Chris Matthews Tied to Jack Abramoff - Democratic Underground

SCRUBDASHRUB

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Fri Jan-27-06 10:43 PM
Original message

Chris Matthews Tied to Jack Abramoff

Edited on Fri Jan-27-06 10:44 PM by SCRUBDASHRUB

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_anthony__060105_chris_matthews_tied_.htm

<snip>

January 4, 2006

I have certainly written about Chris Matthews and his propensity for toeing the Republican Party line as well as using his show for a platform to excuse the abuses of the Bush administration and the GOP controlled Congress. It was just last month when Matthews exclaimed that “everyone likes this president except the real whack-jobs on the left.” Recently, Matthews has used his show to play softball with anyone willing to minimize the impending Jack Abramoff corruption scandal or try and turn it into a bipartisan event. Now it seems we know why.

According to sourcewatch.com, the following is a breakdown of some of the dealings of CAF:

• In 2001, CAF received $1 million from the Coushatta and $177,415 from Foxcom.
• The Coushatta apparently believed that the donation was for a sky box from which Abramoff would lobby Members of Congress during Redskins games.
• In 2002, CAF collected $2.56 million from 9 donors including 3 tribes.
• In 2003, CAF collected $2.15 million from tribes, Michael Scanlon and an internet casino client of Abramoff’s. $2.13 million of the money went to the Eshkol Academy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/eshkol_academy), a school started by Abramoff.
• In a February 2003 email, Abramoff told Scanlon to make sure that his share of money went to Eshkol directly – 'using school as conduit for some of our activities . .. If that won’t fly with them, use CAF.'
• CAF also paid $120,000 in August 2002 for Abramoff, Robert W. Ney, Ralph E. Reed, Jr., and then-General Services Administration Chief of Staff David Safavian "to St. Andrews to play golf with a stop in London on way back. Ney later claimed that the trip’s purpose was to raise money for a foundation, but there were no fundraising events during the course of the trip."
So we have a sleazy lobbyist in bed with a lot of sleazy politicians, all of which are from the GOP. They use a fake charity to provide themselves with junkets around the world such as golfing at St. Andrews in Scotland. This is where Chris Matthews comes in. On March 5, 2003, Matthews helped put on a charity event for the purpose of raising $300,000 for the Capital Athletic Foundation. According to sourcewatch.com:

Daily Kos is reporting today that Mr. Matthews has ties to Mr. Abramoff and the details of those ties presents ethical problems for someone pretending to be a journalist. Jack Abramoff is the former super-lobbyist who bilked millions upon millions of dollars from his clients, bribed numerous republican congressmen, and even paid to have things inserted into the congressional record from those he did “business” with. Amongst the slime of Mr. Abramoff, he also ran a faux charity called the “Capital Athletic Foundation”, which allegedly was designed to provide sports related programs for youth. Instead, Jack used the charity as a front to funnel money in and out of to provide perks to the Congressmen he was bribing and doing business with. The reality is that less than ONE percent of the revenue of the Capital Athletic Foundation (CAF) actually went to sports related programs for youth. CAF was actually used to fund the overseas trips for Tom Delay and others we are starting to hear so much about.

<snip>