With the deadline for removing Ney’s name from the Ohio ballot less than two weeks away, the review of his statements to the Indian Affairs Committee could form the basis for a charge of lying to Congress against the Ohio Republican, according to a handful of sources familiar with the transfer of documents to federal prosecutors.
In releasing its report on the Abramoff investigation June 22, the Indian Affairs Committee cited several instances in which Ney’s statements to panel investigators conflicted with the testimony and e-mails of several other figures involved in the case.
His statements to the committee regarding his efforts to help Abramoff’s clients are just one piece of a larger investigative puzzle that the prosecutors are exploring. Ney has already been identified as “Representative No. 1” in the plea agreements of five different figures in the probe, including Abramoff and Neil Volz, Ney’s former chief of staff who went to work for Abramoff in February 2002.
Ney, whose office didn’t respond to questions regarding his statements to the committee, has proclaimed his innocence. His lead lawyer, Mark Tuohey, was on vacation last week and unavailable for comment.
Ney has adamantly insisted that he will stand for re-election on Nov. 7 no matter what his legal situation is at the time. Under Ohio law, within 80 days of an election it becomes almost impossible to remove a candidate from the ballot, leading many political observers to closely watch the prosecutors’ decisions regarding a potential Ney indictment prior to the Aug. 19 deadline.
The Justice Department declined comment on all matters relating to its investigation into Ney.
The examination of whether Ney intentionally gave false statements to Indian Affairs was prompted by the Justice Department, not something the committee requested, according to Senators and aides.
The transfer of the documents, both from Indian Affairs and the Rules and Administration Committee related to its negotiations with Ney over a 2002 election reform bill, was not a smooth process and was partially complicated by another federal probe of a Member of Congress. According to a source familiar with the initial request from Justice to Indian Affairs, the federal prosecutors asked for a very large portion of the materials related to the committee’s investigation of Abramoff and his swindling of his tribal casino clients.
That request gave pause to some Senate aides, who on the very next day saw the FBI raid Rep. William Jefferson’s (D-La.) office in its probe of his financial dealings, the source said. The atmosphere slightly more tense, Senate Legal Counsel and Indian Affairs aides then engaged in a month-long negotiation over what the panel would give to Justice, with the bulk of material focusing on Ney and his statements to the committee as well as other statements that might contradict Ney, sources said.
The Senate passed a resolution forwarding the documents to Justice on June 23. The Hill newspaper first reported that a resolution had passed transferring documents from the two committees to Justice, and Roll Call reported last month that the documents from the Rules Committee dealt with its material related to the 2002 election reform bill, for which Ney served as the lead House negotiator as the House Administration Committee chairman at the time.
Without commenting on the nature of the Indian Affairs portion of the DOJ request, Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said he was assured that the request for documents related to the Rules Committee dealt with Ney. “There’s no question in my mind that what they were after was stuff involving Ney,” Lott, the Rules chairman, said.
However, a handful of sources said that the more critical portion of that June 23 resolution was the transfer of documents related to Indian Affairs, legally speaking, since it could lead to a criminal charge against Ney. In addition, that resolution allowed for Senate counsel to represent aides from both committees “in connection with the document production and testimony.”
Indian Affairs, in its Abramoff report, focused on the “different recollection of events” as Ney recounted his efforts to insert a provision into the election reform bill that would have helped a pair of Texas tribal clients of Abramoff’s open casinos.
The lawmaker was interviewed by committee staffers on Nov. 12, 2004, at which point he told them the only reason he agreed to the provision benefiting the Tigua tribe of El Paso was because Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) — then the Rules chairman in 2002 — was pushing it. Ney told the committee he believed it was to benefit a Connecticut tribe.
“Congressman Ney said there was never any mention of any tribe in El Paso, Texas, and no reference to any Tigua Indian tribe,” the committee wrote in its report. “As of the date of his interview with committee staff, Congressman Ney said he was not at all familiar with the Tigua.”
Volz, Ney’s former chief of staff, pleaded guilty this spring to breaking federal “cooling-off” laws for immediately lobbying Ney on the Tigua issue in the spring, summer and fall of 2002. This lobbying effort by Abramoff, Volz and others included a 90-minute, face-to-face meeting in Ney’s office with the lawmaker and members of the Tigua and another tribal client of Abramoff’s, according to testimony given to Indian Affairs by tribal representatives and e-mails from Abramoff.
The other tribal client, the Alabama Coushatta, had recently partially funded a trip that Ney and other friends of Abramoff’s took to Scotland that included a round of golf at the esteemed Old Course at the Royal and Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews.
Four days after interviewing Ney, committee aides interviewed at least two top staffers to Dodd, who contradicted many details of Ney’s testimony. The aides testified that no version of the election bill had ever crossed Dodd’s desk with the tribal provision, and one Dodd staffer specifically said it was Ney’s staff that pushed the issue.
It’s unclear whether any of Dodd’s staff, or aides to Indian Affairs, have given interviews to the federal prosecutors.
Earlier this year, an Indian Affairs aide testified against David Safavian, the former government procurement officer who was convicted for lying to inspectors general regarding his professional relationship with Abramoff at the time of the August 2002 trip to Scotland.
The Senate approved a similar resolution to the one it passed in June regarding the committee documents, allowing legal counsel to represent the committee aide in his testimony regarding Safavian’s interviews with Indian Affairs.
Shortly after that resolution passed, Safavian was indicted, including on one count of giving false statements to Indian Affairs. That was the one count of his indictment that he was cleared on in his June trial.
John Bresnahan contributed to this report.