Abramoff Gets 4 Years, After Prosecution Urges Leniency
Jack Abramoff, a disgraced lobbyist who was at one time one of the powerhouse figures on Capitol Hill, was sentenced to four years in prison today by a federal judge.
U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle “ordered Abramoff to serve an additional 48 months on top of the two years he has already served for a separate case. She also ordered him to pay restitution in the amount of $15 million,” reports the Hill.
He could have gotten as much as 11 years, but was credited for his cooperation in an FBI political corruption case that has resulted in convictions of a congressman, several Capitol Hill aides and members of the Bush administration, reports the Associated Press. Prosecutors had sought less time than the judge gave him, however, and Abramoff appeared disappointed by his sentence, the news agency says.
Before he was sentenced, he apologized, telling the judge “I come before you as a broken man. I’m not the same man who happily and arrogantly engaged in a lifestyle of political and business corruption.”
In an e-mailed letter to the judge that was filed with the court yesterday, he wrote: “It is hard to see the exact moment that I went over the line but, looking backwards, it is amazing for me to see how far I strayed and how I did not see it at the time,” reports reports ABC News in a lengthy article.
“So much of what happens in Washington stretches the envelope, skirts the spirit of the rules, and lives in the loopholes,” Abramoff writes. “But even by those standards, I blundered farther than even those excesses would allow.”
Earlier coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “DOJ Seeks to Slash Ex-Lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s Prison Sentences”
