Jack Abramoff CNMI scandal
Encyclopedia
The Jack Abramoff CNMI scandal involves the efforts of Jack Abramoff
, other lobbyists
, and government officials to change or prevent, or both, Congressional action regarding the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
(CNMI) and businesses on Saipan
, its capital, commercial center, and one of its three principal islands.
Among the issues he worked on was keeping Congress from imposing the federal minimum wage for workers in the CNMI.
as a client in 1995. Abramoff and his law firm were paid at least $6.7 million by the CNMI government from 1995 to 2001.
The CNMI is a US commonwealth
and thus may apply the "Made in USA" label to goods manufactured on Saipan
.
Frank Murkowski
, then Republican Senator from Alaska
and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, submitted a bill to extend the protection of U.S. minimum-wage labor laws to the workers in the CNMI.
In testimony before the Senate, it was described that 91% of the private-sector workforce were immigrants, and were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage. Stories also emerged of workers forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks without plumbing. A Department of the Interior report found that "Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry." The Senate passed the Murkowski worker reform bill unanimously.
In 1995, Abramoff, employed at Preston Gates, took on the CNMI as a client. The government sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and minimum wage laws.
In October 1996, the contract with Preston Gates expired. The CNMI government broke its own laws by continuing to pay the firm -
The initial Preston Gates contract with CNMI was from June 1, 1995 - June 30, 1996, for about $860,000. After the expiration of the contract, then-Governor Froilan C. Tenorio's office continued to pay Preston Gates, despite the lack of a valid contract, until January 11, 1998 when Governor Pedro P. Tenorio had been inaugurated, a grand total of $5.21 million. (Between October 1996 to October 1997, the total was just over $3 million.)
The payment without contract was later judged illegal in an investigation by the CNMI Office of the Public Auditor.
Abramoff later arranged an all-expenses paid trip to Saipan for Tom DeLay
on New Year's Eve
in 1997. Although House ethics rules at the time prohibited House members from accepting such gifts from lobbyists, the trip was funded directly by the CNMI and thus was technically allowable. An internal memo from Preston, Gates, and Ellis stated that these sort of trips are "one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill." While on the trip, at a benefit dinner for Willie Tan of Tan Holdings Corporation
, DeLay was quoted as saying:
An undercover investigation by ABC News
captured Willie Tan speaking on a hidden camera about a conversation with DeLay about labor reform laws. According to Tan, "[DeLay] said, 'Willie, if they elect me majority whip, I make the schedule of the Congress, and I'm not going to put it on the schedule.' So Tom told me, 'Forget it, Willie. No chance.'"
After the trip, Abramoff helped DeLay craft policy that extended exemptions from federal immigration
and mimimum-wage labor laws to Saipan industries, though the island is part of the U.S. Commonwealth. Brian Ross at ABC News
for 20/20 on March 13, 1998 alleged that factories on Saipan have forced their workers to have abortions in order to keep their jobs.
In addition, Abramoff's lobbying team helped Rep. Ralph Hall
(R-TX) craft statements
attacking the credibility of "Katrina," a teenaged sex slave whom federal officials relocated to Hawaii and who testified to federal investigators and Congress about the sex trade on that island, in the process forestalling a federal criminal prosecution.
Abramoff also negotiated a $1.2 million no-bid contract
from the Marianas for 'promoting ethics in government' to be awarded to David Lapin, brother of Daniel Lapin
.
Abramoff also allegedly paid the expenses for at least two other trips to the Marianas. In both cases, Abramoff was reimbursed by Preston Gates & Ellis, which was then being paid by the Marianas government.
The first trip involved two aides to Tom DeLay, Edwin A. Buckham and Tony Rudy
, both who later joined the lobbying firm Alexander Strategy Group
. Buckham and Rudy traveled with Abramoff from December 4 to December 12, 1996. Abramoff paid at least $3,000 of the costs, according to a memo written by his assistant Jennifer Senft Hamann.
The second trip involved James E. Clyburn (D-SC) and Bennie Thompson
(D-MS). In a letter dated December 17, 1996, the National Security Caucus Foundation invited the lawmakers to attend a trip to the island in January 1997, saying that the government would incur no expense. Non-profits
are allowed to pay for lawmaker travel, and Clyburn and Thompson said they believed the NSCF was doing so. Greg Hilton, the director of the NSCF at the time, has said that Preston Gates & Ellis sent him the airline tickets and told him the government had paid for them. The cost of the trip was, according to an Abramoff memo, $15,657. The lawmakers said that they never met Abramoff nor knew of his involvement.
visited the CNMI intending to convince two legislators to support Fitial for speaker of the CNMI's 18-member House of Representatives. Scanlon was still a member of Tom DeLay's congressional staff, and was on unpaid leave at the time. Buckham and Scanlon extended promises to help deliver federal aid to the legislators' districts, and succeeded in convincing the two Democratic
legislators to vote for Fitial, a member of the rival Covenant Party
. After Fitial was elected speaker in January 2000, he wrote the governor insisting that the islands contract again with Abramoff at Preston Gates & Ellis.
In August 1999, Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig (which, all told, received $4.04 million from 1998 to 2002 from the Commonwealth), hired Millennium Marketing (a division of the Ralph Reed
-founded Century Strategies) to "sen[d] out a mailer to Alabama conservative Christians asking them to call then-Rep. Bob Riley
(R-Ala.) and tell him to vote against legislation that would have made the CNMI subject to federal minimum wage laws. "The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands," the mailer from Reed's firm said. The Chinese workers, it added, "are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ" while on the islands, and many "are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand."
In February 1999, a congressional delegation visited the CNMI; it included Representative John Doolittle
, who would get significantly more involved in 2001. Doolittle and Representative Joel Hefley
write in June 1999, a "Dear Colleague" letter, saying that a May 1999 show on ABC's newsmagazine, 20/20, "The Shame of Saipan", had numerous inaccuracies, and that "Tom DeLay has consistently engaged government leaders in taking steps toward reform in the Mariana Islands to ensure and maintain a vibrant economy under local control."
By late July 2000, Abramoff and Preston Gates were hired again, for $100,000 a month.
In January 2001 Abramoff switched lobbying firms to Greenberg Traurig. "'Our standing with the new administration promises to be solid as several friends of the CNMI (islands) will soon be taking high-ranking positions in the Administration, including within the Interior Department,' Abramoff wrote in a January 2001 letter in which he persuaded the island government to follow him as a client to his new lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig."
In January 2006, CNMI Governor Benigno Fitial demanded that Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig return much of the money originally paid for lobbying services, claiming that "the positive benefits of those services have been undone by the wide scandal brought on by the criminal charges against Abramoff."
In August 2006, Roger Stillwell
, formerly an employee of the Department of the Interior, pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to report gifts received from Abramoff during the period that Abramoff was lobbying the Interior on behalf of the Commonwealth of the Marianas Islands.
In April 2008, the US Senate
campaign of Republican Bob Schaffer was rocked by reports of Schaffer's participation in a 1999 trip with his wife to the CNMI organized by Preston-Gates, and paid for by the Traditional Values Coalition
. Schaffer later used his position on the House Resources Committee to attack reports of abuses on the islands.
Jack Abramoff
Jack Abramoff is an American former lobbyist and businessman. Convicted in 2006 of mail fraud and conspiracy, he was at the heart of an extensive corruption investigation that led to the conviction of White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine...
, other lobbyists
Team Abramoff
"Team Abramoff" is the team of lobbyists assembled by Jack Abramoff when he worked at Greenberg Traurig, primarily of former aides to prominent Congressional politicians...
, and government officials to change or prevent, or both, Congressional action regarding the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands
Northern Mariana Islands
The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands , is a commonwealth in political union with the United States, occupying a strategic region of the western Pacific Ocean. It consists of 15 islands about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to the Philippines...
(CNMI) and businesses on Saipan
Saipan
Saipan is the largest island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands , a chain of 15 tropical islands belonging to the Marianas archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean with a total area of . The 2000 census population was 62,392...
, its capital, commercial center, and one of its three principal islands.
Among the issues he worked on was keeping Congress from imposing the federal minimum wage for workers in the CNMI.
Background
Abramoff took on the Northern Mariana IslandsNorthern Mariana Islands
The Northern Mariana Islands, officially the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands , is a commonwealth in political union with the United States, occupying a strategic region of the western Pacific Ocean. It consists of 15 islands about three-quarters of the way from Hawaii to the Philippines...
as a client in 1995. Abramoff and his law firm were paid at least $6.7 million by the CNMI government from 1995 to 2001.
The CNMI is a US commonwealth
Commonwealth (United States insular area)
In the terminology of the United States insular areas, a Commonwealth is a type of organized but unincorporated dependent territory.The definition of "Commonwealth" according to current U.S. State Department policy reads: "The term 'Commonwealth' does not describe or provide for any specific...
and thus may apply the "Made in USA" label to goods manufactured on Saipan
Saipan
Saipan is the largest island of the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands , a chain of 15 tropical islands belonging to the Marianas archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean with a total area of . The 2000 census population was 62,392...
.
Frank Murkowski
Frank Murkowski
Francis Hughes Murkowski is an American politician and a member of the Republican Party. He was a United States Senator from Alaska from 1981 until 2002 and the eighth Governor of Alaska from 2002 until 2006.- Early life and career :...
, then Republican Senator from Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...
and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, submitted a bill to extend the protection of U.S. minimum-wage labor laws to the workers in the CNMI.
In testimony before the Senate, it was described that 91% of the private-sector workforce were immigrants, and were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage. Stories also emerged of workers forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks without plumbing. A Department of the Interior report found that "Chinese women were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry." The Senate passed the Murkowski worker reform bill unanimously.
Lobbying
In 1993, the government of the CNMI hired Preston Gates to lobby for it. Between October 1993 and September 2001, the firm was paid about $6.7 million by the CNMI government, about 72% of the government's overall lobbying payments. The CNMI government was one of the firm's biggest clients.In 1995, Abramoff, employed at Preston Gates, took on the CNMI as a client. The government sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and minimum wage laws.
In October 1996, the contract with Preston Gates expired. The CNMI government broke its own laws by continuing to pay the firm -
The initial Preston Gates contract with CNMI was from June 1, 1995 - June 30, 1996, for about $860,000. After the expiration of the contract, then-Governor Froilan C. Tenorio's office continued to pay Preston Gates, despite the lack of a valid contract, until January 11, 1998 when Governor Pedro P. Tenorio had been inaugurated, a grand total of $5.21 million. (Between October 1996 to October 1997, the total was just over $3 million.)
The payment without contract was later judged illegal in an investigation by the CNMI Office of the Public Auditor.
Abramoff later arranged an all-expenses paid trip to Saipan for Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
on New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve
New Year's Eve is observed annually on December 31, the final day of any given year in the Gregorian calendar. In modern societies, New Year's Eve is often celebrated at social gatherings, during which participants dance, eat, consume alcoholic beverages, and watch or light fireworks to mark the...
in 1997. Although House ethics rules at the time prohibited House members from accepting such gifts from lobbyists, the trip was funded directly by the CNMI and thus was technically allowable. An internal memo from Preston, Gates, and Ellis stated that these sort of trips are "one of the most effective ways to build permanent friends on the Hill." While on the trip, at a benefit dinner for Willie Tan of Tan Holdings Corporation
Tan Holdings Corporation
Tan Holdings Corporation is a holdings company located in the United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands . Since 1983, the company's headquarters are located in Saipan. The company's CEO is Henry Tan, its President is Willie Tan, and its Executive Vice-President is Jerry Tan. All...
, DeLay was quoted as saying:
- "When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made."
An undercover investigation by ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
captured Willie Tan speaking on a hidden camera about a conversation with DeLay about labor reform laws. According to Tan, "
After the trip, Abramoff helped DeLay craft policy that extended exemptions from federal immigration
Immigration
Immigration is the act of foreigners passing or coming into a country for the purpose of permanent residence...
and mimimum-wage labor laws to Saipan industries, though the island is part of the U.S. Commonwealth. Brian Ross at ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
for 20/20 on March 13, 1998 alleged that factories on Saipan have forced their workers to have abortions in order to keep their jobs.
In addition, Abramoff's lobbying team helped Rep. Ralph Hall
Ralph Hall
Ralph Moody Hall is a United States Representative from . First elected in 1980, Hall is the chairman of the Science Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee...
(R-TX) craft statements
attacking the credibility of "Katrina," a teenaged sex slave whom federal officials relocated to Hawaii and who testified to federal investigators and Congress about the sex trade on that island, in the process forestalling a federal criminal prosecution.
Abramoff also negotiated a $1.2 million no-bid contract
No-bid contract
The term "no-bid contract" is a popular phrase for what is officially known as a "sole source contract". A sole source contract implies that there is only one person or company that can provide the contractual services needed, and any attempt to obtain bids would only result in one person or...
from the Marianas for 'promoting ethics in government' to be awarded to David Lapin, brother of Daniel Lapin
Daniel Lapin
Daniel Lapin is a political commentator and American Orthodox rabbi living on Mercer Island, Washington. He is the founder of Toward Tradition, a politically conservative Jewish-Christian organization. He once headed the Pacific Jewish Center in Venice, California. He is also the former head of...
.
Abramoff also allegedly paid the expenses for at least two other trips to the Marianas. In both cases, Abramoff was reimbursed by Preston Gates & Ellis, which was then being paid by the Marianas government.
The first trip involved two aides to Tom DeLay, Edwin A. Buckham and Tony Rudy
Tony Rudy
Tony Charles Rudy , an American lobbyist and an associate of Jack Abramoff. After serving as a staffer in the office of U. S. Representative Tom DeLay from approximately 1995 to 2001, and rising to deputy chief of staff, Rudy joined "Team Abramoff" at Greenberg Traurig. Rudy was implicated in the...
, both who later joined the lobbying firm Alexander Strategy Group
Alexander Strategy Group
Alexander Strategy Group was an American lobbying firm involved in the K Street Project, founded by Ed Buckham and his wife Wendy. Buckham is a former chief of staff of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and the firm openly promoted its access to DeLay. Its chief lobbyist was Paul Behrends.In...
. Buckham and Rudy traveled with Abramoff from December 4 to December 12, 1996. Abramoff paid at least $3,000 of the costs, according to a memo written by his assistant Jennifer Senft Hamann.
The second trip involved James E. Clyburn (D-SC) and Bennie Thompson
Bennie Thompson
Bennie G. Thompson, is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993, and the ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security since 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party....
(D-MS). In a letter dated December 17, 1996, the National Security Caucus Foundation invited the lawmakers to attend a trip to the island in January 1997, saying that the government would incur no expense. Non-profits
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
are allowed to pay for lawmaker travel, and Clyburn and Thompson said they believed the NSCF was doing so. Greg Hilton, the director of the NSCF at the time, has said that Preston Gates & Ellis sent him the airline tickets and told him the government had paid for them. The cost of the trip was, according to an Abramoff memo, $15,657. The lawmakers said that they never met Abramoff nor knew of his involvement.
Contract suspended and renewed
Abramoff's lobbying contract with the CNMI was suspended in late 1998 due to a January change in administration and financial problems. In December 1999, allegedly at the request of CNMI politician Benigno R. Fitial, Edwin A. Buckham and Michael ScanlonMichael Scanlon
Michael Scanlon, AKA "Sean Scanlon", is a former communications director for Rep. Tom DeLay, lobbyist, and public relations executive who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal...
visited the CNMI intending to convince two legislators to support Fitial for speaker of the CNMI's 18-member House of Representatives. Scanlon was still a member of Tom DeLay's congressional staff, and was on unpaid leave at the time. Buckham and Scanlon extended promises to help deliver federal aid to the legislators' districts, and succeeded in convincing the two Democratic
Democratic Party (Northern Mariana Islands)
The Democratic Party is a political party in the Northern Mariana Islands. It is not officially affiliated with the United States' national Democratic Party....
legislators to vote for Fitial, a member of the rival Covenant Party
Covenant Party (Northern Mariana Islands)
The Covenant Party is a political party in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands advocating government and financial reform. In the legislative elections of 2003, the Covenant Party won nine of eighteen seats. In the 2005 elections, the Covenant Party increased its position as one of the...
. After Fitial was elected speaker in January 2000, he wrote the governor insisting that the islands contract again with Abramoff at Preston Gates & Ellis.
In August 1999, Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig (which, all told, received $4.04 million from 1998 to 2002 from the Commonwealth), hired Millennium Marketing (a division of the Ralph Reed
Ralph E. Reed, Jr.
Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr., is a conservative American political activist, best known as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s. He sought the Republican nomination for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Georgia but lost the primary election on July 18, 2006,...
-founded Century Strategies) to "sen[d] out a mailer to Alabama conservative Christians asking them to call then-Rep. Bob Riley
Bob Riley (Alabama)
Robert Renfroe "Bob" Riley is an American politician in the Republican Party. He was the 52nd Governor of Alabama, first elected in 2002, and re-elected in 2006.-Early life:...
(R-Ala.) and tell him to vote against legislation that would have made the CNMI subject to federal minimum wage laws. "The radical left, the Big Labor Union Bosses, and Bill Clinton want to pass a law preventing Chinese from coming to work on the Marianas Islands," the mailer from Reed's firm said. The Chinese workers, it added, "are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ" while on the islands, and many "are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand."
In February 1999, a congressional delegation visited the CNMI; it included Representative John Doolittle
John Doolittle
John Taylor Doolittle , American politician, was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 1991 to 2009, representing . In the 109th Congress, he held a leadership role as the Deputy Whip for the Republican party in the House...
, who would get significantly more involved in 2001. Doolittle and Representative Joel Hefley
Joel Hefley
Joel M. Hefley is a U.S Republican politician who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives representing the 5th Congressional District of Colorado from 1987 to 2007. His wife, Dr. Lynn Hefley, is, like he, a former member of the Colorado State House of Representatives...
write in June 1999, a "Dear Colleague" letter, saying that a May 1999 show on ABC's newsmagazine, 20/20, "The Shame of Saipan", had numerous inaccuracies, and that "Tom DeLay has consistently engaged government leaders in taking steps toward reform in the Mariana Islands to ensure and maintain a vibrant economy under local control."
By late July 2000, Abramoff and Preston Gates were hired again, for $100,000 a month.
In January 2001 Abramoff switched lobbying firms to Greenberg Traurig. "'Our standing with the new administration promises to be solid as several friends of the CNMI (islands) will soon be taking high-ranking positions in the Administration, including within the Interior Department,' Abramoff wrote in a January 2001 letter in which he persuaded the island government to follow him as a client to his new lobbying firm, Greenberg Traurig."
In January 2006, CNMI Governor Benigno Fitial demanded that Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig return much of the money originally paid for lobbying services, claiming that "the positive benefits of those services have been undone by the wide scandal brought on by the criminal charges against Abramoff."
In August 2006, Roger Stillwell
Roger Stillwell
Roger G. Stillwell , an American lobbyist. Stillwell was charged with "falsely certifying that he did not receive reportable gifts" from Jack Abramoff and on August 11, 2006, pled guilty to a misdemeanor charges...
, formerly an employee of the Department of the Interior, pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of failing to report gifts received from Abramoff during the period that Abramoff was lobbying the Interior on behalf of the Commonwealth of the Marianas Islands.
In April 2008, the US Senate
United States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
campaign of Republican Bob Schaffer was rocked by reports of Schaffer's participation in a 1999 trip with his wife to the CNMI organized by Preston-Gates, and paid for by the Traditional Values Coalition
Traditional Values Coalition
The Traditional Values Coalition is a conservative Christian organization that represents, by its estimate, over 43,000 Christian churches throughout the United States of America...
. Schaffer later used his position on the House Resources Committee to attack reports of abuses on the islands.
External links
- Department of the Interior: Communications Between DOI and Jack Abramoff (2005) - Extensive collection of materials obtained by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in WashingtonCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in WashingtonCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington is a nonprofit 501 organization that describes itself as "dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials – regardless of party affiliation – who sacrifice the common good to...
under the Freedom of Information Act.