramoff, according to the New York Times.
• House Democrats are holding a steering committee meeting today that many expect to center on Rep. [sw: William Jefferson]’s (D-LA) seat on the Ways and Means Committee. Jefferson, facing an imminent indictment for his role in a number of crooked deals, was asked to step down by Minority Leader [sw: Nancy Pelosi] (D-CA) but refused. Pelosi is expected to ask the Democratic Caucus to remove Jefferson from his committee seat and possibly replace him with another member of the Congressional Black Caucus.
• According to The Hill, [sw: Tom DeLay] (R-TX) will be leaving Congress this Friday and it looks like he’ll be slipping out the back door and not leaving with the bluster and pomp that he was known for during his tenure as one of the most powerful men on Capitol Hill.
• The Hill reports that the oil and gas industry is ramping up the fear rhetoric after the House voted to force oil companies to renegotiate their oil leases signed in 1998 and 1999. The industry is declaring that if this law passes the Senate than it would increase foreign investment in the Gulf of Mexico. After the vote in the House I did a quick run-down on oil-and-gas contributions to the Republicans who voted "Yea" and found that they took a significantly less from the industry than the average Republican. My colleague Larry Makinson did a more extensive review of career numbers and found the same pattern.
• And for some lighter news: "A struggling art galley is hoping a showing and possible sale of a pair of paintings by imprisoned ex-U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. will keep it open."

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• The San Diego Union Tribune looks at San Diego Rep. [sw: Duncan Hunter] (R-CA) and the campaign contributions that he has received from a certain lobbyist with a shady past (read: convicted criminal). "King of Pork" [sw: Hal Rogers] (R-KY) also pops up in the story.
• Rep. [sw: Bob Ney] (R-OH) has a new excuse for going on an all-expenses paid trip to Scotland with Jack Abramoff and friends. His spokesman is saying that he certainly didn’t go to play golf because Ney hates golf as much as he hates "an all-night conference committee meeting on an arcane tax issue." He hates dealing with arcane tax issues, good thing he’s not in government. Wait a second…!
• Justin Rood reports that David Safavian implicated himself in court today… As a complete and total idiot.
  

  "Did you think you were qualified for the job?" Zeidenberg asked. "Probably not, actually," Safavian said. "Are you intelligent enough to do the job?" Zeidenberg followed up. Safavian gave an extensive pause. "I suppose so."

• Roll Call reports that members of the House and Justice Department officials are scheduled to sit down and hash out issues relating to the raid on Rep. [sw: William Jefferson]’s (D-LA) office and "begin negotiations on a set of procedures for dealing with possible future search warrants for Congressional offices." Meanwhile, House lawyers will file a brief in federal court claiming that the raid was unconstitutional.

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• Yet another Bush Pioneer pleads guilty, this time in Ohio. Tom Noe, a big Republican fundraiser and coin collector, admitted "that he used friends and colleagues to illegally pour thousands of dollars into the effort to re-elect President Bush," according to the Toledo Blade. Noe joins Jack Abramoff as Bush Pioneers who will be sent to prison. Brent Wilkes, alleged to have bribed Jailed Rep. Duke Cunningham, is also a Bush Pioneer under investigation by the Justice Department. Noe will face up to 30 months in prison.
• According to the New York Times, ethics officials testifying in the trial of David Safavian stated that he "had not told them important facts about his relationship with Abramoff" while he was working at the General Services Administration.
• The San Bernadino Sun reports that San Bernadino County has been asked by federal investigators to turn over "records related to the county’s contract with a top D.C. lobbying firm tied to Rep. Jerry Lewis."
• Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) continues to face questions due to his relationship with Jack Abramoff, according to the Associated Press.

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The three congressmen that Neil Volz said he and Jack Abramoff worked with issued their expected denials. The congressmen, Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Steve LaTourette (R-OH), and Don Young (R-AK), issued statements through spokesmen. Only LaTourette and Capito responded (Young’s spokesman said that the congressman was unaware of Volz’s testimony):

Deborah Setliff, communications director for LaTourette, said, “The congressman is the former chairman of the Transportation Committee’s Public Buildings Subcommittee. About four years ago, Chairman LaTourette and Chairman Young signed a letter to the GSA encouraging hub-zone business participation in the redevelopment of the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C. Hub-zone businesses, a type of disadvantaged small business, are routinely included in large GSA projects. The congressman supported small, disadvantaged businesses then and still does today, and the policy is good regardless of who is pushing it. He has never supported turning the Old Post Office building into a hotel and supports legislation making it a women’s history museum.”

“Representative Capito had absolutely no knowledge of the phone call that purportedly took place between her former chief of staff and Mr. Volz, ” said her spokesman Jordan Stoick. “She was not aware of any contact with GSA, nor has she ever consented to her name being used in any way to assist in obtaining information from GSA on this matter.”

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