Who's Senator Jarvis In The Jack Abramoff Scandal?

Kevin Spacey's Abramoff starts revealing guilty
Republican senators before being dragged away.

Yesterday-- loosely speaking-- I woke up at 4am to catch a plane from Bangkok to Hong Kong, where I waited around for 4 hours for my 13-hour flight back to L.A. It was worth it; I'm home! I watched 6 episodes of the hilarious 1980s BBC comedy Yes, Prime Minister and, more importantly, Casino Jack, last year's film about the Jack Abramoff scandal. I liked the movie; I recommend it.

Towards the end there's a fantasy scene at an Indian Affairs Committee hearing chaired by John McCain where Abramoff, sick of pleading the Fifth, has a startling outburst. He begins to unravel the grotesque hypocrisy of McCain and his fellow Republican senators who have been on the receiving end of immense amounts of legalistic bribery from lobbyists like himself. In fact, he singles out two Republican senators who he personally bribed and who were persecuting him at the hearing, Senators Jarvis and Senator Burman, played, respectively, by newcomers Mike Petersen and David Brandon George. But unlike other criminals in the film, whose real names were used, like McCain, Bob Ney (the only Member of Congress who actually went to prison as a result of accepting bribery from Abramoff), Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Tom DeLay, there never were any Senators Burman or Jarvis.

Abramoff-- the real one (the one who billed 6 Indian tribes $82 million)-- admitted bribing 20 Members of Congress. So how is it only one went to prison-- or was even charged? The fictional Senators Burman and Jarvis were singled out by the film's Abramoff character for their particularly appalling hypocrisy, especially "Jarvis."

Since the powers-that-be Inside the Beltway have successfully covered up most of the Abramoff scandal, no one knows for sure which Members of Congress other than Ney were guilty of criminal activities, even if it is generally assumed that Tom DeLay was let off the hook in return for his resignation. In the House, aside from Ney and DeLay, the most egregious Abramoff bribees were Dirty Dick Pombo (R-CA), ex-Speaker Denny Hastert (R-IL), J. D. Hayworth (R-AZ), John Doolittle (R-CA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and Roy Blunt (R-MO). The worst of Abramoff's Senate whores were John Ensign (R-NV), Jim Talent (R-MO), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and, easily the cream of the crop, and my bet for who "Jarvis" represented in the film, Conrad Burns (R-MT). (Of course Bush wasn't a Member of Congress, but-- although he lied and claimed he didn't even know Abramoff-- he was on the take as well, Abramoff having contributed over $100,000 to his reelection campaign.)

Other Members of Congress who accepted legalistic bribes or illegal gifts from Abramoff and his clients:

Heather Wilson (R-NM)
Tom Feeney (R-FL)
Eric Cantor (R-VA)
three shady New Jersey congressmen: Mike Ferguson, Frank LoBiondo and Jim Saxton
Ed Royce (R-CA)
David Vitter (R-LA)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
John Cornyn (R-TX)
Max Baucus (D-MT)
Denny Rehberg (R-MT)
Randy Forbes (R-VA)
Charlie Rangel (D-NY)

According to Wikipedia, "FEC records show that Abramoff gave $172,933 for Republican candidates, $88,985 to Republican causes and nothing to Democratic candidates or organizations." Whether or not Abramoff suggested payoffs from his clients to crooked Democrats like Rangel and Baucus hasn't been proven. And no one ever made-- or even tried to make-- the connection between Tom DeLay and the murder of Gus Boulis.