Griles lives in Virginia with Sue Ellen Wooldridge, who until January
was an assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice
Department's environmental division.
The AP reported in February that Wooldridge, as the nation's
environmental prosecutor, bought a $980,000 vacation home last year
with Griles and Donald R. Duncan, the top Washington lobbyist for
ConocoPhillips.
Nine months later, she signed an agreement giving the company more
time to clean up air pollution at some of its refineries.
The Justice Department filed papers Friday morning proposing the plea
deal with Griles.
He was scheduled to appear Friday before U.S. District Judge Ellen
Segal Huvelle in Washington.
Huvelle will likely decide Friday whether to accept or reject the
plea.
A court decision on sentencing is likely to come two to three months
later.
In government papers, Griles acknowledges he obstructed the Senate
committee's investigation into Abramoff and his associates' dealings
with Indian casino clients.
Griles admits he testified falsely four times to the committee on Nov.
2, 2005, and once to the panel's investigators two weeks earlier.
Abramoff persuaded his Indian clients to pay him tens of millions of
dollars to influence decisions coming out of Congress and the Interior
Department.
Part of his pitch to clients was that he had serious pull at the
department, especially with Griles.
Awaiting sentencing in the bribery scandal, Abramoff already is
serving six years in prison for a bogus Florida casino deal.
Others convicted so far in the wide-ranging, influence peddling
include former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and former White House official
David Safavian.
The extent of Abramoff's reach at Interior is still somewhat unclear.
The court papers echo the Senate committee's account of events.
Abramoff directed his tribal clients to give $500,000 to Federici's
Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy from March 2001 to
May 2003, about the time when Griles and Federici ended their romantic
relationship.
They began dating in 1998.
Federici co-founded the advocacy council with Norton — before Norton
joined the Bush administration — and with Grover Norquist, a
conservative GOP activist, college friend of Abramoff and a close ally
of Bush.
Griles' office calendars, obtained through Freedom of Information Act
requests, show frequent meetings with Federici occurring within days
of them being discussed in e-mails between Federici and Abramoff.
Abramoff also sent e-mails to aides about meetings with Griles that
don't appear on Griles' office calendars.
Federici and Abramoff regularly exchanged e-mails from 2001 through
most of 2003, seeking meetings with Griles or favors from him.
Griles routinely passed on departmental information to Federici, who
passed it on to Abramoff, according to e-mails and other evidence
obtained by the Senate committee.
Griles acknowledged in the plea agreement that he lied when he told
the Senate committee that it was "outrageous and is not true" that
Abramoff had any special access to him at Interior and that no
"special relationship" existed between them.
He also conceded that he misled the committee's investigators when he
told them his relationship with Abramoff was "no different" than with
other lobbyists.
Griles now admits those statements were untrue because Abramoff was
the only lobbyist he ever met while at Interior through a woman that
Griles was dating.
Griles and Federici had a romantic relationship between 1998 and
mid-2003, the documents say.
They met through Norton, for whom Federici once did campaign work.
Griles lied in trying to "conceal the true nature" of how he met
Abramoff and "did not testify fully and truthfully" about his
relations with Federici or Abramoff's access to him, the documents
say.
The Justice Department says Federici's introduction gave Abramoff
"more credibility as a lobbyist than Abramoff ordinarily would have
had with Griles," quickly putting them on terms "that ordinarily would
have taken years to develop."
Prosecutors in January had outlined other possible charges against
Griles.
They included "honest services" fraud, based on his meetings with
Abramoff;
lying to Congress about information favorable to Abramoff that Griles
had passed on to other Interior officials;
and lying to Congress and criminal conflict of interest over a job
that Abramoff had offered to Griles.
From The Associated Press, 3/23/07:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/03/23/national/w055806D97.DTL&type=politics
Ex-Deputy to Plead Guilty in Lobbyist Case
By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) --
Former Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles has decided to 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, people involved in the case
said on condition of anonymity, because a federal judge had not yet
approved the plea deal.
Griles and Abramoff met on March 1, 2001, through Italia Federici, a
Republican environmental activist whom Griles had been dating.
That was just one week before Griles, who had been serving on Bush's
transition team for Interior, was nominated by the president as deputy
to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
Second in rank only to Norton, Griles effectively was Interior's chief
operating officer and its top representative on Vice President *****
Cheney's energy task force.
_________________________________________________________
That ole Republic Culture of Corruption's alive and well.
Harry
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