Say Anything Blog

Emmett Tyrell:

All’s well, Sen. Byron Dorgan of the great state of North Dakota has done come clean. Dorgan is the vice chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee. In that capacity he accepted $67,000 in contributions from Indian tribes represented by the recently-indicted Jack Abramoff, a fabulous fixer here in the capital of the Free World. Abramoff, a Republican, has obviously been an equal-opportunity fixer, and apparently Dorgan was not above accepting his help, though Dorgan claims he never met the rogue and never backed any of his programs — knowingly. Now there is an adverb to contemplate: “knowingly.” The senator’s aides admit that their boss did advocate some of Abramoff’s programs while he was accepting the tribes’ contributions, but he did not do so knowingly.

That is a good start on Dorgan’s road back to respectability. Yet there is another far more serious bit of funny business he has been involved in. He, along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to deny the public the contents of an Independent Counsel’s report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in the Clinton Administration. In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans. It is time to let the public see this report…

Dorgan has led the campaign to deny the report’s contents to the public. Last April he attempted to end Barrett’s funding. He was thwarted then, but more recently he tried a new ploy. With Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin and John Kerry, he bootlegged into an Iraq-war appropriations bill an amendment that would suppress the report completely. Some Republicans defeated this attempt, but Dorgan and his allies are clever. Into a later appropriations bill they got language that would suppress 120 pages of the report relating to Clinton Justice Department and IRS misbehavior.

Read the whole thing.

As I've pointed out several times before, the only evidence we have to suggest that there was no pay-for-play action taking place between Abramoff's clients and Senator Dorgan is Dorgan's word on the matter. And his history of supporting the causes of Abramoff's clients even before Abramoff came along. But is that enough? I don't think so.

Anyone willing to take a politician, be they Republican or Democrat, at their word when asked about corruption is a fool. Further, Dorgan would be a whole lot believable were his words on this subject not so carefully...nuanced. He tells us that he's never knowingly supported the causes of Abramoff's clients as a direct result of their contributions to him. He tells us that he's never met Abramoff, yet he used Abramoff's suite at the MCI Center. He tells us that he's never taken donations from Abramoff, yet he has admitted in his own words that he has accepted donations from employees of Abramoff's firm.

Yet still, despite all these connections to Abramoff that Dorgan had to have been a ware of before joining the investigation into the Abramoff matter, he still sits in a position of power on the Congressional panel that is heading the investigation.

That is just plain inappropriate.

At the very least Dorgan should step down. In a perfect world his own dealings with Abramoff's clients and firm should get a thorough review from the investigation.