David Ayres says he will invoke Fifth Amendment as Justice Department refuses to immunize him
From a document filed today in the case of USA v. Kevin A. Ring:
The government recently told Ring that it would not immunize David or Laura Ayres, or Laura Blackann. David Ayres was Attorney General John D. Ashcroft's Chief of Staff and Laura Ayres was and is his wife. Briefly, the government believes that David Ayres helped Ring secure government funds for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (the "Choctaw"), specifically funds for a justice center on the Choctaw's reservation. After the decision was made to grant the Choctaw those funds, Ring sought David Ayres's further help to ensure that the Choctaw could award the construction contract for the justice center to a contractor of its choosing. In March 2002, Ring, with Jack A. Abnramoff's consent, gave David Ayres tickets to the March Madness NCAA college basketball tournament at the then-MCI Center. The evidence at trial will show that Ring hoped and intended that David Ayres would "pay ... back" Ring and his lobbying colleagues for those and other things of value. (GX 572).
Moreover, in January 2003, Laura Ayres asked Ring for several expensive tickets to a professional basketball game at the MCI Center, telling Ring that she wanted to give them to her husband for his birthday. Ring, with Abramoff's consent, gave Laura Ayres the tickets. On his annual financial disclosure forms for 2002 and 2003, David Ayres did not disclose his receipt of any of those tickets. Neither Ayres has been willing to speak to the government, which consequently has not idea what either would say about those events...
Here, Ring does not and cannot proffer the Ayreses' likely testimony and therefore cannot establish that the government's failure to immunize them constitutes a distortion of the judicial factfinding process. In his motion, Ring insists that he has a "good faith basis to believe that Mr. Ayres and Ms. Ayres would each provide critical exculpatory testimony," yet in the next paragraph writes that the Ayreses have told him that they will invoke the privilege against self-incrimination. Ring's "good faith basis" is little more than hollow speculation made even less reliable by the Ayreses invocation of their Fifth Amendment rights. In any event, even assuming argendo that David Ayres would testify, for example, that Ring did not expressly link the tickets and other things of value with an official act, or that David Ayres did not receive benefits with that understanding -- and the government has not reason to believe that he would so testify -- David Ayres's mens rea is irrelevant, as the case will not present the question of whether David Ayres joined the charged conspiracy.
Prosecutors connected Mr. Ayres to the Choctaw jail at a status conference on August 20, 2009. According to the Kevin Ring indictment, Mr. Ring predicted that Mr. Ayres would "get the joke" shortly before funding for the Choctaw jail increased from $9 million to $16.3 million. At the August status conference, prosecutors said Team Abramoff lobbyist Todd Boulanger would testify that to "get the joke" was a somewhat vague term meaning to receive something of value from Team Abramoff in return for access, taking an official action or granting some other favor. Prosecutors clearly believe that the official action involved increasing the funding amount for the Choctaw jail. It isn't clear what prosecutors think Mr. Ayres got in return.
The fact that prosecutors refused to grant immunity to Mr. and Mrs. Ayres suggests to us that the Justice Department may yet file criminal charges against the couple. The good news for the Ayreses is that the government isn't alleging (yet) that they were part of the conspiracy.
7 comments:
The relations ship between Ayres and Ring goes back to before the start of the Bush Administration. Just after John Ashcroft became AG and Ayres joined his staff they (and others) had almost five hour meeting with Ring that was billed to the Choctaw.
We know this because the House Government Reform Investigation into contacts between Team Abramoff and the White House disclosed the meeting:
Date: 3/24/2001
Greenberg Lobbyist: Kevin Ring
Description of White House Interaction: Meet with AG Ashcroft; Meet with D. Trigg (Commerce Dept), J.Wilkinson (White House), and D. Ayres (DoJ) regarding client issues
Client: Choctaw
Time Billed (hours): 4.7
Expenses Billed: none
Bates Number: GTG-R005292
The House GRC report of 9-26-06 detailed hundreds of hours of meetings between Team Abramoff and the Executive Branch billed to the Choctaw. Most of those hours were billed by lobbyists who have already admitted their guilt, been indicted or have been granted immunity for telling what they know.
Quite a few of the exhibits mentioned in the Ring Trial overlap with contacts mentioned in the House GRC report.
These cases are being built slowly and methodically. They are being built to last (as David Safavian can attest). Mrs. Blackann, Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle and Mr. and Mrs. Ayres should be quite concerned that the wheels of justice are grinding towards them. The walls are closing in on them.
One wonders why they have not learned the lesson of Michael Scanlon and Tony Rudy: those who make a deal early get to stay out of jail.
Cheers
Dengre,
I have no doubt that the relationship between Messrs. Ayres and Ring began prior to the Bush administration.
In your contact log, notice that "D. Trigg (Commerce Dept)" also attended the meeting. That would be Don Trigg, Policy Director at the Commerce Department and former Deputy Chief of Staff to then-Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) before Mr. Ashcroft left the Senate in 2001.
Recall that Todd Boulanger reported via email that Mr. Ayres had enjoyed the suite at the NCAA basketball tournament on 15 March 2002, and Mr. Ring said that he was "Glad he got a chance to relax. Now he can pay us back." GX 572 memorializes this email exchange. The subject line of this email is "RE: Trig and Ayres are here". I believe that Mr. Boulanger was also reporting that Don Trigg attended the same event.
~ACR
My company--a credentialing tech standard inventory is involved in a grand jury investigation as a victim (Pro Publica Marcus Stern's 12/3/08 article gave reference to our grand jury) that overlaps with the Abramoff investigation. I am quite certain that Ayres is under investigation for far more serious crimes than this one being demonstrated apart of the Ring pre-trial proceedings. Hence...why the Ayreses wouldn't be immunized--they may be facing additional charges. Don't ask more about this...you know that parties like me aren't supposed to be revealing inside info we know about such grand jury investigations.
Pardon...I mistyped. My comment should read "a tech standard inventor..."
Anon (September 7, 2009 8:51 AM):
I don't know of any possible scandal connection to David Ayres beyond what the Justice Department has revealed in yesterday's filing and ones similar to it.
For the convenience of the readers, though, I want to provide a hyperlink to the 3 December 2008 article by Marcus Stern. The article relates to the Duke Cunningham / Mitchell Wade case.
~ACR
Check this out:
http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/09/04/case-against-ex-abramoff-associate-hits-curves/
Looks like coughlin and Copland have had a change of heart.
That is an interesting letter from Ferrara regarding Coughlin.
The post at mainjustice.com mentions Daniel Bryant, who was the Chief Council for the House Judiciary Committee before joining the DOJ.
Contacting Bryant about the jail was on the "to do" list of several members of Team Abramoff. On 11/15/01 Shawn Vasell sent a memo to the team about who was to do what in the effort to secure the funding (email released by House Government Reform Committee, Bates Number: GTG-R005254).
Bryant was a target of several team members. A Democrat lobbyist on the team, Ron Platt, was tasked with getting some Democrats to call Bryant. effort. Tony Rudy was to get his contacts to pressure Ken Mehlman and Byant. And Kevin Ring was part of the effort as well:
Kevin Ring
* Gather intelligence from DOJ on next steps and to assess impact of political pressure
from Congress.
* {redacted} to contact Ken Mehlman and Nick Calia.
* Contact {redacted} to encourage calls to WH (Hobbs) and DOJ (Bryant).
"Hobbs" is David W. Hobbs, former Chief of Staff for Dick Armey and at the time of the Vasell memo the Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs or as the post is commonly referred to the President's Chief Lobbyist on the Hill (Hobbs work in Armey's office with the recently indicted Horace Cooper—both Hobbs and Cooper have a long history of working with Abramoff before they went to the WH).
In the memo, Kevin Ring was tasked with gathering intelligence for the DOJ about the best way to use Congressional pressure to get the funding. In the list of evidence, Ring sends Coughlin an email on the same day that is described as:
Email from Ring to Coughlin, "thanks again"
It seems that Coughlin is walking a fine line here between living up to his admission of guilt and backing away from cooperating with DOJ prosecutors. There is a reason that the Baltimore, Maryland DOJ Office is investigating Coughlin. He is a black mark on the DOJ, he is a scoundrel who brought corruption into the DC Office of the DOJ. I doubt the professional staff at the DOJ is amused by these childish games. I think Coughlin is playing with a bit of fire here and is being too cute by half.
The Ferrara letter seemed to be the DOJ's way of saying to Ring that we do not need Copland or Coughlin to convict you and letting Copland and Coughlin know their playing tricks as a case goes to trial is not a tactic that is likely to end well for them.
I found it to be a very understated letter.
Cheers
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