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Previous trips had taken DeLay and members of his staff all over the world, but none had been planned quite as meticulously as this one. Three sources who worked with Abramoff at the time say the majority whip's office ran one of Abramoff's assistants ragged with its constantly changing requests. Indeed, say two of those sources, the whole idea for the expensive London jaunt originated with DeLay aides as an additional stop on a golf outing that Abramoff had proposed to Scotland's famous St. Andrews course...
Abramoff delivered on virtually everything DeLay's staff requested. "Jack didn't need this to go awry," recalls a lobbyist who then worked with Abramoff at the Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds law firm and who notes that the trip came at a critical moment. Congress was considering legislation (which died a month after the trip) that might have shut down Internet gambling--and jeopardized the livelihoods of some of Abramoff's biggest clients. Two of them--a Choctaw Indian tribe and the Internet gambling company eLottery Inc.--each wrote a check...
...flurry of demands by DeLay's staff to Abramoff's lobbying operation call into question whether DeLay's office really believed the trip was, in fact, "sponsored, organized and paid for by the National Center for Public Policy Research," as DeLay spokesman Dan Allen maintained when the Washington Post first reported the indirect financing arrangement last month. What's more, if the idea for and details of the London leg originated with DeLay's office, that raises questions about possible violations of a House rule governing gifts and travel. The rule allows members to accept gifts, under limited circumstances...
...without the contributions from Abramoff's lobbying clients and that there was nothing untoward about a board member--Abramoff, in this case--helping to arrange a center-sponsored trip. "The center believed then and the center believes now the trip was entirely appropriate, as I'm sure does Tom DeLay," says a source close to the center, which would not comment on the record. DeLay's office maintains the Congressman did important work on the trip, the highlight of which was a meeting with conservative icon Margaret Thatcher. The long-retired British Prime Minister regaled DeLay with an account...
Perhaps, but DeLay's travel arrangements may be drawing the interest of the Justice Department. A source tells TIME that at least one former Abramoff assistant who was involved in setting up the trip to England and Scotland is scheduled to be deposed this week by the FBI, whose Washington field office has assigned half a dozen agents to an investigation into the dealings of Abramoff and his business associate, former DeLay spokesman Michael Scanlon. The focus of the probe, says a senior FBI official supervising the investigation, is "allegations of any wrongdoing involving moneys that went into or left...