WHO IS ITALIA FEDERICI AND WHAT DID SHE PLEAD GUILTY TO?

If you're not a long time, devoted DWT reader you may think Italia Federici is a cologne or a high end brand of shoes or handbags. If you get your information from CNN or other corporate mass media outfits busy dumbing down their viewers you might think she's an "environmental activist." Federici, a Grover Norquist placement in the Bush Regime, first surfaced on DWT late in 2005 when we pointed out her role in a series of corrupt financial scandals tying Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and lobbyist/Interior Secretary Gale Norton.

This morning Federici plead guilty to tax evasion and obstructing a Senate investigation into the Abramoff lobbying scandal and the Republican Culture of Corruption that has pervaded Washington since Bush took over in 2000 and gave DeLay and the congressional Republicans a green light to do whatever they want in return for their acquiescence to all aspects of his radical right agenda. Supposedly Federici has turned on her erstwhile compadres-- including an ex-lover-- and it is suspected a plea bargain will lead to charges against numerous GOP officials, including Norton and DeLay, who has been indicted for several crimes but not for any of his Abramoff-related activities.

Federici served as a go-between for Abramoff, who currently is in prison, and former Deputy Interior Secretary J. Steven Griles, whom she dated from 1998 to about May 2003. Griles also has pleaded guilty to lying to Senate investigators about his relationships with Abramoff and Federici.

Federici acknowledged lying about this relationship when she testified before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which in 2005 was investigating Abramoff's dealings with the Interior Department.

She also admitted supplementing her salary as co-founder of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy by making ATM withdrawals directly from the organization's bank accounts. Court documents says she did not pay income tax from 2001 through 2003 and owes tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes.

Remember the CNN headline I mentioned up top, the one calling her "an environmental advocate?" She's an environmentalist the same way that Bush is. In other word's, she's a shill for corporate policies designed to thwart environmentalism.

STEVEN GRILES AND SUE WOOLDRIDGE: WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD MARRY EITHER ONE OF THEM?

Well, there are several obvious answers there, but the main point is that Bush's crooked ex-Deputy Secretary of the Interior Steven Griles and ex-Department of Justice anti-environmental hack Sue Wooldridge now cannot be forced to testify against each other. As The Hill so elegantly put it this morning, "two Bush administration officials who have been linked in scandal are now linked in wedlock... They were married March 26, three days after Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his relationship with Abramoff and a previous romantic partner... Legal experts note that people can refuse to testify against their spouses, and that in some cases, people can prevent their spouse from testifying against them. 'There have been plenty of cases where marriage was a good strategy for a criminal defendant,' said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor. But he added, 'It’s plausible they simply picked an odd time to wed.'”

Adam, the art director, is responsible for the lovely wedding picture and he asked me to include his take on this. He rarely does, so I agreed. His main point is that this typically Republican wedding is yet another demonstration of how these hypocrites preserve the sanctity of marriage-- not unlike Mitch McConnell's marriage of convenience to Elaine Chao.

WHAT ABOUT THE FEDERAL PROSECUTORS THAT DIDN'T GET FIRED? WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN UP TO? LET'S LOOK AT THE CASE OF STEVEN GRILES

Bush's corruption plagued Department of Justice has been going very, very easy on apprehended Republican crooks who made up the backbone of the party's very lucrative Culture of Corruption. There have been no twenty year sentences. There haven't even been any 10 year sentences; not even a fiver. I guess engaging in a conspiracy to steal billions and billions of dollars from the American taxpayer isn't all that serious to the Bush regime. Have you noticed this pattern of letting the worst crooks plead guilty to some ancillary crime-- like lying to investigators-- in return for them never having to be tried for the underlying crime they were caught at?

Today one of Abramoff's minions will be just the latest Bush Regime monstrosity to get off with a tsk, tsk. "Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles will plead guilty to one count of obstruction of justice in the Jack Abramoff corruption investigation, The Associated Press has learned. Griles, an oil and gas lobbyist who became an architect of President Bush's energy policies while at the Interior Department between July 2001 and July 2005, is the highest ranking Bush administration official implicated in the Washington lobbying scandal. The former No. 2 official at the Interior Department has agreed to a felony plea admitting that he lied five times to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and its investigators about his relationship with Abramoff, people involved in the case told the AP. Griles will admit in federal court Friday that he concealed that he had a unique relationship with Abramoff..."

Even worse than Griles not being tossed into a prison or bottomless pit for a couple decades like he deserves-- top sentence would be 10 months, most of which could be served at home-- "prosecutors (and, please note, these are the guys Gonzales and Rove did not fire-- dropped earlier allegations that Griles did anything improper to help Abramoff or gained anything of value from the former Republican lobbyist... [and will] not require Griles to help investigators with their grand jury probe. Who's side are these prosecutors on? I guess that should be pretty clear, right?

For Republicrook apparachik Griles the bottom line is he admits he told a little fib to the Senate and he walks away from a major crime spree for which he can never be tried under a real Department of Justice.

In 2005, Griles testified before the Senate Indian Affairs committee that "there was no special relationship for Mr. Abramoff in my office. It never did exist."

He has now admitted, however, that he had frequent contact with Abramoff through Federici, the founder of a conservative environmental group with close ties to former Interior secretary Gale Norton. Federici had served as an official on one of Norton's political campaigns in Colorado.

Griles was a controversial political appointee from the earliest days of his tenure at Interior under Norton. He was attacked by environmentalists and by the department's inspector general for maintaining ties to energy and mining companies that were once his lobbying clients...

E-mails released as part of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee investigation of Abramoff's lobbying activities detailed contacts Griles had with Abramoff or Federici, who was working as the lobbyist's go-between to Griles. Griles told the panel then that he had little to do with Indian affairs and never tried to intercede on behalf of Abramoff's clients.

But a former Interior Department lawyer testified that Griles inserted himself in tribal issues, including a land issue that would determine whether a small Louisiana tribe, the Jena Band of Choctaws, would be able to build a casino.

Abramoff enlisted the aid of numerous members of Congress and anti-gambling groups to crush the effort because it could draw away casino business from his clients. Just as it appeared the department would grant the Jena's land claim anyway, Griles turned up with a binder full of congressional letters opposing the deal-- a binder prepared by Abramoff-- and sought to press it on department officials.

Last week we covered Griles' live-in lover, Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who is also implicated in this bribery mess and who had boasted about biting off sheep's balls. "Last March, while at the Justice Department, Wooldridge and Griles purchased a $980,000 vacation home on Kiawah Island, S.C., with Don R. Duncan, a lobbyist for oil giant ConocoPhillips. Wooldridge later signed a consent decree on behalf of the federal government giving the oil company more time to pay millions of dollars in fines and meet pollution-cleanup standards at some of its refineries."


Meanwhile more of the prosecutors that Gonzales and Rove decided to not fire, have moved to give Abramoff a "Get Out of Jail Early" card. Yesterday's Washington Post reported that "federal prosecutors took the first steps toward reducing the prison sentence of former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, currently scheduled for release in 2011 for a Florida fraud conviction," presumably saving Bush the embarrassment of having to pardon his old friend who helped finance the Republican ascension to political dominance. Abramoff has still not been charged in the murder case of his ex-partner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis.


UPDATE: SO JUST HOW PARTISAN DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO NOT GET FIRED FROM THE BUSH REGIME?

Well, it looks like you have to pretty much be a complete and total partisan hack to keep your job with these folks. Today's McClatchy papers carry a scathing indictment about the way Rove and Gonzales have politicized the DoJ. Since Bush wormed his way into power "the Justice Department has backed tougher state voter identification laws and steered U.S. attorneys toward investigating voter fraud policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes."

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division when it was rolling back long-standing voting rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

Another newly installed U.S. attorney, Tim Griffin in Little Rock, Ark., was accused of participating in efforts to suppress Democratic votes in Florida during the 2004 presidential election while he was research director for the Republican National Committee...

Taken together, legal experts and other critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest that the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

The department's civil rights division, for example, supported a Georgia voter identification law that a court later said discriminated against poor minority voters. It also declined to oppose an unusual Texas redistricting plan that helped expand the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That plan was partially reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frank DiMarino, a former federal prosecutor who served six U.S. attorneys in Florida and Georgia during an 18-year Justice Department career, said that too much emphasis on voter fraud investigations “smacks of trying to use prosecutorial power to investigate and potentially indict political enemies.”

Several former voting rights lawyers, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of antagonizing the administration, said the division’s political employees reversed the recommendations of career lawyers in key cases and transferred or drove out most of the unit’s veteran attorneys.

In this week's hearings at the House Judiciary Committee former voting rights section chief Joseph Rich testified that longtime career lawyers whose views differed from those of political appointees were routinely "reassigned or stripped of major responsibilities." He said that nearly half the attorneys in the voting rights section have been transferred to other jobs or have left. He also said he has yet to see evidence of voter fraud on a scale that warrants voter ID laws, which he said are "without exception... supported and pushed by Republicans and objected to by Democrats. I believe it is clear that this kind of law tends to suppress the vote of lower-income and minority voters."

Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., who will be a Blue America live guest in a couple of weeks, and who chaired the hearing, pointed out that “The more stringent requirements you put on voting in order to get rid of alleged voter fraud, the more you’re cutting down on legitimate people voting.” Which is, of course, exactly what the Republicans have been trying to do for decades.

David Iglesias of New Mexico has said he thinks “the voter fraud issue was the foundation” for his firing and the complaints about his failure to pursue corruption matters involving Democrats were “the icing on the cake.”

John McKay, the ousted U.S. attorney for western Washington state, looked into allegations of voter fraud against Democrats during the hotly contested governor’s race in 2004. He said that later, while being interviewed for a federal judgeship by top Bush aides, he was asked to respond to criticism of his inquiry in which no charges were brought. He didn’t get the judgeship.