1115.org

The latest revelations about DeLay’s famous $70,000 family-and-friends golfing trip to Scotland and England in spring 2000 contain an unexpected bonus. They reveal Susan Ralston – who then worked for Jack Abramoff and who is now Special Assistant to the President and Assistant to Karl Rove – enthusiastically aiding and abetting DeLay and his staff in the filing of false financial disclosure forms to Congress about the trip.

After DeLay’s staff asked Abramoff’s office for information about the cost of the trip:

“We should give them the most minimal numbers for cost of the hotel (do not include golf), food and plays,” Abramoff wrote two assistants at his Preston Gates lobbying firm in an e-mail from June 29, 2000. One of those assistants, Susan Ralston, now works for top White House adviser Karl Rove.

In a follow-up e-mail to Abramoff, Ralston reported she talked to DeLay’s then-deputy chief of staff, Tony Rudy, who suggested numbers that could be used as cost figures on the congressional travel report. Rudy had gone on the trip with his boss.

“Tony said: $6,800 for flights per person. $300 per night for hotel, $120 per day per person for meals, $500 per day for transportation,” Ralston wrote Abramoff. Abramoff’s credit card bill shows some costs were higher.

Impressive how quickly that went from DeLay’s staff saying “tell us what the cost was” to DeLay’s staff saying “why don’t we tell you what the cost was”. But let’s refuse to get distracted from the main point. Which is Ralston participating in the fabrication of fictitious figures for the cost of the trip.

Then there’s:

Ralston wrote she had a follow-up conversation with DeLay’s office. Hirschmann (DeLay’s chief of staff at the time) wanted “a name” of someone at the GOP group who would attest to paying for the trip and was concerned whether the center’s executive director, Amy Ridenour, knew about the costs.

“She (Hirschmann) just wants to make sure that if someone starts asking questions that Amy Ridenour knows about these s (sic),” Ralston wrote.

This time around Ralston has documented for ethics violations ombudsmen that she was knew the trip was not in fact paid for by the GOP lobbying group which was put up as a front.

If I were a lawyer, I would know whether Ralston’s actions constitute an indictable offense, and if so, whether it’s a felony or a misdemeanor. But you don’t have to be a lawyer to know that her actions are unethical (you just have to be outside the Bush administration). To use the mildest phrase I can summon up under the circumstances, it’s troubling and problematic behavior for someone who is a Special Assistant to the President. So troubling that it’s hard to see how she can keep her job under the circumstances.

Wonder whether the White House will see it that way, though. Especially since:

Ralston is cited as being the highest ranking Filipino-American in the Bush White House. The Philippine News Online reported September 22, 2004, that “Ralston, who was promoted special assistant to the president last July, is also actively involved in courting the Asian American vote.”