Ralph Redux
Posted on | July 17, 2006
Ralph Reed, in last night’s debate with his Republican rival Casey Cagle, blamed his clients for the money-laundering:
Cagle pointed to a recent U.S. Senate investigation, and a federal lawsuit filed last week filed by an Indian tribe in Texas accusing Abramoff, Reed and others of closing its casino through fraud and racketeering.
The lawsuit says that by not disclosing the fact that his anti-gambling campaign was funded by a rival Louisiana tribe, also with a casino, Reed was able to use Christian organizations as a successful cover.
“It’s not an assault by the liberal media,” Cagle said. “[Reed] was taking Christians and Christian values and has sold and lined his own pockets by it. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s wrong.”
Reed called Cagle’s comments a “cheap shot.” Reed was paid more than $5.3 million from two tribes with casinos to oppose the expansion of gambling elsewhere. The money was often funneled to him through nonprofit corporations.
A Senate report issued last month quoted Indian representatives as saying this was done to protect Reed. On Sunday, Reed denied this was so.
“I would have been happy if they paid me directly. They were the ones who made the decision that I would be paid through nonprofits,” he said.
Paul Kiel at TPMuckraker shines a light:
Remember that Reed worked for two different tribal clients of Abramoffs - the Louisianna Coushatta and the Mississippi Choctaw. In both cases, Reed’s fees were laundered through nonprofits and shell companies.
Did both of those tribes come up with this scheme independently?
And what about another client of Abramoff’s, eLottery, Inc.? In 2000, Abramoff hired Reed to kill anti-gambling legislation moving forward in the House. The eLottery, Inc. money was funneled through Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, then to a sham organization called the Faith and Family Alliance, and then on to Reed’s firm. Robin Vanderwall, the man who ran the Faith and Family Alliance, has since admitted that he was “operating as a shell” - the organization had no other purpose than to pass on payments to Reed’s company.
Was that eLottery’s idea? Abramoff’s other Christian rabble-rouser on the gambling bill, Rev. Louis Sheldon, was paid directly by eLottery.
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