DOJ files charges against disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff

The Justice Department is prosecuting the legendary lobbyist Jack Abramoff on felony conspiracy charges. Again.

More than 14 years after he pleaded guilty in the biggest Washington lobbying scandal in a generation, Abramoff has agreed to enter guilty pleas on charges of criminal conspiracy and failing to register as a lobbyist for his role in two separate schemes, according to the Justice Department.

In the first, Abramoff allegedly failed to register as a lobbyist after he was hired by an FBI undercover agent posing as a businessperson. In the second, he and another man, Rowland Marcus Andrade, criminally misrepresented a cryptocurrency they claimed would use “biometric technologies” to verify its users’ identities, according to prosecutors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil charges against Abramoff and Andrade in addition to the criminal charges.

Abramoff did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Andrade hired Abramoff in 2017 to “work on a public relations and marketing campaign” for the cryptocurrency, called AML Bitcoin, according to prosecutors. In the course of the work, Andrade and Abramoff “misrepresented the state of the development of the technology and the viability and timeline for the final release” of AML Bitcoin, they wrote in a filing. Abramoff later lied to an undercover agent who posed as a potential AML Bitcoin buyer, according to prosecutors.

Andrade and Abramoff also hired writers to publish op-eds falsely claiming that NBC had rejected a Super Bowl ad they had created for being “too political,” according to prosecutors. (The ad depicted North Korea’s Kim Jong Un berating underlings for failing to hack the cryptocurrency; BuzzFeed News reported at the time that the claim was untrue.)

While he was promoting AML Bitcoin, Abramoff was also pushing changes to federal marijuana laws for another client, according to prosecutors.

He “discussed topics with a member of Congress including the proposed modification or adoption of federal legislation regarding marijuana, adoption of laws that protected medical marijuana from federal law enforcement, and possible amendment to the federal tax code,” prosecutors wrote. But he never registered as a lobbyist for the work.

An undercover FBI agent separately later hired Abramoff to lobby. Abramoff lobbied a member of Congress but didn’t register to do so.

The prosecution drags Abramoff back into the headlines more than a decade after he got out of prison, where he served three and a half years after pleading guilty in 2006 to felony counts of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion as part of a wide-ranging lobbying scandal. He plied government officials with gifts, including an all-expenses-paid trip to Scotland, expensive meals, Super Bowl tickets and campaign contributions, in exchange for help for his clients.

Abramoff found work at a Baltimore kosher pizza restaurant in 2010 after he got out of prison. He also became an advocate for reforms to limit the influence of money in politics to “stop folks like me,” as he put it in 2015.

But he didn’t entirely leave the influence industry. In 2016, he was recruited by a Romanian consultant to help set up a meeting between President-elect Donald Trump and Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the president of the Republic of Congo. (The effort failed, but Abramoff did help set up a phone call between Sassou-Nguesso and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) that led to a meeting in Congo.)

Abramoff registered as a foreign agent months later after POLITICO reported on his work with Sassou-Nguesso. But he said that he wasn’t paid for his efforts, according to Justice Department filings.

Abramoff’s prosecution is a watershed moment in the enforcement of federal lobbying law: It appears to be the first time the Justice Department has filed criminal charges under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, which requires lobbyists representing domestic clients to register with Congress but is thought to be widely flouted.

While the Justice Department has carried out several high-profile prosecutions on charges of violating lobbying laws in recent years, those cases have involved violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which governs foreign lobbying. They included the cases against Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, who was sentenced last year to seven and a half years in prison, and Greg Craig, President Barack Obama’s former White House counsel, who was acquitted last year.

Robert Kelner, a Washington lawyer who advises clients on lobbying laws, said it was tough to say whether Abramoff's prosecution was an exceptional case or whether “this is the first shot in a new and unprecedented effort to actually enforce the largely unenforced Lobbying Disclosure Act.”

“The fact that it involves probably the most infamous lobbyist of all time, Jack Abramoff, makes it that much more sensational,” he added.

Unlike some other potential unregistered lobbyists, Abramoff can’t argue he’s not familiar with the law, said Josh Rosentein, another lawyer who’s an expert in lobbying law. Congress toughened lobbying disclosure laws in 2007 after Abramoff went to prison. It passed another law last year — titled the JACK Act, in a reference to Abramoff — forcing lobbyists convicted of bribery, embezzlement and other white-collar crimes to disclose them on lobbying paperwork. Abramoff would have had to do so if he’d registered again as a lobbyist.

Thomas Spulak, another lawyer who advises clients on lobbying laws, said the case appeared to signal a new aggressiveness on the part of prosecutors.

No one “should think simply because Jack Abramoff is in a class by himself, this is a one-time shot,” Spulak wrote in an email to POLITICO. “There will be more.”