WASHINGTON - U.S. Rep. John Doolittle's Northern Virginia home was raided by the FBI in recent days, NBC News has learned. The California Republican and his wife have been linked to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Law enforcement sources tell NBC producer Mike Kosnar that the raid, which occurred sometime before Tuesday, took place at Doolittle's house, which also is where his wife ran a fundraising company.
Doolittle's name came up in documents released by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee last summer as part of its investigation into the Abramoff influence-peddling scandals.
ulie Doolittle, Rep. Doolittle's wife, owned a fundraising firm, Sierra Dominion Financial Solutions. The firm was retained by Abramoff's law firm, Greenberg Traurig.
On Monday, Kevin Ring, a lobbyist also tied to Abramoff and who previously worked as an aide to Doolittle, resigned from the law firm where he worked.
A Roll Call article noted that Doolittle wrote a letter to then-Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton in support of the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa, an Abramoff client. The letter asked Norton to allow the tribe to reopen a gaming casino that had been shut down by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The letter was written at the same time that Sierra Dominion was receiving payments from Abramoff's lobbying firm.
Abramoff is currently serving a 5 1/2-year sentence for his conviction in the Florida-based SunCruz Casinos gambling boat fraud case. A federal judge has granted him a hearing to determine a reduction in his sentence as a reward for his continued cooperation in the Department of Justice probe.
So Doolittle wrote a letter to Norton asking that a gambling casino be re-opened for the Sac and Fox tribe, which was an Abramoff client. And while Doolittle was writing his letter to Norton, his wife's consulting firm, Sierra Dominion, was receiving payments from Abramoff's lobbying firm. Gee--what services was Sierra Dominion performing for Abramoff? This is almost like a good-ole-boy network, where personal and professional relationships are intermeshed together, and there is no disconnect between public policy and private lobbying.
TPM Muckraker has a complete history of the Doolittle angle on the Abramoff scandal.
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