Abramoff to Plead to Five Year Counts in Florida
CNN reports receiving an email from Jack Abramoff's attorney, Neal Sonnett, stating that Abramoff will plead to wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud tomorrow in Miami, while other charges would be dropped as part of the plea deal.
These are five year counts. Assuming he pleads to two counts,as reported here, the maximum he could get is ten years. Because he is cooperating, he will get less. As I analyze here, in D.C., the sentence could be as little as four to five years. The same is probably true of the Florida sentence. With the sentences to run concurrently, Abramoff did very well. Good work by Neal and Abbe Lowell.
The Washington Post recaps the Florida Indictment here.
On a related note, Jane and Digby are very skeptical of Chief of DOJ's Criminal Division Alice Fisher's ability to be impartial in the investigation of congressional wrongdoers that results from Abramoff's cooperation. As I reported here, Bush snuck Fisher in as a recess appointment after Senators had blocked her confirmation. At the time, The Houston Chronicle reported:
President Bush has used a constitutional provision to bypass the Senate and fill a top Justice Department slot with an official whose nomination stalled over tactics at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility. Bush used a "recess appointment" Wednesday to name Alice Fisher to lead the agency's criminal division. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., had blocked the nomination because he wants to talk to an agent who named Fisher in an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo. Fisher can serve until January 2007.
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