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 Convicted felon J. Steven Griles had asked that for his punishment he be permitted to work for his old friends and associates at the American Recreation Coalition.
Just moments ago, a federal judge ruled that Griles must go to prison instead.
As news of Griles' incarceration spreads, I sincerely hope that many more media outlets associate the criminal and the ARC.... as does the article which appears below.
Scott
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Griles gets 10 months in prison
By Mike Soraghan
June 26, 2007
The highest-ranking Bush administration official to plead guilty in
connection with the Jack Abramoff investigation was sentenced to prison
Tuesday, with the judge adding time because, she said, he violated the
public trust.
J. Steven Griles, 59, whom Abramoff once described as “our guy” at the
Department of the Interior, is to serve 10 months in prison. U.S.
District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle increased the sentence from the five
months laid out in Griles’s plea agreement with prosecutors.
Griles pleaded guilty in March to lying to the Senate Indian Affairs
Committee about the access and influence he had given to Abramoff, a
Bush “pioneer” fundraiser, on Indian casino issues.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) led the probe. Italia Federici, a former
campaign aide to former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, has also
pleaded guilty to lying to the committee.
Griles’s guilty plea had indicated that he would likely have to serve
five months in jail. But Huvelle had warned Griles that she might not
accept the prosecutors’ recommendation. The judge had also increased
the sentence of former Rep. Bob Ney (R-Ohio) because of the trust
placed in him as an elected official.
Griles’s attorneys had argued that a sentence of five months in prison
would be too harsh, saying the crime was minor and citing their
client’s history of public service. They advocated a sentence of
community service to be served at the American Recreation Coalition, an
industry group Griles had worked with at Interior that supports
motorized recreation on public lands.
Norton wrote a letter in support of Griles and asked for leniency.
Griles’s attorneys noted that while other Abramoff defendants took
money from the lobbyist, Griles had not. Griles noted that he had been
invited on Abramoff’s now-infamous golf trip to Scotland with former
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), but “expressly and
affirmatively rejected” the offer.
Prosecutors replied that five months was a fitting punishment, and
offered up new details about how Griles helped Abramoff’s Indian casino
clients. They said Griles “was not shy” about seeking favors in return.
The favors included asking Abramoff to raise money for the group run by
Federici, then Griles’s girlfriend, and trying to get jobs at
Abramoff’s firm for other women with whom he had “close, personal”
relationships.
For his part, Griles berated an official who did not want to send
federal school construction funds intended for poor tribes to a wealthy
casino tribe that had hired Abramoff, and worked to block a casino that
would compete with one of Abramoff’s clients, the brief said.
They also compared the case to that of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who
was given a two-and-a-half-year sentence for lying to investigators
about the outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.
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- Activism 
