Jack Knows George
by Pamela LeaveyWhat seems to be more like a round of Laurel and Hardy’s “Who’s on First” the question of whether George W. Bush knows Jack Abramoff is in the news again and this time it looks like Jack’s on a first name basis with George. Well, maybe not quite that close, but you be the judge…
Jack Abramoff said in correspondence made public Thursday that President Bush met him “almost a dozen” times, disputing White House claims Bush did not know the former lobbyist at the center of a corruption scandal.
“The guy saw me in almost a dozen settings, and joked with me about a bunch of things, including details of my kids. Perhaps he has forgotten everything, who knows,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail to Kim Eisler, national editor for the Washingtonian magazine.
Abramoff added that Bush also once invited him to his Texas ranch.
The messages were made public by the ThinkProgress, yesterday. The White House is disputing this latest revelation, but ThinkProgress reports that “Washingtonian editor Ken Eisler, the recipient of the Abramoff emails first published by ThinkProgress, appeared tonight on CNN’s Situation Room” and disputed Scott McClellan’s insistant claim earlier today that “Bush and Abramoff did not have a relationship.”
UPDATE: The WaPo reports that Kim Eisler of Washingtonian magazine is not too happy about the developments with this story… Eisler “said he recently provided portions of it to the liberal Web log ThinkProgress because he thought he was dealing with a fellow reporter. The blog posted the contents of the Abramoff-Eisler communication.”
Eisler said Abramoff did not grant him permission to release the contents of their e-mail and Abramoff is upset that Eisler did. Eisler, who described himself as sympathetic to Abramoff’s situation, was trying to show the ThinkProgress reporter that Abramoff was not exaggerating his relationship with Bush.
I guess Eisler doesn’t get that not everyone is “sympathetic to Abramoff’s situation”.
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I did not mean to say that I thought I was talking to a “fellow reporter.” I think whatI said was that I thought I was talking to a print reporter working a magazine article. I did not release “emails” to her, but rather two grafs from one email. Thus she did not actually have even one complete email, much less emails. As for being “sympathetic,” my position is that Mr. Abramoff was like a lobbyist on steroids, but the prevailing notion that he cheated his clients, as opposed to doing all this to promote their interests, is not accurate. All the things he did was for his clients, so to believe he cheated them, seems contradictory. In any event, he is a human being with twins, a dog and a cat, and doesn’t really need to be turned into the villain of the century. After all, the money he allegedly “stole” all went to build a school for Gods sake. Not like it was going to Duke Cunningham’s yacht. The last point is obviously debatealbe, I’m just trying to show some humanity here to a man I know is not all bad. There was a good jack and a bad jack. Most people today only know the bad jack. I didnt know that man at all. The Jack I knew was funny engaging and after hours he was decent and true to his beliefs. Apparently he had some misguided impression of how to influence government.
-Kim