Abramoff Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison

On Thursday, former lobbyist Jack Abramoff was sentenced to four years in prison for tax violations and corruption offenses.

Abramoff, you'll recall, bilked tribes of millions of dollars. He played one tribe off another, promising access to and influence over federal policymakers while charging exorbitant fees and chortling over how easy it was to dupe tribal officials. Of course, Abramoff's unethical and illegal acts extended well beyond his interactions with tribes. His relatively short sentence -- under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, he could have received 11 years in prison -- was recommended by the prosecutor based on Abramoff's extensive cooperation in the investigation. In fact, the government recommended only 39 months, while tribal leaders from the Saginaw Chippewa in Michigan and the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana urged the judge to issue a much harsher sentence.

Ironically, or perhaps fittingly, the man who called his tribal clients "monkeys," "troglodytes," "morons," and "the stupidest idiots in the land," begged the court for mercy, saying, "My name is the butt of a joke."

Read here in the New York Times.

We wrote an article on the implications of the Abramoff scandal on federal campaign finance law and tribal political participation in the Gaming Law Review. Find information on it here,
http://www.liebertonline.com/toc/glr/10/3, and as with anything else we’ve written, please feel free to contact us about the article.