On KFKA, right-wing bloggers Jones, Kaminsky omitted key details of Schaffer-Abramoff reports

Summary: In a conversation about U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer's (R) "fact-finding mission" to the Northern Mariana Islands in 1999, as reported by The Denver Post, blogger and radio guest host Ross Kaminsky and his guest, Brad Jones of Face the State, spread misinformation about the controversial trip on 1310 KFKA's The Amy Oliver Show.

Discussing the controversial 1999 trip that Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Schaffer took to the Northern Mariana Islands, right-wing blogger Ross Kaminsky claimed April 21 on 1310 KFKA's The Amy Oliver Show that "one of the reasons" Schaffer and other GOP legislators were "asked to go look at the situation there by [now-jailed former lobbyist Jack] Abramoff" or by "people who support what's going on over there" was because "they believe[d] that if a congressman just saw for themselves, then they would realize how good it was, what was going on." Further, echoing a reported comment from Schaffer, guest host Kaminsky stated that notwithstanding reports of labor and human rights abuses on the islands, "[I]t sounds to me like what's going on over there is a great thing, which is why the unions hate it so much." But in their remarks on Schaffer's trip, neither Kaminsky nor his guest, conservative political activist Brad Jones, discussed any of the specific content from a series of Denver Post reports on purported connections between Schaffer and Abramoff's lobbying efforts for the U.S. protectorate's textile industry.

During the same conversation, Jones echoed an April 17 "Fact Check" on his "news" website Face the State by claiming that U.S. Rep. Mark Udall -- Schaffer's Democratic opponent for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Wayne Allard -- "for six years essentially ... was taking contributions from Abramoff clients who were interested" in blocking passage of legislation to restrict Internet gambling. However, as noted by April 17 reporting in the Post and the Rocky Mountain News, over a six-year time span Udall received one donation each (for a total of $1,500) from two law firms during the periods in which Abramoff worked for them.

As Colorado Media Matters has noted, controversy over Schaffer's 1999 trip to the Northern Mariana Islands as a U.S. congressman arose after an April 7 Post profile in which Schaffer "pointed" to the islands "as a successful model for a guest-worker program that could be adapted nationally." Follow-up Post articles on April 10, April 11, and April 13 have raised questions about Schaffer's trip and its purported connections to Abramoff.

From the April 21 broadcast of 1310 KFKA's The Amy Oliver Show, with guest host Ross Kaminsky:

JONES: Well, in this case, I think the important thing isn't necessarily Abramoff. It's the change in the vote before and after donations are given, and also before and after, basically, Abramoff is somebody who you can safely distance yourself from because he was starting to, basically, fall from his place in Washington. So there's a lot of things at play here. But I don't -- I think a lot of people here are going, "Well, you know, in both of these cases everybody knew who Abramoff was and what he was up to." You have to go back a few years to when all this was going down, and, you know, in the big scheme of things, he's just another lobbyist. On both sides, you know, for both Udall and Schaffer. So if you want to make this an issue, fine, but just admit that it's not like they took this money from Abramoff yesterday. No politician in their right mind would do so.

KAMINSKY: What year was Schaffer's Marianas trip?

JONES: Uh --

KAMINSKY: I don't remember exactly.

JONES: You would probably know better than I. I think it's actually 1999. Which, of course, was far before, you know, obviously, this Abramoff thing blew up in everybody's face.

KAMINSKY: Exactly, and what I, you know, what -- I spoke with Bob Schaffer about this a little bit, and in his view the reason, or one of the reasons that he and others were asked to go -- and in particular that Republicans were asked to go look at the situation there by Abramoff, or by people who support what's going on over there is that -- and by the way, it sounds to me like what's going on over there is a great thing, which is why the unions hate it so much -- but part of the reason is that they believe that if a Congressman just saw for themselves, then they would realize how good it was, what was going on. It wasn't that they were trying to somehow buy a change of opinion in Schaffer. They were saying to Schaffer, "Go see it for yourself. If you see it for yourself, talk to the workers yourself," and Schaffer went out and took some workers and interviewed them in private. Just them and -- just Schaffer and the worker, or Schaffer and the worker and the worker's pastor -- that kind of stuff, to get honest answers. You know, the people who paid for this trip believed that the situation over there speaks for itself in a positive way.

Kaminsky's assertion that the labor system on the Northern Mariana Islands "is a great thing, which is why the unions hate it so much" echoed a Schaffer sentiment that the Post reported on April 10:

Just before boarding a plane to the Mariana Islands in 1999, then-Congressman Bob Schaffer announced he was embarking on a fact-finding mission to get to the bottom of repeated allegations of labor abuse in the American protectorate.

"I plan to walk right into those factories and living quarters to see for myself what conditions exist," Schaffer said in a news release in August of that year.

What he didn't say was that the trip was partly arranged by the firm of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who represented textile factory owners fighting congressional efforts to reform labor and immigration laws on the islands and who was being handsomely paid to keep the islands' cherished exemptions.

Schaffer and his wife stayed for free at a palm-studded beach resort and, besides factories, also toured historical sites and met with clients of Preston-Gates, Abramoff's firm, according to a copy of the trip's agenda archived in Schaffer's congressional papers.

He left believing that allegations of widespread abuse were largely unfounded -- blaming them on Big Labor's efforts to shut down a booming textile industry allowed to use the "Made in USA" label but dependent on tens of thousands of imported workers.

In a recent interview with The Denver Post, the Republican candidate for Colorado's open Senate seat described the protectorate's guest-worker program as a "model" lawmakers could use as they overhaul the U.S. immigration system.

"At its base it is a union fight that has been taking place there," Schaffer said in a recent interview about what he found on the islands. "I insisted that it be a real investigation, which it was," he said, noting that he visited more than 20 factories and found serious problems in only one. [emphases added]

Kaminsky also failed to mention the numerous reports from the U.S. government and others of worker and human rights abuses on the islands, as reported by the same Post article:

A class-action lawsuit filed the year Schaffer toured the islands alleged that many of those workers lived in slum conditions, housed seven to a room in barracks surrounded by barbed wire designed to keep the workers in. Workers in some factories labored 12 hours a day, seven days a week, the suit alleged -- without pay if they fell behind set quotas.

A U.S. Interior Department investigation found that pregnant workers were forced to get illegal abortions or lose their jobs. Some were recruited for factories but forced into the sex trade instead.

The islands' factories were cited by the U.S. Department of Labor more than 1,000 times for safety violations in the late 1990s.

Kaminsky and Jones did not mention the April 10 Post article's further reporting that during the trip Schaffer "met with clients of Preston-Gates, Abramoff's firm, according to a copy of the trip's agenda archived in Schaffer's congressional papers." Additionally, the pair failed to mention the Post's April 13 report that "Schaffer was one of the key players" in a hearing of the House Resources Committee that "provides a key context for a trip to the islands that Schaffer had taken a month before, partly arranged by Abramoff's lobbying firm and now an issue in Schaffer's campaign for the U.S. Senate." The Post reported that in a "secret memo" to a "textile tycoon on the Northern Mariana Islands," Abramoff had "mapped out" a strategy for congressional oversight hearings on labor issues in the Northern Marianas.

Jones and Kaminsky also failed to address the Post's April 11 report that after the trip Schaffer was "among several Republican U.S. lawmakers who stepped in to lend their support" at key junctures to Benigno Fitial, "governor of the Northern Mariana Islands and a powerful former ally of now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff." The Post further claimed that "Schaffer was part of a concerted and public campaign by Republicans on the House Committee on Natural Resources to boost Fitial's public career when he became key to extending a multimillion-dollar lobbying contract for Abramoff from the island's government."

Additionally, the Post reported April 18 that, according to records compiled by the Udall campaign, Schaffer received "$9,000 in contributions ... from Mariana Islands residents, including $2,500 from an Abramoff client on the island, Jerry Tan." The Mariana Islands trip, valued at "nearly $13,000," the Post reported, was "paid for by the Traditional Values Coalition, which was linked to several Abramoff causes."

Returning the discussion to Udall, Jones asserted without substantiation that "for six years essentially," the Democratic Congressman "was taking contributions from Abramoff clients" who opposed anti-gambling legislation.

JONES: Well, and obviously this is a situation more nuanced than most people are willing to spend listening on, you know, the 9 o'clock news for 30 seconds. You can't boil a Senate race down to a 30-second sound bite. And just in the same way, you can't boil the fact pattern in this case. For instance, for six years essentially, Udall was taking contributions from Abramoff clients who were interested in keeping this bill from passage, and then in 2006, when the money dries up because Abramoff's, you know, gettin' hauled off to jail, there's a change in position. That's -- you don't put that on a bumper sticker. But that's the truth in the situation. And really, Ross, it comes down to, what does this have to do with what's best for people in Colorado? Both Udall and Schaffer -- imagine this were, you know, congressmen who dealt with lobbyists and at some point dealt with one of the highest-profile lobbyists in Washington. That's not news to anybody. But what should be part of the discussion here is the future of Colorado's economy, the future of Colorado's energy economy, the fact that Mark Udall hasn't met a tax increase that he's ever not liked. These are things that are actually going to affect folks in the November election --

KAMINSKY: Brad, you're doing, you know, the best work that a blogger can do in finding this stuff and trying to counter the obvious liberal bias in The Denver Post and much of the mainstream media. Are you seeing any follow-through by any of the mainstream media picking up on some of these facts that you've found?

JONES: You know, I have to, I actually, I have to say there is -- yes, we have. Lynn Bartels of the Rocky Mountain News actually made reference to, quote-unquote, "a conservative blog" in a story that she had on Friday [April 18]. You know, we're not looking to get named by name, we just want the information to get out there, and I'm glad that it did.

However, Jones inaccurately described the contributions as being from "Abramoff clients" when in fact they reportedly were from the political action committees of law firms that employed the lobbyist at the time of the contributions. According to an April 16 article in the News, "Udall got $500 in 2000 from the Preston Gates firm, which employed Abramoff. Later, Abramoff worked for Greenberg Traurig LLP, which in 2002 gave $1,000 to Udall." Abramoff worked at Preston Gates from 1994 to 2000, while he worked at Greenberg Traurig from 2000 to 2004.

According to data from OpenSecrets.org, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics, the contribution from the Preston Gates political action committee was among the $133,303 the firm gave to U.S. House members overall during the 2000 election cycle. During that period Abramoff contributed $500 to the Preston Gates PAC. The $1,000 Udall's campaign received from Greenberg Traurig's PAC was among $116,247 the PAC donated to House members during the 2002 election cycle, during which Abramoff did not contribute to the firm's PAC.

—E.B. & J.F.B.