Reply #5: Ms. Gale Norton is going down too

[Botany]

http://stygius.typepad.com/stygius/2005/11/delay_abramo...

From November of 2005

Some DeLay staff e-mails are emerging, making for interesting reading. Associated Press:

Rep. Tom DeLay's staff tried to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff win access to Interior Secretary Gale Norton, an effort that succeeded after Abramoff's Indian tribe clients began funneling a quarter-million dollars to an environmental group founded by Norton.

Although I can't find it online now, in mid-March, the Arizona Republic did a piece on Norton's ties to this dodgy gaming PAC. Anyone -- say, a journalist -- with Lexis-Nexis handy might want to go dig it up. (However, see also this, this, and this for starters.) Back to the AP piece:

Within months, Abramoff clients donated heavily to the Norton-founded group and the lobbyist and one of the tribes he represented won face-to-face time with the secretary during a Sept. 24, 2001, dinner sponsored by the group she had founded.