Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Michael Barry, Joe Jack abram Off.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, Hello, how are you.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm good, Thanks for being our guest.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's a pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
So how long were you in jail?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Forty three months over three and a half years.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Did you ever expect you'd be in jail?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Of course not absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
What was the worst thing about.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It being away from my family?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Is jail as broken as the rest of governmental institutions?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, absolutely, it's as the leader in broken government institutions.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Does anybody get better from going to jail?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
No, it's a storage facility. There's no effort to make
them better.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I for one, have always had this opinion. We won't
talk about prison the whole time, but I for one
have this opinion. The whole you know, jokes about rape
in prison, and that whole thing is that jail should
be for rehabilitating and punishing and the whole concept of
rape only makes people worse. But how bad a problem
is it?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, where I was, it wasn't a problem at all.
I was non violent prison. But it is a problem
in other prisons, and uh, they you know, they try
to do stuff about it, But you're dealing with a
bunch of very you know, very sick guys.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
When you tell your when you tell your your children
daddy's daddy went to prison, what do you tell him
what was for?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well? I mean my kids know my situation pretty well.
I tell them the details. You know. I went for
three specific reasons. One I didn't reveal something to my
clients I should have. Two, I didn't. I had money
directed to charities we supported instead of to me, and
that's tax evasion. In three, I lavished on Congressman things
(01:34):
that I should never have done.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
When you look back, if you're telling a young person, hey,
look I was I was a guy making good money.
You didn't need to do that. I mean, you were
fabulously wealthy, you were incredibly successful, and you could have
survived without that. When you look back on where you
went wrong, why, Well, I.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Think the problem was that I didn't as I was
doing it, really understand where I was at. I guess
sort of was one degree off in my sex stint.
As I started my voyage, time I looked up, I
was lost and I was hyper competitive. I took all
the fights to the extreme. I pushed every envelope, and
you know, I rationalized a way and until it was
(02:11):
too late.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You've written a book, Capital Punishment, The Hard Truth about
Washington Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. What
do you hope to accomplish? Writ in this book?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well, what I want to do is two things. Number One,
I want to inform America about what actually happens in Washington.
Why is their government dysfunctional? What's going on here? And
I think most Americans are, you know, they instinctively think
something's wrong. But what I point out is what goes
on behind the doors. And people who read the book
are shocked and angry and scared about what they're reading,
(02:44):
and I want them to be for the hope that
maybe people will rise up and undo the kind of
system that undid me and that I helped lead unfortunately.
And so I go in the book and I offer
some suggestions as to what people can do, or what
people can make their legislators do, to clean up the
corruption that's in this town that I unfortunately played so well.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
You based a lot of your lobbying around leisure activities
like playing golf, a sport I've just taken up. And
much of my audience either lives in what used to
be Tom DeLay's district or obviously they know who Tom
Delay is and many of them personally know him. Is
it true you played in a million dollar golf match
in Russia with Tom Delay?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, it was. It didn't start off as a million
dollar golf match. One of my clients Russian, who was
a fine fellow, a Christian and a free marketeer and
pro us and pro Ronald Reagan. Love Ronald Reagan. He
loved Tom Delay. He thought he was just an absolute
champion of freedom and wanted to give money to him politically,
and I kept telling the guy, you can't do it.
(03:44):
You're a Russian, you can't make a political contribution. So
we were going over there on a trip. Tom was
trying to help the persecuted Christians over there in Russia.
And after a bunch of meetings, my client said, hey,
let's go play golf. And apparently he had spent nine
months secretly learning how to play golf in a warehouse
in Russia. And we get to a golf course and
(04:04):
we play, and he wants to bet, even though he stinks,
and Tom's not a bad golfer, and so he's betting
and eventually he's losing every hole, and he finally turns
around and says, we're going to bet a million dollars
on this hole. And we looked at each other, Wady,
out of your mind. We don't have a million dollars.
He said, well do it anyway. So we did, you know,
just as a lark. He lost, of course, and then
he turned to Tom and said, Tom Jack won't let
(04:25):
me give you a political contribution. So you just beat
me for a million dollars in a golf game, and
they're now going to give you a million dollars. Now.
I said, look, you can't do that. That's not legal either.
And so unfortunately, the poor guy wound up not being
able to give the payoffs the million dollar loss. He
just want up eventually contributing it to a foundation and
(04:46):
things like that. But so that was our million dollar
golf bet in Russia?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Was Tom Delay? Akrup?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Now, how would you describe Tom to lay?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I consider Tom Delay an honorable, decent human thing. I
consider him to be a passionate religious Christian. I consider
him to be an absolute conservative and somebody who walks
the walk and just doesn't talk. Yet, as you probably know,
he raises foster kids in his own home, and he'd
never got involved in, you know, kind of the hanky
panky that a lot of these fellows do in Washington.
(05:19):
And I consider him to be a fine man.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
The book is Capital Punishment, the hard truth about Washington
corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist. Some people would say, well, now,
this guy's going to make money off off of all
his crimes. What do you say to that.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Well, considering that forty four million dollars comes out for restitution,
I'd have to make an awful lot of money before
that's that's the case true that I didn't do the
book to make money. I hope I'll make money eventually,
of course, who doesn't want to make money, But most
of the money will go to restitution and paying other
debts and things like that. And I didn't do it, frankly,
(05:54):
on the financial basis because I could do and trying
to do other things to make real money. You don't
make a lot of money on books these days. I
did it because the story has got to get out.
People've got to be aware of what goes on in
their government, and people have got to get active to
try to stop it, or our Republic is doomed?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Jack, Can you hold with me for just a moment?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Our guest is Jack Abramoff. The book is Capital Punishment,
The hard truth about Washington Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist.
Do we even need lobbyists? And some of the worst
stories of Jack Abramoff's career coming up? Stay tuned. Our
guest is Jack Abramoff, Notorious his words, lobbyists. The book
(06:34):
is Capital Punishment, The hard truth about Washington Corruption from
America's most notorious lobbyists. Will you ever pay back to
forty three million dollars?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Well, you to work hard to try, you know, I
don't know. It depends how how my portions go. It's
a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Now, is this money that you were paid that they
say you falsely billed?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It's a combination of things. What I pled to, by
the way, in terms of dealing with my clients, was
that I didn't warm my clients that I was sharing
in money of the companies that I recommended to them,
that I worked with to defeat some of the attacks
on them in their own states. And so part of it.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Is that how much of so you over the years
made forty three million dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, I made a lot of money. We build I
guess not just to me, but we build a clients
about eighty north of about eighty million dollars. We sat
down when this all happened to try to figure out, well,
what kind of value did we provide in that atmosphere,
and it wound up being about six plus billion dollars. So,
you know, our clients used to refer to us as
(07:39):
the Indian tribal clients with the casinos used to say
we were the best slot machine they had. But you know,
the truth is that in that world, I guess I
was pretty proficient and pretty aggressive and successful. My problem
is I shouldn't have been in that world.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
We Jack Abramoff is our guest probably the most. I
was reading through the emails during the break, and there
were a number of references to the black hat you
wore coming out of the courthouse on the day of
your guilty plea, and people making the note that in
American culture, the black hat is the sign of the villain.
Did you realize how that was going to look?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
No, what happened was I guess I had the only
political wardrobe malfunctioned or something I just I took off
in the morning from my house. It was dark and
it was raining, and I wanted to get to the
to the court before the press did, because the press
would set up these gauntlets and you know, just hurl
inductives at me, and it was it was horrible. So
(08:31):
I got there early. I was running out. It was raining.
I grabbed my raincoat, I grabbed the hat and got
in the car and drove up there, went into the
court and I didn't think much about it and put
it down and went into the court did the business
we had to do, which was a horrible day for me.
I pled guilty that day and I put it back on,
walked outside, and I didn't realize until the media started
(08:52):
screaming at me that there was a problem and they
thought I was a combination. I guess a boris bad enough,
or any angster. So it was not good.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Jack Abram Mos our guests, you represented some pretty unpopular causes,
like sweatshops in the American Pacific territories. Is it generally
the case as a lobbyist that you get paid more
for causes that are so unpopular?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, let me let me back up for a second.
The Marianas Islands has been a subject to a real
campaign of vilification those factories out there. We before we
took the client, I was at a firm called Preston
Gates at the time. One of the senior partners was
a Liberal Democratic former congressman named Lloyd Meads, who was
on the Labor Committee. We went out to the island
(09:38):
and inspected the factories and the whole place, spent a
few days. Lloyd was, I guess, a former inspector of factories,
and went around and saw what was going on and
gave it a check. He checked it off and thought
that it was pretty good. And he also what was
more important was that the government there was gone after abuse.
It wasn't sweatshops. In fact, he said he had never
(09:59):
seen fact was as clean, as bright as air conditioned
as these places were. But they were making garments at
a lower than federal minimum wage. They had when they
joined the United States the Marianas Islands. We granted them
the ability to set their own local minimum wage and
to have control of their immigration. Well, all of a sudden,
(10:20):
the Unions and some of the Democrats didn't want to
have that anymore, because they saw they were making shirts
and making something of themselves. They started attacking them, and
the attacks were basically saying that they were sweatshops and whatnot.
To prove them wrong and basically to overcome this, the
government hosted and I had my suggestion, by the way,
getting one hundred and fifty congressional offices to send their
(10:42):
people out to inspect the island as well, and we
were to overcome that. So I just wanted to weigh
in on that. There are a lot of accusations about me.
I mean, people in the media wrote ten thousand stories
about me. Between the time that started and before I
went to prison, I sat quietly because frankly, I didn't
know what this was all about. I wanted to try
to get through it, and you know, I didn't want
(11:04):
to make matters worse. But they got to paint a
picture of me that was a little unfair. And that's
one of the things in the book I try to
do as well, to say exactly what it was with
all the warts. By the way, I admit what I
did wrong and I wasn't perfect, but I try to
paint that in the book.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Book is Capital Punishment, The hard truth about Washington corruption
from America's most notorious lobbyist, Jack Abramoth when you look back, well,
I tell you what paint the picture for us. If
you would take a couple of minutes, sure and explain
the most if you want to call it corrupt or
the most inappropriate. If the public saw what you and
(11:39):
obviously others were doing, how does that process work? I mean,
how open and brazen is it?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well? I think I think it's a good question, and
I think people've got to keep in mind the following.
The problem is not where people break the law. I
pushed the envelope and I went over the line. I
did break the law. I lost sight of where the
line in the sand, even though these are murky lines
in the sand, by the way, in this business, where
I have lost sight of where that is and I
went over it. The problem isn't that there aren't a
(12:06):
lot of Jack abram Offs or people who are pushing
that far. The problem is what's legal in Washington, and
the process basically is such as follows. If you're a lobbyist,
you know some congressman, you know some staff. You've probably
know a lot of them. You've probably worked on Capitol Hill,
which is one of the things I get to in
my book that has to be stopped. You've come off
(12:26):
Capitol Hill, you cashed in your public service, and you're
now a lobbyist. Now you've got friends over there, and
you're going to whine them and dine them and take
them to ballgames and play golf with them and travel
with them, and you spend a lot of FaceTime with him.
And that's called access. That's the first important thing for
a lobbyist. Access because if you can't get to the
decision maker, it doesn't matter what your argument is. That
(12:48):
going beyond the access basically is the lobbyist has to
convince a legislator to do something. So sometimes the lobbyist
convinces him by raising a lot of money and just say, hey,
hold your nose, just do it. A lot of times
the lobbyists and we often would do this. We give
them the compelling reasons why philosophically and politically it would
be something okay for them to do if it wasn't
(13:10):
related to their district. But the access is everything, and
that's what the average citizen doesn't have, and that's what
the lobbyist does have.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Who is the most ethical member of Congress that you
ever dealt with. Under no circumstances, would they change from
the most principled position.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
You know, it's hard to it's hard to think of,
you know, the the most ethical. There are guys. I
can think of Dana Rabacher in California. He wouldn't under
any circumstances do something he didn't believe in. But are
there are a lot of guys like that that that
isn't necessarily the problem that people are switching their positions
(13:46):
they hold deer and things like that, because the truth is,
lobbyists are able to couch issues and others. By the way,
all the special interests are able to couch their issues
in ways that they seem like the lot the legislators
should support them. But fortunately, because of the way the
government has gotten out of control, the federal government has
grown over the years, all of these things add up
(14:06):
to a real problem for us.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
There have been over the last couple of years a
number of congressional investigations by Democrats and now Republicans of
members of the Black Congressional Caucus. Did you find members
of the Black Congressional Caucus to be more corrupt than
the other members?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, I really didn't I didn't have a lot of dealings,
you know, with the Black Caucus. I was a Republican
and I only really double with Republicans. I had people
work for me who did. But frankly, I don't remember
anything more or less in terms of the Black Caucus
or any of the other caucuses. Unfortunately, the problem is
so pervasive that the question is who isn't doing this
(14:46):
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Our guest is Jack Abramoff. The book is Capital Punishment,
The heart truth about Washington Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyists.
Jack tell me this, as long as we're going to
have lobbyists, it strikes me that we're going to have
some level of corruption because there is competition built in,
there is a desire to serve your client. There are
(15:09):
some clients who win out of government contracts or are
favorable regulation. And if the public's not going to have
their own lobbyist, it strikes me, if we're going to
have lobbyists, we're going to have corruption.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Well, I think that's exactly right. The big underlying boogeyman here,
the eight hundred pound elephant of the room that nobody's
going to discuss, is the fact that the government is
too big. The federal government is in too many things.
There are too many reasons to have lobbyists. You have
twenty thousand lobbyists running around because the governments in above
them hundreds of thousands of things that they shouldn't be
(15:42):
involved in. Now, to get rid of the lobbyists ultimately,
or at least to pair them back, you've got to
get the government back into this constitutional framework, the box
that the founders gave it to us in. Unfortunately, that's
a long way away. So in the interim, what I
try to do is lay out some steps that in
the meantime can do to at least reduce the kind
of corruption and the kind of connection between those lobbyists
(16:05):
and these congressmen and the staff that exists right now.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And what would that be.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Well, I think there's several steps. First of all, the
revolving door between public service and basically the congressmen are
working on the hill.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
The publisher would tell you that at that point you're
supposed to say, well, as I said in the book,
you're not good at this yet.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Well, I'm just out of prison. I don't know. In
prison wouldn't say that stuff. And they're listening into the publicist.
So I'm gonna I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Get You're supposed to start every answer with That's what
Glenn Beck says well, as I.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Lay out in the book on page nine hundred. Now
I'm kidding the yes, by the way, as I do
say in the book, and then this is the kind
of stuff I do write about, that the revolving door
between public service and cashing in has got to end.
It's got to be shut, not shut for two years
or delayed for two years as they currently do, but
rather shut permanently. That if you work on the hill
(17:01):
or you're a member of Congress, you are done. You
finish your service, you go home. You don't cash in
and hang around and become a lobbyist and make money
off your public service. It's number one, number two, the
tie between money and these congressmen and their staff has
got to be cut off on the other side, meaning
(17:21):
if you're a lobbyist or you're somebody's getting a government
grant or a government contract or government large ass, you're
basically feeding at the trough of the American people. You
do not give money politically federally. You can't buy with
your money a continuation of this feeding frenzy. So you
can't give money. You make a choice. You either want
(17:42):
to be a lobbyist and get money out of the trough,
or you contribute politically. Number one and number two, if
you're one of those folks, you can't give anything to
a staffer or to a congressman at all, not a meal,
not a golf game, not a ticket to anything, not
a glass of water, nothing that it's going to create
that deadeness. I further write in the book that the
(18:03):
congressmen themselves have got to be term limited. I was
never for this, by the way, when I was a lobbyist,
but I've got to tell you, they don't see how
you do it. Unless you do this. These people who
sit there for decades, they eventually become corrupt. You can't
butt but become corrupt. What the founders wanted is citizen legislators,
not permanent legislay.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
But the argument Jack Jack Aramoff is our guest. The
argument against term limits is that then you increase the
power of the bureaucracy. At least the public official can
be thrown out by the public. We can't affect the bureaucracy.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Well, first of all, this is all in tandem with
the bureocracy being carried back. I also want serious civil
service reform where you don't have people who are sitting
in the bureocracy for years. Either. We've got to have
fresh blood coming in and out of Washington, fresh ideas,
people who are going to do public service and get
out this notion of staying there for your life and
(18:56):
basically profiting off of whether in the government or out
of the government, to the government. And that is something
that we've got to get beyond. And the final thing
I talked about, Actually I talk about a few more
things in the book, but one of the big things
I talked about is that the laws that the members
of Congress make and they pass have got to be
applicable to them. Recently, it's come out and I talked
about it as well in some of the interviews I've done.
(19:17):
How these members of Congress and their staff have insider
information about what's going on and they're able to trade
in stocks. Now, if I did that, they'd send me
back to prison. They do it with impunity.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
You're absolutely right. The Nancy Pelosi case visa she bought
a stock five thousand shares at forty four bucks a share,
and that it jumped up to sixty four two days
later while they were under congressional review. Yep, how do
you make a living now?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Well, I'm slowly trying to get some businesses going, and
I've got this the book, started to make speeches and
things like that. I mean, you know, it's a struggle. Look,
I got to tell you, if you're a fella, a
former felon, you're never a former fella and you're always
a fellaon. Really it's tough. It's tough. A lot of
people are in my position, and you know, we just
struggle and just try to do it well we can.
(20:03):
I have some projects, other projects that are television related,
and some internet stuff that I'm working on. I've got
a website called abramov dot com where people can communicate
with me and share ideas and buy the book, and
you know, I'm hoping, you know, to develop some things.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Were you the worst most corrupt lobbyist in DC in
your heyday?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I doubt it. I doubt it. I mean they're probably
some pretty nefarious characters. Look, I thought I was doing good, Okay,
I didn't think I was hurting people. I had a
bunch of clients whose causes I supported. I was raising
a lot of money for them from them, for the
people I supported, the Republicans and the Conservatives, I won
great victories for them so that they got a lot
(20:44):
of benefit. I took that money. My wife and I
gave eighty percent of the money we made away to
charity and communal causes. I didn't think anything was wrong.
The truth is again, as I said, I was off
on a voyage. I was off by one percent. But
by the time I was done, I was on another continent,
and unfortunately I broke the law. I did do it.
I'm sorry I did it. I got punished tremendously. I've
(21:06):
been stripped of everything I own. I got thrown into prison,
and my family has suffered as well. And you know,
God willing we'll be able to come back somehow and
do something.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Jack Abramoff, as our guest, you used harsh and derogatory
language against your clients in emails. Obviously some things you
would have never wanted them to see. Let's focus on
the Indian tribes for a moment. I see the Department
of Interior's treatment of the Indian tribes as something of
a cabal the casino license is the opportunity to print money.
(21:37):
It seems as if we've set aside this group of
people and said, here, you can make an insane amount
of money that no one else can, and we're going
to create barriers around you. I don't know if that
was the reason you seem to disdain them, or if
you didn't really mean what you were saying, But how
would you respond to that now that you're not their lobbyiess.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Well, look, I said, eight hundred and fifty thousand emails, okay,
in the course of time less than a decade that
I was a lobbyist. In those emails, every thought that
coursed through my head, I put an email, I'm the
poster child, or don't write in an email those things
you don't want to read on the front page of
the Washington Post, because, frankly, unfortunately, hundreds of times I
(22:15):
got to read my emails on the front page of
the Washington Post. Now, among those eight hundred and fifty
thousand emails which were subpoenaed by Senator McCain and his staff,
they went through and they called out about fifty They
were pretty pretty rough, and I'm embarrassed by it, and
I'm sick that I did it. And some of them
were jocular, some of them were angry, some of them
were passionate. I wrote emails about the clients, frankly, whom
(22:37):
I loved. Sometimes I was upset they didn't do what
I told them to do. But you know, if you
look at my emails, unfortunately there's some emails about my
own kids. To say the same things to my wife, Geez,
what's wrong with this Mauran? Why doesn't he pick up
his clothes on the floor? That kind of thing. I
was that kind of passionate person. I regret that I was.
I put it in an email. Didn't reflect how I
(22:59):
felt about my client. The other eight hundred and fifty
thousand certainly had a lot different message. But unfortunately, when
my scandal became public, they wanted me to be a villain,
and they had, unfortunately, in my own hand, plenty of
ample emails to put out there.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
The book is Capital Punishment, The hard truth about Washington
Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Thanks for
being our guest. If you liked the Michael Berry Show
and podcast, please tell one friend and if you're so
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(23:37):
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(24:05):
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(24:29):
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PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to
provide free counseling. Three
The Michael Barry, Joe Jack abram Off.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, Hello, how are you.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
I'm good, Thanks for being our guest.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
It's a pleasure, thank you.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
So how long were you in jail?
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Forty three months over three and a half years.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Did you ever expect you'd be in jail?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Of course not absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
What was the worst thing about.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It being away from my family?
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Is jail as broken as the rest of governmental institutions?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, absolutely, it's as the leader in broken government institutions.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Does anybody get better from going to jail?
Speaker 2 (00:33):
No, it's a storage facility. There's no effort to make
them better.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I for one, have always had this opinion. We won't
talk about prison the whole time, but I for one
have this opinion. The whole you know, jokes about rape
in prison, and that whole thing is that jail should
be for rehabilitating and punishing and the whole concept of
rape only makes people worse. But how bad a problem
is it?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Well, where I was, it wasn't a problem at all.
I was non violent prison. But it is a problem
in other prisons, and uh, they you know, they try
to do stuff about it, But you're dealing with a
bunch of very you know, very sick guys.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
When you tell your when you tell your your children
daddy's daddy went to prison, what do you tell him
what was for?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well? I mean my kids know my situation pretty well.
I tell them the details. You know. I went for
three specific reasons. One I didn't reveal something to my
clients I should have. Two, I didn't. I had money
directed to charities we supported instead of to me, and
that's tax evasion. In three, I lavished on Congressman things
(01:34):
that I should never have done.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
When you look back, if you're telling a young person, hey,
look I was I was a guy making good money.
You didn't need to do that. I mean, you were
fabulously wealthy, you were incredibly successful, and you could have
survived without that. When you look back on where you
went wrong, why, Well, I.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Think the problem was that I didn't as I was
doing it, really understand where I was at. I guess
sort of was one degree off in my sex stint.
As I started my voyage, time I looked up, I
was lost and I was hyper competitive. I took all
the fights to the extreme. I pushed every envelope, and
you know, I rationalized a way and until it was
(02:11):
too late.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
You've written a book, Capital Punishment, The Hard Truth about
Washington Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. What
do you hope to accomplish? Writ in this book?
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Well, what I want to do is two things. Number One,
I want to inform America about what actually happens in Washington.
Why is their government dysfunctional? What's going on here? And
I think most Americans are, you know, they instinctively think
something's wrong. But what I point out is what goes
on behind the doors. And people who read the book
are shocked and angry and scared about what they're reading,
(02:44):
and I want them to be for the hope that
maybe people will rise up and undo the kind of
system that undid me and that I helped lead unfortunately.
And so I go in the book and I offer
some suggestions as to what people can do, or what
people can make their legislators do, to clean up the
corruption that's in this town that I unfortunately played so well.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
You based a lot of your lobbying around leisure activities
like playing golf, a sport I've just taken up. And
much of my audience either lives in what used to
be Tom DeLay's district or obviously they know who Tom
Delay is and many of them personally know him. Is
it true you played in a million dollar golf match
in Russia with Tom Delay?
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, it was. It didn't start off as a million
dollar golf match. One of my clients Russian, who was
a fine fellow, a Christian and a free marketeer and
pro us and pro Ronald Reagan. Love Ronald Reagan. He
loved Tom Delay. He thought he was just an absolute
champion of freedom and wanted to give money to him politically,
and I kept telling the guy, you can't do it.
(03:44):
You're a Russian, you can't make a political contribution. So
we were going over there on a trip. Tom was
trying to help the persecuted Christians over there in Russia.
And after a bunch of meetings, my client said, hey,
let's go play golf. And apparently he had spent nine
months secretly learning how to play golf in a warehouse
in Russia. And we get to a golf course and
(04:04):
we play, and he wants to bet, even though he stinks,
and Tom's not a bad golfer, and so he's betting
and eventually he's losing every hole, and he finally turns
around and says, we're going to bet a million dollars
on this hole. And we looked at each other, Wady,
out of your mind. We don't have a million dollars.
He said, well do it anyway. So we did, you know,
just as a lark. He lost, of course, and then
he turned to Tom and said, Tom Jack won't let
(04:25):
me give you a political contribution. So you just beat
me for a million dollars in a golf game, and
they're now going to give you a million dollars. Now.
I said, look, you can't do that. That's not legal either.
And so unfortunately, the poor guy wound up not being
able to give the payoffs the million dollar loss. He
just want up eventually contributing it to a foundation and
(04:46):
things like that. But so that was our million dollar
golf bet in Russia?
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Was Tom Delay? Akrup?
Speaker 2 (04:53):
I don't think so.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Now, how would you describe Tom to lay?
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I consider Tom Delay an honorable, decent human thing. I
consider him to be a passionate religious Christian. I consider
him to be an absolute conservative and somebody who walks
the walk and just doesn't talk. Yet, as you probably know,
he raises foster kids in his own home, and he'd
never got involved in, you know, kind of the hanky
panky that a lot of these fellows do in Washington.
(05:19):
And I consider him to be a fine man.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
The book is Capital Punishment, the hard truth about Washington
corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist. Some people would say, well, now,
this guy's going to make money off off of all
his crimes. What do you say to that.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Well, considering that forty four million dollars comes out for restitution,
I'd have to make an awful lot of money before
that's that's the case true that I didn't do the
book to make money. I hope I'll make money eventually,
of course, who doesn't want to make money, But most
of the money will go to restitution and paying other
debts and things like that. And I didn't do it, frankly,
(05:54):
on the financial basis because I could do and trying
to do other things to make real money. You don't
make a lot of money on books these days. I
did it because the story has got to get out.
People've got to be aware of what goes on in
their government, and people have got to get active to
try to stop it, or our Republic is doomed?
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Jack, Can you hold with me for just a moment?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Our guest is Jack Abramoff. The book is Capital Punishment,
The hard truth about Washington Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist.
Do we even need lobbyists? And some of the worst
stories of Jack Abramoff's career coming up? Stay tuned. Our
guest is Jack Abramoff, Notorious his words, lobbyists. The book
(06:34):
is Capital Punishment, The hard truth about Washington Corruption from
America's most notorious lobbyists. Will you ever pay back to
forty three million dollars?
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Well, you to work hard to try, you know, I
don't know. It depends how how my portions go. It's
a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Now, is this money that you were paid that they
say you falsely billed?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
It's a combination of things. What I pled to, by
the way, in terms of dealing with my clients, was
that I didn't warm my clients that I was sharing
in money of the companies that I recommended to them,
that I worked with to defeat some of the attacks
on them in their own states. And so part of it.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Is that how much of so you over the years
made forty three million dollars.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Yeah, I made a lot of money. We build I
guess not just to me, but we build a clients
about eighty north of about eighty million dollars. We sat
down when this all happened to try to figure out, well,
what kind of value did we provide in that atmosphere,
and it wound up being about six plus billion dollars. So,
you know, our clients used to refer to us as
(07:39):
the Indian tribal clients with the casinos used to say
we were the best slot machine they had. But you know,
the truth is that in that world, I guess I
was pretty proficient and pretty aggressive and successful. My problem
is I shouldn't have been in that world.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
We Jack Abramoff is our guest probably the most. I
was reading through the emails during the break, and there
were a number of references to the black hat you
wore coming out of the courthouse on the day of
your guilty plea, and people making the note that in
American culture, the black hat is the sign of the villain.
Did you realize how that was going to look?
Speaker 2 (08:10):
No, what happened was I guess I had the only
political wardrobe malfunctioned or something I just I took off
in the morning from my house. It was dark and
it was raining, and I wanted to get to the
to the court before the press did, because the press
would set up these gauntlets and you know, just hurl
inductives at me, and it was it was horrible. So
(08:31):
I got there early. I was running out. It was raining.
I grabbed my raincoat, I grabbed the hat and got
in the car and drove up there, went into the
court and I didn't think much about it and put
it down and went into the court did the business
we had to do, which was a horrible day for me.
I pled guilty that day and I put it back on,
walked outside, and I didn't realize until the media started
(08:52):
screaming at me that there was a problem and they
thought I was a combination. I guess a boris bad enough,
or any angster. So it was not good.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Jack Abram Mos our guests, you represented some pretty unpopular causes,
like sweatshops in the American Pacific territories. Is it generally
the case as a lobbyist that you get paid more
for causes that are so unpopular?
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Well, let me let me back up for a second.
The Marianas Islands has been a subject to a real
campaign of vilification those factories out there. We before we
took the client, I was at a firm called Preston
Gates at the time. One of the senior partners was
a Liberal Democratic former congressman named Lloyd Meads, who was
on the Labor Committee. We went out to the island
(09:38):
and inspected the factories and the whole place, spent a
few days. Lloyd was, I guess, a former inspector of factories,
and went around and saw what was going on and
gave it a check. He checked it off and thought
that it was pretty good. And he also what was
more important was that the government there was gone after abuse.
It wasn't sweatshops. In fact, he said he had never
(09:59):
seen fact was as clean, as bright as air conditioned
as these places were. But they were making garments at
a lower than federal minimum wage. They had when they
joined the United States the Marianas Islands. We granted them
the ability to set their own local minimum wage and
to have control of their immigration. Well, all of a sudden,
(10:20):
the Unions and some of the Democrats didn't want to
have that anymore, because they saw they were making shirts
and making something of themselves. They started attacking them, and
the attacks were basically saying that they were sweatshops and whatnot.
To prove them wrong and basically to overcome this, the
government hosted and I had my suggestion, by the way,
getting one hundred and fifty congressional offices to send their
(10:42):
people out to inspect the island as well, and we
were to overcome that. So I just wanted to weigh
in on that. There are a lot of accusations about me.
I mean, people in the media wrote ten thousand stories
about me. Between the time that started and before I
went to prison, I sat quietly because frankly, I didn't
know what this was all about. I wanted to try
to get through it, and you know, I didn't want
(11:04):
to make matters worse. But they got to paint a
picture of me that was a little unfair. And that's
one of the things in the book I try to
do as well, to say exactly what it was with
all the warts. By the way, I admit what I
did wrong and I wasn't perfect, but I try to
paint that in the book.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Book is Capital Punishment, The hard truth about Washington corruption
from America's most notorious lobbyist, Jack Abramoth when you look back, well,
I tell you what paint the picture for us. If
you would take a couple of minutes, sure and explain
the most if you want to call it corrupt or
the most inappropriate. If the public saw what you and
(11:39):
obviously others were doing, how does that process work? I mean,
how open and brazen is it?
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Well? I think I think it's a good question, and
I think people've got to keep in mind the following.
The problem is not where people break the law. I
pushed the envelope and I went over the line. I
did break the law. I lost sight of where the
line in the sand, even though these are murky lines
in the sand, by the way, in this business, where
I have lost sight of where that is and I
went over it. The problem isn't that there aren't a
(12:06):
lot of Jack abram Offs or people who are pushing
that far. The problem is what's legal in Washington, and
the process basically is such as follows. If you're a lobbyist,
you know some congressman, you know some staff. You've probably
know a lot of them. You've probably worked on Capitol Hill,
which is one of the things I get to in
my book that has to be stopped. You've come off
(12:26):
Capitol Hill, you cashed in your public service, and you're
now a lobbyist. Now you've got friends over there, and
you're going to whine them and dine them and take
them to ballgames and play golf with them and travel
with them, and you spend a lot of FaceTime with him.
And that's called access. That's the first important thing for
a lobbyist. Access because if you can't get to the
decision maker, it doesn't matter what your argument is. That
(12:48):
going beyond the access basically is the lobbyist has to
convince a legislator to do something. So sometimes the lobbyist
convinces him by raising a lot of money and just say, hey,
hold your nose, just do it. A lot of times
the lobbyists and we often would do this. We give
them the compelling reasons why philosophically and politically it would
be something okay for them to do if it wasn't
(13:10):
related to their district. But the access is everything, and
that's what the average citizen doesn't have, and that's what
the lobbyist does have.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Who is the most ethical member of Congress that you
ever dealt with. Under no circumstances, would they change from
the most principled position.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
You know, it's hard to it's hard to think of,
you know, the the most ethical. There are guys. I
can think of Dana Rabacher in California. He wouldn't under
any circumstances do something he didn't believe in. But are
there are a lot of guys like that that that
isn't necessarily the problem that people are switching their positions
(13:46):
they hold deer and things like that, because the truth is,
lobbyists are able to couch issues and others. By the way,
all the special interests are able to couch their issues
in ways that they seem like the lot the legislators
should support them. But fortunately, because of the way the
government has gotten out of control, the federal government has
grown over the years, all of these things add up
(14:06):
to a real problem for us.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
There have been over the last couple of years a
number of congressional investigations by Democrats and now Republicans of
members of the Black Congressional Caucus. Did you find members
of the Black Congressional Caucus to be more corrupt than
the other members?
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, I really didn't I didn't have a lot of dealings,
you know, with the Black Caucus. I was a Republican
and I only really double with Republicans. I had people
work for me who did. But frankly, I don't remember
anything more or less in terms of the Black Caucus
or any of the other caucuses. Unfortunately, the problem is
so pervasive that the question is who isn't doing this
(14:46):
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Our guest is Jack Abramoff. The book is Capital Punishment,
The heart truth about Washington Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyists.
Jack tell me this, as long as we're going to
have lobbyists, it strikes me that we're going to have
some level of corruption because there is competition built in,
there is a desire to serve your client. There are
(15:09):
some clients who win out of government contracts or are
favorable regulation. And if the public's not going to have
their own lobbyist, it strikes me, if we're going to
have lobbyists, we're going to have corruption.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Well, I think that's exactly right. The big underlying boogeyman here,
the eight hundred pound elephant of the room that nobody's
going to discuss, is the fact that the government is
too big. The federal government is in too many things.
There are too many reasons to have lobbyists. You have
twenty thousand lobbyists running around because the governments in above
them hundreds of thousands of things that they shouldn't be
(15:42):
involved in. Now, to get rid of the lobbyists ultimately,
or at least to pair them back, you've got to
get the government back into this constitutional framework, the box
that the founders gave it to us in. Unfortunately, that's
a long way away. So in the interim, what I
try to do is lay out some steps that in
the meantime can do to at least reduce the kind
of corruption and the kind of connection between those lobbyists
(16:05):
and these congressmen and the staff that exists right now.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And what would that be.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
Well, I think there's several steps. First of all, the
revolving door between public service and basically the congressmen are
working on the hill.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
The publisher would tell you that at that point you're
supposed to say, well, as I said in the book,
you're not good at this yet.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Well, I'm just out of prison. I don't know. In
prison wouldn't say that stuff. And they're listening into the publicist.
So I'm gonna I'm going to get it.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
Get You're supposed to start every answer with That's what
Glenn Beck says well, as I.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Lay out in the book on page nine hundred. Now
I'm kidding the yes, by the way, as I do
say in the book, and then this is the kind
of stuff I do write about, that the revolving door
between public service and cashing in has got to end.
It's got to be shut, not shut for two years
or delayed for two years as they currently do, but
rather shut permanently. That if you work on the hill
(17:01):
or you're a member of Congress, you are done. You
finish your service, you go home. You don't cash in
and hang around and become a lobbyist and make money
off your public service. It's number one, number two, the
tie between money and these congressmen and their staff has
got to be cut off on the other side, meaning
(17:21):
if you're a lobbyist or you're somebody's getting a government
grant or a government contract or government large ass, you're
basically feeding at the trough of the American people. You
do not give money politically federally. You can't buy with
your money a continuation of this feeding frenzy. So you
can't give money. You make a choice. You either want
(17:42):
to be a lobbyist and get money out of the trough,
or you contribute politically. Number one and number two, if
you're one of those folks, you can't give anything to
a staffer or to a congressman at all, not a meal,
not a golf game, not a ticket to anything, not
a glass of water, nothing that it's going to create
that deadeness. I further write in the book that the
(18:03):
congressmen themselves have got to be term limited. I was
never for this, by the way, when I was a lobbyist,
but I've got to tell you, they don't see how
you do it. Unless you do this. These people who
sit there for decades, they eventually become corrupt. You can't
butt but become corrupt. What the founders wanted is citizen legislators,
not permanent legislay.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
But the argument Jack Jack Aramoff is our guest. The
argument against term limits is that then you increase the
power of the bureaucracy. At least the public official can
be thrown out by the public. We can't affect the bureaucracy.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Well, first of all, this is all in tandem with
the bureocracy being carried back. I also want serious civil
service reform where you don't have people who are sitting
in the bureocracy for years. Either. We've got to have
fresh blood coming in and out of Washington, fresh ideas,
people who are going to do public service and get
out this notion of staying there for your life and
(18:56):
basically profiting off of whether in the government or out
of the government, to the government. And that is something
that we've got to get beyond. And the final thing
I talked about, Actually I talk about a few more
things in the book, but one of the big things
I talked about is that the laws that the members
of Congress make and they pass have got to be
applicable to them. Recently, it's come out and I talked
about it as well in some of the interviews I've done.
(19:17):
How these members of Congress and their staff have insider
information about what's going on and they're able to trade
in stocks. Now, if I did that, they'd send me
back to prison. They do it with impunity.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
You're absolutely right. The Nancy Pelosi case visa she bought
a stock five thousand shares at forty four bucks a share,
and that it jumped up to sixty four two days
later while they were under congressional review. Yep, how do
you make a living now?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Well, I'm slowly trying to get some businesses going, and
I've got this the book, started to make speeches and
things like that. I mean, you know, it's a struggle. Look,
I got to tell you, if you're a fella, a
former felon, you're never a former fella and you're always
a fellaon. Really it's tough. It's tough. A lot of
people are in my position, and you know, we just
struggle and just try to do it well we can.
(20:03):
I have some projects, other projects that are television related,
and some internet stuff that I'm working on. I've got
a website called abramov dot com where people can communicate
with me and share ideas and buy the book, and
you know, I'm hoping, you know, to develop some things.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Were you the worst most corrupt lobbyist in DC in
your heyday?
Speaker 2 (20:23):
I doubt it. I doubt it. I mean they're probably
some pretty nefarious characters. Look, I thought I was doing good, Okay,
I didn't think I was hurting people. I had a
bunch of clients whose causes I supported. I was raising
a lot of money for them from them, for the
people I supported, the Republicans and the Conservatives, I won
great victories for them so that they got a lot
(20:44):
of benefit. I took that money. My wife and I
gave eighty percent of the money we made away to
charity and communal causes. I didn't think anything was wrong.
The truth is again, as I said, I was off
on a voyage. I was off by one percent. But
by the time I was done, I was on another continent,
and unfortunately I broke the law. I did do it.
I'm sorry I did it. I got punished tremendously. I've
(21:06):
been stripped of everything I own. I got thrown into prison,
and my family has suffered as well. And you know,
God willing we'll be able to come back somehow and
do something.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Jack Abramoff, as our guest, you used harsh and derogatory
language against your clients in emails. Obviously some things you
would have never wanted them to see. Let's focus on
the Indian tribes for a moment. I see the Department
of Interior's treatment of the Indian tribes as something of
a cabal the casino license is the opportunity to print money.
(21:37):
It seems as if we've set aside this group of
people and said, here, you can make an insane amount
of money that no one else can, and we're going
to create barriers around you. I don't know if that
was the reason you seem to disdain them, or if
you didn't really mean what you were saying, But how
would you respond to that now that you're not their lobbyiess.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Well, look, I said, eight hundred and fifty thousand emails, okay,
in the course of time less than a decade that
I was a lobbyist. In those emails, every thought that
coursed through my head, I put an email, I'm the
poster child, or don't write in an email those things
you don't want to read on the front page of
the Washington Post, because, frankly, unfortunately, hundreds of times I
(22:15):
got to read my emails on the front page of
the Washington Post. Now, among those eight hundred and fifty
thousand emails which were subpoenaed by Senator McCain and his staff,
they went through and they called out about fifty They
were pretty pretty rough, and I'm embarrassed by it, and
I'm sick that I did it. And some of them
were jocular, some of them were angry, some of them
were passionate. I wrote emails about the clients, frankly, whom
(22:37):
I loved. Sometimes I was upset they didn't do what
I told them to do. But you know, if you
look at my emails, unfortunately there's some emails about my
own kids. To say the same things to my wife, Geez,
what's wrong with this Mauran? Why doesn't he pick up
his clothes on the floor? That kind of thing. I
was that kind of passionate person. I regret that I was.
I put it in an email. Didn't reflect how I
(22:59):
felt about my client. The other eight hundred and fifty
thousand certainly had a lot different message. But unfortunately, when
my scandal became public, they wanted me to be a villain,
and they had, unfortunately, in my own hand, plenty of
ample emails to put out there.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
The book is Capital Punishment, The hard truth about Washington
Corruption from America's most notorious lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Thanks for
being our guest. If you liked the Michael Berry Show
and podcast, please tell one friend and if you're so
inclined write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions,
and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can
(23:37):
be communicated directly to the show at our email address,
Michael at Michael Berryshow dot com, or simply by clicking
on our website, Michael Berryshow dot com. The Michael Berry
Show and Podcast is produced by Ramon Roeblis, the King
of Ding. Executive producer is Chad Knockannish. Jim Mudd is
(24:05):
the creative director. Voices Jingles, Tomfoolery and Shenanigans are provided
by Chance McLean. Director of Research is Sandy Peterson. Emily
Bull is our assistant listener and superfan. Contributions are appreciated
and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit,
(24:29):
where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God
bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis, be
a simple man like Leonard Skinnard told you, and God
bless America. Finally, if you know a veteran suffering from PTSD,
call Camp Hope at eight seven seven seven one seven
(24:54):
PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to
provide free counseling. Three
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Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.