Book attacks McCain's Abramoff inquiry

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13230.html

A new book released the day after Sen. John McCain accepted the Republican presidential nomination attacks one of his trademark political successes: his investigation of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff in 2004 and 2005.

“The Perfect Villain: John McCain and the Demonization of Lobbyist Jack Abramoff,” by former Boston Globe freelancer Gary S. Chafetz and put out by small independent publisher Martin and Lawrence press, aggressively puts forth the case that McCain’s investigation into Abramoff wasn’t the high-minded reform crusade he has made it out to be on the campaign trail, but rather was pure political payback.

Abramoff had been one of the financiers of evangelical leader Ralph Reed’s brass-knuckled efforts to defeat McCain in the 2000 South Carolina Republican primary. Shorly after McCain lost that campaign to Bush, he quit the race.

Chafetz argues that McCain nursed the wounds of that defeat for years, and in 2004 jumped on the chance to investigate Abramoff after the Washington Post published a damning expose of the millions of dollars in lobbying fees Abramoff had collected from his casino-rich Indian tribal clients.

Peppered with new quotes from Abramoff—who met with Chafetz while in federal prison in Cumberland, MD—the book alleges that McCain withheld the vast majority of emails he confiscated during the inquiry, many of which could be exculpatory to the former lobbyist or damaging to McCain allies.

But Chafetz goes further than almost all of the few remaining Abramoff defenders, arguing that McCain deliberately twisted the results of his investigation to paint Abramoff in the worse possible light—and that McCain’s own actions to benefit his political contributors are similar to the very misdeeds he accused Abramoff of committing.

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