Say Anything Blog

Cross Posted from Taking Back North Dakota.

As you may know, Senator Byron Dorgan is part of the Jack Abramoff influence peddling investigation by the US Department of Justice. A commentator at TBND had this to say about how they felt the investigation would go:

Dorgan is an arrogant sleaze who thinks North Dakotans are a bunch of dumb hicks, but he’s not stupid. Any quid pro quo would have been implicit, and he is well insulated from serious investigation. This story, alas, means little

While I may agree with some of what Pomerdorgrad had to say I have to respectively disagree with his conclusions.

Proving a quid pro quo is tough to do. It's legal to take some of these campaign donations. On the other hand Senator Dorgan to the best of my knowledge is the only person being investigated who tried to cover up Abramoff donations with the Federal Election Commission.

This all has to do with the MCI Center Skybox loaned to the Dorgan campaign by confessed influence-peddler, Jack Abramoff. Senator Dorgan filed false documents with the FEC trying to claim it came from Mississippi Band of Choctaw. He also tried to claim to the Washington Post that the box was controlled by Greenberg Taurig. Abramoff ran the Washington Office of Greenberg Taurig. He's sure that the Skybox belonged to the Choctaw. And he's sure that the Skybox belonged to Greenberg Taurig. And he's sure we'll believe him.

At the fund-raiser at the MCI center was Michael Smith who was one of Abramoff's Democrat lobbyists. (WaPo and Sourcewatch). Jack Abramoff wasn't a one man outfit. He hired people like Smith to lobby Democrats like Dorgan.

Senator Dorgan apparently has not fixed the false report. The Skybox belonged to Abramoff. Dorgan reported to the FEC that it was an in-kind donation from the Choctaw in 2001. Four years after he lied to the FEC (and us) he "returned" the money for the box to the Choctaw. KXMA news:

Records show Senator Byron Dorgan met with lobbyist Jack Abramoff's team and clients and that he held a fundraiser in Abramoff's arena skybox.

Records show Dorgan treated it as a tribal contribution, but reimbursed the tribe for the box four years later -- after determining it was connected to Abramoff.

How can you reimburse the tribe when it wasn't their box in the first place? Who does he think he's fooling?

To sum it up, let's assume that Abramoff (or Abramoff's deputy Michael Smith) testifies that he had a quid quo pro. The fact that Senator Dorgan falsified a FEC report is going to make it much more difficult for him to convince a jury it was all a misunderstanding.

Senator Dorgan's has lied about this issue to us and the FEC. Is he lying to the Justice Department too?