Disgraced Jailbird Jack Abramoff Takes Rightful Place As Matthew Boyle's Voice Of Moral Authority

Whey-faced tube of cookie dough Matthew Boyle, ace staff reporter at Corpse Andrew Breitbart’s Internet Resting Place, has quite the scoopy scoop today. As faithful readers know,BoilBoyle has been hot on the trail of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez (D-Of Course) and some shenanigans what he done maybe got up to involving a shady Florida ophthalmologist, some sort of port security deal with the Dominican Republic, and a trio of less-than-believable hookers. If the previous sentence appears on the inside jacket of Christopher Buckley’s next novel, yr Wonkette will sue for royalties.

The story does not seem to have gained much traction in the media yet, possibly because a grand jury was only recently empaneled to try and get to the bottom of things, or maybe because people have more immediate day-to-day concerns than what the junior senator from a state that is a national punch line for corruption might – might – have gotten up to corruption-wise, or because it’s politics and “corrupt asshole uses money to buy influence with other corrupt assholes” has been our system’s lodestar ever since some French marquis was securing the finest whores in Paris for Thomas Jefferson in exchange for ol’ TJ relaxing tariffs on imported rum.

But Boyle has to keep the story moving. Maybe he could do reporter things like fly down to Miami and sniff around that grand jury, cultivate some sources in the local FBI and U.S. Attorney’s offices, learn a little bit about shady ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen besides the fact that Harry Reid flew on his private plane to a convention last summer and the good doctor had his picture taken with the president at a fundraiser once. But since Corpse Breitbart’s operating budget is probably all tied up in legal fees, Boyle eschewed the old-fashioned shoe-leather approach, put on his sexxxy reporting fedora, and drunk-dialed the great Jack Abramoff for some speculation and innuendo.

“The same thing never stopped happening,” Abramoff told Breitbart News. “Ninety-nine percent of what I did was legal; that’s the problem. Not the one or three things that I did that were illegal. That wasn’t the issue.”

Right, you went to prison over things that weren’t even an issue. Damn activist judges, sentencing a man to jail for crimes he committed.

“Just getting your picture with the president – a lot of people look at that and go ‘eh, you know, who cares?’ – well, I’ll tell you who cares: He cares,” Abramoff said. “Now I don’t know him and I don’t know exactly what he was doing but I’ve seen it many times where somebody will literally use a picture of themselves with the president of the United States as a calling card of credibility to be able to move along in the bureaucracy."

About that picture:  Melgen co-hosted a fundraiser in 2010 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The president was there. They schmoozed for a few minutes and someone snapped a picture of Bamz and the good doctor that he could then hang on the wall of his office. Pictures like that are basically party favors in the federal government. Jack, whatever pictures you had on your office wall of you and Dubya grinning at the camera like a couple of middle-aged bros at a suburban barbeque meant nothing, and if a convicted felon had speculated otherwise on the front page of The New York Times back in 2003, you would have been screaming about slander.

“He’s already got a powerful senator, chairman of the foreign relations committee now but has always been very powerful, in Menendez doing his bidding," Abramoff continued. "While it’s unlikely that Obama would personally get involved to help him, [Menendez and his cohorts] all knew what he was up to. They're all involved in politics. They all know what guys like this use pictures with the president of the United States for.”

That is some world-class speculation right there. Can’t wait for Casino Jack to testify at Menendez’s trial. Does Georgetown give out law degrees to just any old hobo who rolls in off the street smelling like a jug of Boone’s, or does it have standards?

As for Reid’s connections to Melgen, Abramoff said the Senate Majority Leader is “one of the dirtiest players in the Senate,” so it does not surprise him at all. “He knows how to sniff money out of anywhere,” Abramoff said. “It’s par for the Harry Reid course. He’s been doing it for years and he gets away with it because he’s got a media that’s complicit, except for you guys in new media."

At which point Boyle placed his hand on the back of Abramoff’s head and gently guided it back down towards the reporter’s lap. Ha, we’re kidding! Boyle is very clear this was a phone interview. He actually put Abramoff on hold while he fumbled around in his desk for a box of Wet Wipes.

Abramoff also said Reid’s choice to allow Menendez to remain chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is telling. “At a minimum, Menendez should be suspended as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee,” Abramoff told Breitbart News.

“If this were a Republican, the guy probably would have already resigned from the Senate," he speculated. "But the Democrats get to play with this double standard, and there’s a very good chance barring some federal indictment for corruption that Menendez will just ride this through.

"Democrats don’t react the same way Republicans do, because they are not forced to react the same way Republicans are forced to react. They get to be as corrupt as, basically, they want, and just ignore it.”

Damn right! Republicans can’t get away with that crap. Everyone remembers when John McCain was one of the Keating Five back in the late 1980s. Whatever happened to that old rapscallion, anyway? Slunk home to Arizona with his tail tucked between his legs, no doubt.

Abramoff also charged that, “100 percent,” what Melgen has been accused of doing amounts to “bribery.”

“They [the mainstream media] won’t say it, and by the way the legal standard of bribery in this country is laughable,” he said. “It’s basically that you have to have a quid pro quo that both parties agree and it has to be proven that it’s quid pro quo."

He retorted, "That doesn’t mean that nothing’s being bought. Of course they’re being bribed. If you try to give a public servant something of value and get something back, it’s a bribe.

"There is no question about it that this is bribery in the traditional, common law sense of the word, not in the statutory ‘these guys protecting their own hides’ United States law sense," Abramoff concluded. "Every citizen of the United States outside the Beltway knows this is a bribe.”

Yeah, funny thing about that, Jack. For all the bad press you might have gotten a few years ago about ninety-nine percent of your doings, it was the illegal stuff in the statutory United States law sense that sent you to prison. Spare us all the moral crusader shtick. You’re a hack living in your eternal victimhood in the right-wing echo chamber, and you should be grateful you were not talking to Boyle on a pay phone in your cell block while a tattooed Aryan Brotherhood lunkhead stared you down and slowly thwocked a metal pipe against his palm.

Awesome scoop, Matthew Boyle. Maybe when you grow up you can be a reporter for real.

[ Ghost Breitbart’s House of Horrors ]