Lobbying Trial to Look Inside White House

Tuesday, May 23, 2006; 3:36 PM
Pete Yost - AP

WASHINGTON -- The first trial in the Jack Abramoff influence-peddling scandal will offer a raw look inside a Washington lobbying operation, with prosecutors contending the results implicate the top procurement official in the Bush administration.

Abramoff himself is unlikely to testify. With a number of members of Congress under investigation, prosecutors appear to be holding him back for bigger cases they are trying to pull together.

In the trial that starts Wednesday, hundreds of e-mails will show Abramoff's aggressive tactics as the lobbyist badgered David Safavian, the defendant in the case, about two government controlled properties.

Abramoff wanted the properties for himself and for his clients, and he showered Safavian with invitations including a trip to Scotland. Safavian accepted the trip, which has become the focus of the trial.

A jury of 10 women and two men will hear opening arguments in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman. The trial is expected to last two weeks.

As prosecutors try to bury Safavian in the e-mails he exchanged with Abramoff, the government is expected to keep the disgraced lobbyist off the witness stand to avoid having him cross-examined by defense lawyers.

Safavian's lawyers plan to depict the Justice Department as overreaching in bringing charges against the procurement official who is a longtime friend of Abramoff.

A five-count indictment charges Safavian with covering up the fact that Abramoff was interested in land in Maryland and in a downtown Washington landmark, the Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue. The two properties are controlled by the General Services Administration, where Safavian was the administrator's chief of staff. Safavian later moved to the White House where he was administrator of the office of federal procurement policy.

The defense team says prosecution excesses started over a year ago when investigators were looking for Abramoff associates who might be able to implicate the lobbyist in wrongdoing.

Prosecutors believe Safavian was in that category, so they brought a weak case against him in an effort to pressure him into turning on his old friend, the defense has said.

Safavian chose to fight rather than cooperate. And his possible cooperation against Abramoff became a moot point when the lobbyist entered guilty pleas early this year in Washington, D.C., and Florida.

Abramoff is now the government's main weapon in an investigation that is aimed primarily at Capitol Hill.

A former aide to Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, is expected to testify this week about a suggestion from Safavian for inserting language into legislation that would have conveyed to Abramoff GSA-controlled property in Maryland, federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg said at a pretrial hearing.

Neil Volz, Ney's former chief of staff, has pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt the congressman on behalf of Abramoff. Ney, who has denied wrongdoing, also is to be investigated by the House ethics committee.

The committee's leaders have said they also would have investigated the financing of former Majority Leader Tom DeLay's overseas travel had the Texas Republican not decided to leave Congress on June 9 to fight an indictment on a separate investigation in his home state.

Records have shown that Abramoff or his clients financed some of DeLay's travel. DeLay has denied any misconduct.

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