Rachel Maddow - J.D. Hayworth uses McCain's cover up of Abramoff scandal

The following is from Crooks and Liars:

Dennis G. at Balloon Juice wrote an excellent post explaining how John McCain covering up for J.D. Hayworth's involvement in the Abramoff scandal was coming back to bite him in the form of Hayworth as a primary challenger. Hayworth was asked about his involvement in the Jack Abramoff affair on The Rachel Maddow Show and he used the fact that McCain did not bring him up during his committee hearings as proof of his innocence in the matter.

Hayworth: I’ll be very happy to point out how this may apply to the upcoming Republican primary. Senator McCain has joined the chorus of those attempting to link me to someone by the name of Jack Abramoff. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that in any way I’m defending Mr. Abramoff. That’s not the case. I’m offering you a spirited defense of what I believe to be incorrect information that you have received.

But with reference to my immediate Republican opponent Sen. McCain, he chaired hearings you may recall of the Indian Affairs Committee and if memory serves I believe they were in the spring and summer of 2006. Never did my name come up in testimony. Never was I mentioned either during those hearings or in the committee’s final report. So the bottom line is this. I did nothing wrong and the people of Arizona will have a chance to decide that. As for John McCain, a man who says he’s a man of honor I think quite frankly he knows these charges to be incorrect and in desperation to keep his job, sadly he is now proving himself unfit for service in the United States Senate.

I highly recommend reading the whole thing since there is much, much more there, but here are some highlights of Dennis' post. The Grifter and the Coward…:

Both men are also linked to the Abramoff scandal. It will be fascinating to see if McCain will decide to release details about the Abramoff scandal that he has kept covered up for years in a desperate effort to hold onto his Senate seat. [...]

Hayworth went into debt to defend himself from possible charges related to the Abramoff scandal and he set-up the Freedom In Truth Trust to get others to help him retire this debt before he officially announced his run against McCain. Naturally, many of Jack’s other pals contributed to JD’s defense fund. I found Hayworth’s defense on the site to be laughable. Documents released so far in the Abramoff scandal prove him to be a liar. For example, JD says:

Here are the simple facts:

1. Abramoff contributed a grand total of $2,250 dollars to my political efforts. ($250 in 1996, $1,000 in 1998, and $1,000 to our leadership political action committee, TEAMPAC, in 1999.)
2. I never met with Abramoff concerning any legislation.
3. He never came to my office.
4. He never lobbied me directly on any issue.

The record proves him to be a liar on points 1 and 4. Point 2 is certainly a lie if you include a phone call as a “meeting”. There are numerous records citing direct discussions between Abramoff and Hayworth. It is unclear if these meetings/discussions took place in Hayworth’s “office”, so point 3 could technically be true, but only if you exclude meetings between Hayworth’s staff and Abramoff’s staff.

Only a small fraction of the millions of pages of emails, billing records and other evidence linking Abramoff to his co-conspirators has been released. Most of these documents are under wraps and that lets many of Jack’s old Congressional grifter buddies run for office again in 2010. In an ironic twist, a grifter like Hayworth can thank John McCain for the fact that he is out of jail and able to scam gullible voters once again. You see, John McCain had the goods on Hayworth but did not have the courage to put Country over Party or the integrity to let duty trump his ambitions.

[...]

McCain’s investigation of the Abramoff scandal collected over 750,000 pages of documents. He has sent these documents to the National Archives where they will sit under seal for the next twenty years—it is a great way to sweep the largest Congressional scandal in decades under the rug.

[...]

Too bad McCain didn’t keep his promise to “not stop until the complete truth is told” that he made back in 2004. If he had then Hayworth, Norquist, Reed and a host of other grifters would be in jail and/or discredited. Instead, McCain let his cowardice and ambition conceal crimes that he knew they had committed. McCain actively hid evidence of corruption from the American people, but it looks like he kept a copy of that evidence readily at hand just in case he ever needed it. This is most likely why Norquist is still supporting McCain—John has the goods on him. And now, McCain is suggesting that he’ll dig into these hidden documents to release selective attacks on JD Hayworth.

As I asked last month when Hayworth was on MSNBC attacking McCain for his lie about TARP, how's that cover up working out for you now McCain?