Doolittle's Next?

Think Progess has a great run down of all the major Abramoff players, including Democrats who drank the Abramoff/Indian Gambling kool-aide. My favorite passages concern Representative John Doolittle (CA-4), who seems to be very deep in Abramoff's pocket.

- Doolittle received $64,500 in Abramoff-related donations between 2001 and 2004.

- Hayworth, Doolittle, and Ney “were allowed free use of Abramoff’s sports skyboxes for fund-raisers held as long ago as 1999. They didn’t declare the value of the accommodations until records surfaced in ongoing U.S. Senate and criminal investigations of suspected exploitation by the lobbyist in charging six Indian tribes $82 million for representation.

- Doolittle’s former chief of staff, Kevin A. Ring, went to work with Abramoff. Doolittle’s wife, Julie, owned a consulting firm that was hired by Abramoff and his firm, Greenberg Traurig, to do fundraising for a charity he founded. Two sources close to the investigation said that Ring, while working for Abramoff, was an intermediary in the hiring of Julie Doolittle’s firm, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions Inc., which last year received a subpoena from the grand jury investigating Abramoff.”

- Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., received $1,000 from Abramoff several weeks after he signed a February 27, 2002 letter to Norton then got $16,000 from two of Abramoff’s casino-operating tribal clients about two months later. By year’s end [2002], Doolittle also had used Abramoff’s restaurant to cater a campaign event and received an additional $15,000 from tribes.

- “Another, Representative John T. Doolittle, Republican of California, has acknowledged that his wife, who helped Mr. Abramoff organize fund-raisers, was subpoenaed.”

- “You get tired of dinners and receptions. This time we wanted to do a gala event to raise awareness for the Capital Athletic Foundation, and back that awareness up with funds,” said [Julie] Doolittle in 2003. But, the Capital Athletic Foundation didn’t raise money for children, as it was advertised to do. “[T]ax and spending records of the Capital Athletic Foundation obtained by The Washington Post show that less than 1 percent of its revenue has been spent on sports-related programs for youths. Instead, the documents show that Jack Abramoff…has repeatedly channeled money from corporate clients into the foundation and spent the overwhelming portion of its money on pet projects having little to do with the advertised sportsmanship programs.”

John Doolittle has built an empire of patronage and influence in the California gold country. It looks like that empire is going to fall.

For Doolittle, we have the same question as we had for Bob Ney, will the fall be slow or quick? What is clear is that the fall is inevitable.