Good news for Abramoff, bad news for Tom DeLay and John Doolittle? From The Hill:
On Monday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia postponed the sentencing dates for Abramoff and [Michael] Scanlon yet again. Abramoff and Scanlon were convicted of conspiring to bribe public officials more than a year ago, but the court has postponed the sentencing of each several times....
..."Mr. Abramoff has been cooperating with government agents and prosecutors," Justice Department prosecutors wrote. "The government anticipates that Mr. Abramoff's cooperation will continue for the foreseeable future."
In addition to Abramoff and close friend Michael Scanlon, the court has also delayed sentencing hearings for Tony Rudy and Neil Volz. What might this mean? Well, if prosecutors are continuing to gather information from the key players in the Abramoff scandal, it may strengthen their investigations and potential charges of players not yet under indictment, such as DeLay and Rep. Doolittle. And the willingness of the court to continue to postpone sentencing indicates that the information they are receiving from these men is valuable. DeLay and Doolittle can't be feeling very safe right now.
Well, the Abramoff circus isn't quite over; in fact, it appears to have a lot of life left in it. The latest name to surface is Will Heaton, Bob Ney's former chief of staff, who just agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud.
Heaton was involved in the scandal, according to The Hill, from August 2002 through August 2004.
Over those two years, Heaton accepted numerous favors from Abramoff and other members of his lobbying firm, including a now-infamous all-expense-paid golf trip to Scotland. Heaton was also was one of several recipients of a number of other trips abroad, concert and sporting-event tickets, meals and gambling chips, all taken with full knowledge the gifts were in exchange for official favors from Ney.
During one of those trips, Heaton and another staffer helped Ney conceal $5,000 brought into the country through customs and stored the money in a safe inside Ney's congressional office. Court documents said Heaton "open[ed] the safe as requested so that Ney could make repeated withdrawals."
Heaton knowingly falsified his 2002 and 2003 financial disclosure forms and assisted Ney in misrepresenting his travel disclosure form about the receipt of gifts from Abramoff and others.
Follow me inside for what this may mean for other members of Congress and their staffers...
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