Top Republicans are quickly cleaning out their coffers of Abramoff tainted money. AP News reports that
“President Bush, former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and his successor Roy Blunt Wednesday joined the growing list of officials shedding political donations from Jack Abramoff, the once powerful lobbyist who has agreed to testify in a broad-ranging political corruption investigation.”

Bush’s re-election campaign is giving up $6,000 in campaign contributions connected to Abramoff, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to fraud, corruption and tax evasion charges in Washington.

Abramoff actually raised at least $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney ‘04 re-election campaign. He was listed as a Bush Pioneer during the campaign. However the Bush campaign is only giving up $6,000 that was donated directly from “Abramoff, his wife and one of the Indian tribes that he worked to win influence for in Washington.” The$6000 is being donated to the American Heart Association. It remains to be seen if Bush will give up the rest of the $100,ooo that “Abramoff brought in was from other individuals whom he encouraged to donate to Bush.”

Tom DeLay, Blunt and Rep. Bob Ney all joined “House Speaker Dennis Hastert in announcing plans to either return campaign contributions from Abramoff or give them to charity. Several others announced in December that they were giving back Abramoff’s donations to their campaigns.”

DeLay will give campaign contributions connected to Abramoff to charities, his spokesman, Kevin Madden, said in an e-mail Wednesday. The Texas Republican received at least $57,000 in political contributions from Abramoff, his lobbying associates or his tribal clients between 2001 and 2004. DeLay is now awaiting trial in Texas on charges of laundering campaign money used in races for the state legislature.

Blunt, a Missouri Republican whose political action committee received $8,500 from Abramoff between 1999 and 2003, plans to give that much to charity, a spokeswoman said.

“While we firmly believe the contributions were legal at the time of receipt, the plea indicates that such contributions may not have been given in the spirit in which they were received,” said Burson Taylor, a spokeswoman for Blunt.

Ney, who was identified as Representative 1 in Abramoff’s plea deal, donated $6,500 to the American Indian College Fund, according to the Ohio Republican’s spokesman. The money, which falls short of the $7,000 that Ney’s election campaign was given by Abramoff, was donated to the charity “in recent weeks,” spokesman Brian Walsh said.

On another note in the Abramoff scandal, today, Bob Geiger refuted the claims that Abramoff money went to Democrats. Bob “spent hours pouring over Federal Election Commission filings via Political Money Line and Newsmeat and have found that the mainstream media is amazingly incorrect.” Geiger has more here.

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