Abramoff Probe Targets GOP Advocate

WASHINGTON — The head of a Republican environmental advocacy group has been told officially by federal investigators that she is a target for criminal prosecution in the Jack Abramoff corruption probe.Italia Federici, who co-founded the group with former Interior Secretary Gale Norton and conservative GOP activist Grover Norquist, was told by the Justice Department that she faces up to five charges in the influence-peddling scandal that has produced convictions against one lawmaker, two senior Bush administration officials and several congressional aides.While running the advocacy group, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, Ms. Federici was involved in a romantic relationship with J. Steven Griles, who was deputy interior secretary during President Bush’s first term. Griles last month became the highest-ranking Bush administration official convicted in the lobbying scandal when he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of obstructing justice by lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005.Griles, a longtime oil and gas lobbyist, became an architect of Mr. Bush’s energy policies while serving as no. 2 at the Interior Department.He confessed in federal court that he lied to investigators about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Abramoff, who repeatedly sought Griles’s intervention at Interior on behalf of Indian tribal clients.Investigators have been looking at the hundreds of thousands of dollars that Ms. Federici’s environmental advocacy council received from Abramoff ‘s Indian tribal clients and from energy and mining companies, including some of Griles’s former clients.Federal prosecutors told Ms. Federici in a confidential letter dated January 19 that they are considering bringing charges of fraud, impeding the Internal Revenue Service, tax evasion, obstructing the Senate committee, and testifying falsely to the committee and its investigators. The letter was first reported by Legal Times.“The investigation is focused on the allegedly illegal manner in which you operated the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, commonly known as CREA,” the letter says. “The government has also received information that you may have assisted others in depriving the American public of the honest services of at least one administration official.”Ms. Federici’s attorney, Jonathan Rosen, declined yesterday to comment on the letter or other aspects of the case.

Abramoff Probe Targets GOP Advocate

Abramoff Probe Targets GOP Advocate

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