http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/20/washington/20cnd-safavian.html?hp&ex=1150
862400&en=a6b6056d63efa562&ei=5094&partner=homepage

June 20, 2006

Former White House Aide Convicted in Abramoff Inquiry

By PHILIP SHENON

WASHINGTON, June 20 — A former White House aide was convicted today of
lying to government investigators about his ties to the disgraced lobbyist
Jack Abramoff, in the first trial to result from the influence-peddling
inquiry centered on Mr. Abramoff.

The former aide, David H. Safavian, who resigned from the White House
budget office days before his arrest last September, was convicted of four
counts of lying and obstruction of justice in his statements to
investigators about Mr. Abramoff and about a 2002 golf trip to Scotland
that the lobbyist arranged for Mr. Safavian and others. Mr. Safavian was
acquitted on an additional obstruction charge.

The verdict was hailed by Justice Department officials as a victory in
their wide-ranging criminal investigation of the lobbying operations run by
Mr. Abramoff, a Republican fundraiser who pleaded guilty in January to
conspiring to go bribe public officials, including members of Congress, and
is cooperating with prosecutors.

The criminal inquiry has created alarm on Capitol Hill, with several
Republican lawmakers facing difficult re-election battles this November
because of questions about their ties to Mr. Abramoff. Congressional aides
said the influence-peddling scandal was a major factor in the decision of
Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader and an ally of Mr. Abramoff, to
retire from politics this year.

Mr. Safavian, 38 years old and a member of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying staff
before joining the Bush administration, showed little emotion as the guilty
verdicts were read in federal district court in Washington. He could be
given 20 years in prison on the four counts, although federal sentencing
guidelines suggest he will face a much lighter sentence.

After four days of deliberation, the jury agreed with prosecutors that Mr.
Safavian lied to investigators when he insisted there was no ethical
conflict in joining Mr. Abramoff's August 2002 golfing trip to Scotland
since, Mr. Safavian claimed, the lobbyist did "no business" with the
General Services Administration. Mr. Safavian was then the chief of staff
of the G.S.A., which fuctions as the government's real-estate manager.

The jury saw e-mail traffic from the summer of 2002 in which Mr. Abramoff
repeatedly asked Mr. Safavian for help in acquiring two real-estate parcels
that were controlled by the G.S.A., including the Old Post Office Building
on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, close to the White House. Mr.
Safavian arranged a meeting at G.S.A. for Mr. Safavian's wife to discuss
the properties on the day before he left for Scotland.

According to the prosecution's case, Mr. Safavian's lies were initially
told in the summer of 2002 to the G.S.A.'s ethics office and then repeated
to investigators for the agency's inspector general office and for the
Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which investigated Mr. Abramoff's lobbying
contracts with Indian tribe casinos. Mr. Safavian left the G.S.A. in 2004
to join the White House budget office as the director of federal
procurement policies.

Although Mr. Safavian was the first person to go to trial as a result of
ties to Mr. Abramoff, four other Abramoff associates, including two former
top House aides to Mr. DeLay, have pleaded guilty to criminal charges and
face prison sentences.

Mr. Safavian's lawyer, Barbara Van Gelder, said he would appeal the
conviction. In a meeting with reporters after the verdict, she suggested,
as she did in the trial, that Mr. Safavian was a victim of guilt by
association with Mr. Abramoff, whose name has become synonymous in
Washington with the worst abuses of corporate lobbyists. "I've always been
perplexed as to why the Justice Department decided to take out the
howitzers against Mr. Safavian," she said.

Defense lawyers representing other subjects of the Abramoff investigation
said they were chilled by the verdict against Mr. Safavian, suggesting that
it might embolden the Justice Department to bring charges against much more
prominent public officials who were close to Mr. Abramoff.

"Safavian was a little fish," said a lawyer for a former government
official who has also become entangled in the investigations of Mr.
Abramoff. The lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, saying he did
not want to bring unnecessary attention to his client, added, "I think this
makes it easier for the prosecutors to ask permission at the Justice
Department to go for the bigger fish."

Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher, the head of the Justice
Department's criminal division, said in a statement that "the message of
this verdict is clear: in answering questions posed by Congress and by
federal agencies, public officials have the same obligation as does the
public for which they serve — to tell the truth."

Among the other lawmakers under close scrutiny by the Justice Department is
Representative Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who joined Mr. Abramoff and Mr.
Safavian on the 2002 trip to Scotland, where they played on the fabled
course at St. Andrews.

Mr. Ney's former chief of staff, Neil G. Volz, was a government witness
against Mr. Safavian and was questioned in detail about the golf trip. He
testified as a result of a guilty plea in which Mr. Volz confessed to
conspiring with Mr. Abramoff to corrupt public officials, including Mr.
Ney.

After learning of Mr. Safavian's conviction, Mr. Ney's office said in a
statement today that "the reality" is that Mr. Safavian's trial "had
absolutely nothing to do with Congressman Ney" and that the lawmaker
"remains absolutely confident that the lies and deception of Jack Abramoff
will continue to be revealed."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company