I’ve been following the Abramoff scandal for months with a mixture of sick fascination, moral disgust and dread, and, dirty as Washington is, I don’t think British politicians will come out of it well either.
BBC “Euan Blair, the prime minister’s eldest son, is to work in Washington DC as an intern for Republican politicians.”
Eric Burns, Democrat aide: “It is extremely surprising that the son of a Labour prime minister would intern with the Republican majority staff on the committee “
TONY Blair is expected to join one of the most exclusive groups of businessmen in the world after he leaves Downing Street.
The PM is being lined up for a highly lucrative position with the Carlyle Group – an American-based investment giant with strong links to the White House and the defence industry.
The firm has been nicknamed “The Ex-Presidents Club” because it has had a host of former world leaders on its books including George Bush Senior, his former secretary of state James Baker and former British PM John Major. There a also a large number of former US Army top brass. “
I make no imputations of any wrongdoing whatsoever ( as if I’d do such a thing)), but in these dangerously technological times, spouses and nowadays offspring must be above suspicion, and as the stench of Republican corruption is beginning to waft over the Atlantic I expect there are members of the Blair family who are considering revisiting their CVs nd looking at their retirement plans again. ‘No, no, I meant to update anyway…’
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more.
Much more cleverly, the Tories have been pre-emptive with the media. This inside page story from the right-friendly Times spins Scots Tories’ involvement as ‘helping police to convict Abramoff’. It’s the headline that’s important. Who has time to read anything else?
Scottish Tories helped to convict US lobbyist Abramoff
Jason Allardyce
“EVIDENCE from Conservative MSPs helped to bring down Jack Abramoff, the American lobbyist on corruption charges. “
[…]
“While they were in the Fife town, Monteith, who recently resigned from the Scottish Conservatives after being caught briefing against McLetchie while he was leader, set up a dinner at an exclusive hotel.
Monteith knew Abramoff from his days as chairman of the Scottish Federation of Conservative Students when the lobbyist was chairman of College Republicans.
Monteith received a call from the American in the summer of 2000 to say he was playing golf with DeLay at St Andrews and that they would like to meet some senior Tories over dinner. Two of DeLay?s top aides, Susan Hirschmann and Tony Rudy, were also in town, along with their spouses and Edwin Buckham, another Washington lobbyist, and his wife.
According to US newspapers, the guest list included Terry Martin, a lobbyist of the Chitimacha tribe of Louisiana, Russian energy magnate Alex Koulakovsky, a friend of Abramoff who had dined in Moscow with DeLay and the lobbyist in 1997, and garment industry executive Willie Tan from the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, another friend of Abramoff and DeLay.
The MSP invited McLetchie and John Crawford, the then leader?s aide, and set up the dinner. Malcolm Scott, a Scottish Tory fundraiser also attended. “
Read it all and notice that it’s technically true that their evidence helped convict… I’ll have to do some perusal of back copies of Private Eye to root out more info about links between Abramoff’s Young Republicans and the scandal-ridden discredited Young Conservatives of the time.
Interesting.
