Jack Abramoff (born February 28, 1959) is an American former lobbyist, businessman and con man who was a central figure in a series of high-profile political scandals. He is currently incarcerated at the satellite prison camp adjacent to the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Cumberland, Maryland. He is scheduled to be released on December 1, 2010.
Abramoff pled guilty on January 3, 2006, to three criminal felony counts in a Washington, D.C., federal court related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials. The four tribes Abramoff and his associates persuaded include: Michigan's Saginaw Chippewas, California's Agua Caliente, the Mississippi Choctaws, and the Louisiana Coushattas. Abramoff is accused of defrauding the tribes of tens of millions of dollars on issues associated with Indian gaming. The following day he pleaded guilty to two criminal felony counts in a separate federal court, in Miami, related to his fraudulent dealings with SunCruz Casinos. On September 4, 2008, a Washington court found Abramoff guilty of trading expensive gifts, meals and sports trips in exchange for political favors and he was sentenced to a four-year term in prison which will be served concurrently with his previous sentences.
The extensive corruption investigation has led to the conviction of White House officials J. Steven Griles and David Safavian, U.S. Representative Bob Ney, and nine other lobbyists and Congressional aides.
Abramoff was a top lobbyist for the Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig firms and a director of the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, and Toward Tradition. He was College Republican National Committee National Chairman from 1981 to 1985. He was a founding member of the International Freedom Foundation.
Early life
Jack Abramoff was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey into a wealthy and prominent Jewish family. His father, Franklin Abramoff, was president of the Franchises unit of Diners Club.
In 1968, when Abramoff was nine, his family moved to Beverly Hills, California. Abramoff attended Beverly Hills High School. During his high school years, he managed both the Beverly Hills and Westwood United Artists movie theater; his father had left Arnold Palmer Enterprises to become president of the Diner's Club franchises. Abramoff has said that he became a Baal teshuva or a "born again" Orthodox Jew (Baal teshuva literally means, "master of return": one who has repented or "returned" to God see Baal teshuva)at the age of 12 after seeing the film version of Fiddler on the Roof .. Jack played football and was a member of the weight-lifting team.
On an episode of Public Radio International's This American Life that aired in June 2006, journalist Jonathan Gold described Abramoff as an unpleasant high school bully: "He was the sort of person who would walk across the street to be unpleasant to somebody," and described how Abramoff knocked him and his cello down a flight of stairsCollege and law school years
As an undergraduate at Brandeis University, Abramoff served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Alliance of College Republicans, which organised student volunteers for Ronald Reagan's 1980 presidential campaign. He graduated in 1981 and earned his Juris Doctor (J.D.) at the Georgetown University Law Center, in 1986.
According to Nina Easton's book Gang of Five , Abramoff gained much of his credibility in the conservative movement through his father, Franklin Abramoff. As president of Diners Club International, Abramoff's father worked closely with Alfred S. Bloomingdale, a personal friend of Ronald Reagan, and Abramoff would use the name in fundraising.
College Republican National Chairman
After graduating from Brandeis, Abramoff ran for election as chairman of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC). After a campaign which cost over $10,000 and was managed by Grover Norquist, Abramoff won the election after the chief competitor, Amy Moritz (who later, as Amy Ridenour, became a founding director of the National Center for Public Policy Research, and was involved in several trips funded by Jack Abramoff), was convinced to drop out. Abramoff "changed the direction of the committee and made it more activist and conservative than ever before," notes the CRNC. "It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left," Abramoff was quoted as saying in the group's 1983 annual report. "Our job is to remove them from power permanently."
Norquist served as executive director of the committee under Abramoff. He later recruited Ralph Reed, a former president of the University of Georgia College Republicans chapter, as an unpaid intern. Reed, still a young student, was invited to sleep on Abramoff’s couch. According to Reed's book Active Faith , Reed also introduced Abramoff to his future wife, Pam Alexander.
Long-standing college political alliances
At the CRNC, Abramoff developed political alliances with College Republican chapter presidents across the nation, many who would later hold roles in state and national politics and business, and some who would later interact with Abramoff as a lobbyist. Some of those relationships are at the core of the current federal investigation.
At the CRNC, Abramoff, Norquist and Reed formed what was known as the "Abramoff-Norquist-Reed triumvirate." After Abramoff's election, the trio purged "dissidents" and re-wrote the CRNC's bylaws to consolidate their control over the organization. According to Gang of Five , Reed was the "hatchet man" and "carried out Abramoff-Norquist orders with ruthless efficiency, not bothering to hide his fingerprints."
In 1983, the CRNC passed a resolution condemning "deliberate planted propaganda by the KGB and Soviet proxy forces" against the government of South Africa, at a time when that country's government was under worldwide criticism for the apartheid regime.
In 1984, Abramoff and other College Republicans formed the "USA Foundation", a non-partisan tax-exempt organization which held two days of rallies on college campuses around the United States celebrating the first anniversary of the invasion of Grenada. In a letter to campus Republican leaders, Abramoff claimed:
Citizens for America
In 1985, Abramoff joined Citizens for America, a pro-Reagan group that helped Oliver North build support for the Nicaraguan Contras. Citizens for America staged an unprecedented meeting of anti-Communist rebel leaders known as the Democratic International in Jamba, Angola. This conference included leaders of the Mujahedeen from Afghanistan, UNITA from Angola, the Contras, and opposition groups from Laos. Out of this largely ceremonial conference came the International Freedom Foundation. Abramoff helped to organize, and also attended the conference.
Abramoff's membership ended on a sour note when Citizens for America's sponsor Lewis Lehrman, a former New York gubernatorial candidate, concluded that Abramoff had spent his money carelessly.
Reagan appointment
In 1986, Reagan appointed Abramoff as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council.
Hollywood producer / International Freedom Foundation
Abramoff spent 10 years in Hollywood, producing the 1989 film Red Scorpion , a low-budget sensationalist film which can be regarded as blatant anti-Communist propaganda. Jack and brother Robert wrote and produced the Red Scorpion in 1989. The script starred Dolph Lundgren playing the Spetznaz-like Soviet commando Nikolai, sent by the Soviets to assassinate an African revolutionary in a country suspiciously similar to Angola, but soon Nikolai sees the evil of the Soviet]s and changes sides,and becomes a freedom-fighter for the African side
The film can be considered anti-Communist propaganda as it uses graphic violence and extreme artistic license to depict alleged war crimes, sadism and violence of the Soviets, including a scene in which chemical weapons are indiscriminately and liberally used, despite a total lack of evidence., the Americans, the Cubans or other combatants.
Abramoff's script does not depict the historic event of using chemical weapons in one specific air-raid in 1979, openly condemned by the United States (who likely had no fore-knowledge of the raid).
The South African government financed the film via the International Freedom Foundation, a front-group chaired by Abramoff, as part of its efforts to undermine international sympathy for the African National Congress. The filming location was in South-West Africa (now Namibia)On April 27, 1998, Abramoff wrote a letter to the editor of The Seattle Times rebutting an article critical of him and his alleged role as effectively a Public Relations puppet of then apartheid South African military. Abramoff rebutted: "The IFF was a conservative group which I headed. It was vigorously anti-Communist, but it was also actively anti-apartheid. In 1987, it was one of the first conservative groups to call for the release of Nelson Mandela, a position for which it was roundly criticised by other conservatives at the time. While I headed the IFF, we accepted funding only from private individuals and corporations and would have absolutely rejected any offer of South African military funding, or any other kind of funding from any government — good or evil."
During this period in South Africa, Abramoff first met South African-born rabbi David Lapin who would become his religious advisor, and David's brother
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