Prison Sought for Former Bush Official

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-other/2006/oct/12/101204341.html

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government is pushing for three years in prison for a former Bush administration official found guilty of covering up his relationship with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The prison time could be years less than what David Safavian, former chief of staff of the General Services Administration, was initially expected to face for lying and hiding details of his connections with Abramoff from investigators and lawmakers.

Federal prosecutors calculated that Safavian's sentence should be between 30 and 37 months, based on federal guidelines, and asked that he be sentenced "at the high end of that range." Safavian could have faced up to five years on each of the four criminal counts in his June conviction. His sentencing is set for Oct. 27.

In documents filed in federal court Wednesday, Justice Department prosecutors Nathaniel B. Edmonds and Peter R. Zeidenberg urged the court to reject Safavian's request for probation, home detention and community service instead of prison.

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I had been wondering what was happening with Safavian.

which now gives us permission to lock him up and throw away the key.

In this case, I think what that means is that he's cooperating by not revealing too much information about the many, many public officials with whom he worked his criminal schemes.

Or, to put it another way, the FBI is cooperating with Jack Abramoff. Jack has slyly warned in the past that if he actually goes to jail, he's going to deliver the goods on the whole GOP.

They've managed to almost push back his sentencing beyond the '06 elections, at which point the GOP is off the hook and Jack is a dead man.

I guess it wouldn't be so bad if we stopped talking about the Foley scandal for awhile. There's so much other material to cover.

After spending $91.3 million on a 12 year long partisan witch hunt, there was only one conviction of a Clinton administration official: HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for misstating to the F.B.I. the amount of money he gave his girlfriend.

How about...everytime he drownds...they cut off a month? I wonder
how many months he'd end up getting off? I have a feeling that after one...he'd decide to do his full sentence. That would be a great test to see just how dreadful water boarding really is.

I wonder how many months he'd be willing to lose if he were bitten
by dogs (one month off for every dog bite) or paraded around naked in freezing weather? Just wondering. :shrug: