Lawrence Lessig interviews Jack Abramoff

so welcome to the first of our new and occasional series in the dock my name is Lawrence Lessig I'm the director of the Edmond J Safra Center for Ethics and a professor here at the Law School and as I described this series when we announced it our aim is to have a conversation with a wider range of souls than is typically on this stage these are people with a different kind of experience sometimes a legal experience sometimes ethical experience but of course for such a conversation to make sense these are also souls who have demonstrated a certain reflection a certain ability to reflect upon what they know and what they have experienced in a way that would contribute to the to the work of this Center and so that plus the willingness to engage in a conversation that might advance our understanding of the ethical issues that are at the heart of our work and so I'm extremely grateful tonight to Jack Abramoff that he has helped us launch this series perhaps the perfect launch for this series as everyone here knows Jack Abramoff is America's most famous perhaps infamous lobbyist in January 2006 he pled guilty to three federal criminal felony counts involving his work as a lobbyist in the same month he pled guilty to two felony criminal counts in Miami related to a casino venture two years later he was found guilty of exchanging gifts for favors he was sentenced to up to 11 years for the full range of these counts that he pled or was convicted of in June last year he was transferred from a Federal Correctional Institution to a halfway house in Baltimore and a year ago he was released on probation and now lives under the constant surveillance of our criminal system with a continuing obligation to pay whatever money he earns in restitution back to the government now Jack's story has been told in the press and in the movies including a documentary by Alex Gibney and a feature film star of it starring Kevin Spacey as and very cool to meet Kevin Spacey and so it's been told again and again and it's quite familiar to everybody and if you're a junkie for this sort of stuff as I am after you read his extremely compelling account in his book capital punishment which I think we have available downstairs I think you'll experience a little bit of a rash among effect as you try to piece together exactly who did what when but the conversation we're gonna have tonight has nothing to do with that story or those stories we're not here to relitigate the guilt or innocence of a lobbyist we're here tonight to learn about the institution that he lobbied Congress and about the nature of the political system that he's so successfully navigated and it was my sense before I read the book and my conviction after I read his book that his experience has an enormous amount to teach us and my aim in this conversation tonight is to walk through the aspects of that experience that might in fact inform and so if we're successful it will be in large part because we've had the chance to engage with a man who has had an extraordinary and diverse life he's a committed and practicing Orthodox Jew who has made religion a central part and a consensual constraint on his life there's a wonderful story in the book of him being summoned by Imelda Marcos to come meet Imelda Marcos and she suggested 12 o'clock on Friday and it turned out that was midnight on Friday which of course meant he wasn't able to drive to the meeting so he had to walk through fill the Philippines to the meeting space which of course if you've been to the Philippines late at night this is not necessarily the best thing for a non-native to engage in but this was the only way he could go through with a meeting that was to be held at the midnight on Friday night he was one of the key figures who revived the Republican Party in the early 1980s after graduating from Brandeis no one didn't think there were Republicans in Brandeis but there were in 1981 he became chairman of the College Republicans at the very same time I was the chairman of the teenage Republicans of pennsylvania's I feel a certain kinship in a weird way here he has been a film producer he has been a restaurant owner a philanthropist indeed some report giving up to 80 percent of his income to a various philanthropic causes I indeed and maybe the best summary of his character was his own I think hilarious summary of himself when he said quote I was the power lifting football playing Orthodox Jewish right-wing Republican opera buff you know the type so it's not easy to stand in the dock there are not many who would do so voluntarily but again I am grateful to Jack that he would fling himself to Boston to engage in this conversation to help all of us understand a bit more a system that practically none of us respect so Jack thank you and welcome here tonight so I want to begin the conversation but trying to get our bearings and I was struck early in the book with two stories you tell one which outraged you and the other which you passed over without really recognizing any problem so the first one that outraged you was a story about getting Reagan trying to get his MX missile passed and it's a story of you getting a telephone call from congressman Bustamante congressman from Tennessee from Texas and as you recount in the book you say yes sir what can I do for you and Bustamante says the Defense Department is planning to place a new naval base in the Gulf of Mexico and I want it for my district I hear they are looking for Florida looking at Florida instead if I get the base you get the votes if I don't you don't get the votes the votes are from my Hispanic Caucus and they are solidly in my control what do you say and you remark this is your first moment your first experience of true Washington corruption that's it and Bustamante of course later is convicted of various felonies and is sent to prison so it's not implausible to say that corruption was in at least part of his soul okay but I want you to put that story next to another story which you tell early in the book about the great Richard Gordon who taught Entertainment Law at at Georgetown and he was great I mean it was an extraordinary professor but you tell the story about trying to get into his entertainment law class and you say I called him daily for a week i plied him with offers to meet the nation's leading conservatives I invited him to the Opera I got my friend Dan Waldman who worked for the Reagan administration and had dining privileges at the West Wing to get him invitation to eat there daily fortunately my full press was effective and I got my spot in the seminar now this is unremarked in the story it's just a happy story about you getting into a kind of class and I found myself kind of struck that the thing you found corrupt Bustamante I was not quite sure of I mean here was a congressman working giving anybody any money he wasn't doing anything was just saying here's the deal I'm gonna vote for you if you do this political thing for my district and here was Richard Gordon my hero Richard Gordon you're suggesting that he puts you in the class because you offered him lunch at the White House now first of all convince me Richard Gordon didn't give you it gets you in the class because of that but explain to me why the Richard Gordon thing is unproblematic if it's in fact true while the bustamante thing is deeply troubling or corruption as you call them well I hope there were other reasons he let me in the class yeah I think in the book I wrote about my efforts to get into her class and as I look back and I know they're probably some law students here to think of lobbying to get into a law class it's probably not what everybody would have in mind but I guess that's what I was that's what I was doing and and you're right at a certain level indeed it it is kind of the same problem where one is bringing extraordinary means and irrelevant benefits to play and to trying to achieve a goal and I guess I guess what happen I was 22 23 perhaps when maybe 24 I can't remember when I was head of President Reagan's Lobby and Congressman Bustamante called me into his office and hit me with this and I think as I discussed in the book I called the White House was kind of shocked that he would say such a thing that he would give up seven votes for a naval base and I guess I I was naive and the folks the White House probably thought I was silly calling and even asking that question and of course they approved it and then Reagan got the MX missile that's how that vote got through the Congress and so on the one hand that was obviously corrupt to me yet on the other hand I kind of blithely went about doing similar things probably the distinction I would make in my mind then and maybe now to some degree but certainly then is that as I look back on it because look back on it because certainly my whole career became one of using my skills whatever they were to lobby to get public servants to give out come right and so in this case he was a public service public servant trading arguably for the benefit of his district by the way and I would probably have in terms of parsing it viewed my I was a private citizen and trying to just get ahead but at the end of the day I think it is the case that whether one's doing that or one's offering candy to trick kids to come into your store so the parents buy or whatever one's doing it's some level there's some bit of corruption there and the question I guess is we have to confront each of these in our daily interactions and decide what level are we willing to play at well but when you said there was possibly a problem with what Richard Gordon did you said it was because there was something irrelevant about the gift that was being offered and I guess what wasn't related to it wasn't related to the underlying issue right right and so but I wonder if that's just not too high a standard to apply in the context of politics I mean don't we have to have some politics that we could call non corrupt or is just it impossible to imagine democratic politics except with you calling everything corrupt because no no I don't think everything's corrupt and I don't think all lobbying is corrupt by the way I think lobbying is a good thing I think lobbying is a cherished right that we have in the Constitution we have the right to petition our government or to use agents to Perdition our government or to band together and that's something we don't want to lose and I would say that most lobbyists in Washington even and then the state capitals are probably not doing it correctly it's where money gets mixed into the bustamante didn't have much money on the case well in a certain way he did and a certain way he did he was delivering he was delivering jobs and I guess what was probably unusual for me let's just say at that point was here the horse trading of it all just seemed to be so bizarre we were trying to convince people my job at that point was to convince members of Congress to vote for a program the MX missile program in this case because the merits of it and I was lobbying on the merits in those days when I later became a lob as I learned that merits are interesting but they don't usually win and unfortunately and but in those days it was merits and here was somebody for the first time in my life who said that he would give an outcome that I desired for something had nothing to do with the merits of the MX missile and in that case okay so but we we can certainly agree that when the irrelevance issue is money campaign contributions or cash in your pocket both of those I think both of us think raised troubling problems inside of the system one striking fact in the book is you know I guess when I was looking at this I was much more charitable in my interpretation of what must be going on inside the system your account of the role of money here is not charitable at all you insist well first of all you insist that it's natural that people inside the system the lobbyists in particular would expect that they need to be rewarding their benefactors with contributions I ends and you say there's no question that these contributions have a significant impact on this process and the impact is not positive I can tell you we have a department here at Harvard that would question that but okay I think you might have an insight stronger than the department with their statisticians and you said you say quote that contributions from parties with an interest and legislation are really nothing but bribes nothing but bribes inside of the system even though these are not for personal gain they're just for a political game and most striking to me was the way in which you laid out how the feels like extortion gets played you tell this extraordinary story of Tom DeLay meeting with the Microsoft representatives and suggesting that they needed to help out with the Republicans to keep the Republicans in power because the Republicans were moral at not naturally aligned to Microsoft's interest and then delay says you know when he was freshman he says he you say he told them about approaching Walmart for contributions and then you quote from you so the government affairs depart director of Walmart told him that Walmart didn't like to sully their hands with political involvement and then delay staring intently at the Microsoft executives continued quote a year later that government affairs rep was in my office asking me to intervene to get an exit build from the federal highway to a new Walmart store I told him I didn't want to selling my hands with such a task you know what they didn't get their ramp and you know what else they never will get their ramp and then delay smiled without taking his eyes off the quivering executives from Microsoft and of hard to imagine quivering executives of Microsoft but there they were and as we would often say in the lobbying business they finally got the joke and $100,000 check was soon thereafter delivered to the Republican gresham it e now for my view that's extortion right that's sending a clear message that you play along and you're not going to get what you need and you characterize this as just as commonplace as anything inside the system well unfortunately delay wasn't the only one I witnessed doing stuff like that most members of Congress are very subtle when you're I by the way I didn't need to get these speeches from them because I got the jokes myself you know when I was lobbying I was doing everything I could to raise money for everybody I could I had 40 people working for me and we raised millions of dollars but other lobbyists sometimes are a little more obtuse and they they need to be reminded and so these members of Congress what they'll do standing the standard procedure will be they'll work with you on an issue they'll agree to support your bill or oppose whatever you want to pose and they'll say you know by the way I'm having a fundraiser next Tuesday I don't know if you got the invitation to that or not which means you better come up with some money if you want me to keep doing this you better come up with some money now delay was known as the hammer yeah okay and so delay didn't mince words sometimes even that was a little subtle for delay but the lay and and he wasn't alone Elmer Norton who's the delegate for Washington DC was caught infamously on tape actually calling a lobbyist just last year I think it was saying that I don't know if you know this but I'm a chairperson of this committee and I understand you're coming to our committee for the results and I can't believe I looked at my fundraising list you're not on the list there's something wrong with you why are you not giving me money so sometimes it's subtle and sometimes it's very much out front it's certainly extortion and it's there soliciting bribes in essence is what they're doing yeah and and but it's it's unfortunately it's spread throughout the system whether they're subtle or not you know is it your perception that it was always like that or it grew during a certain period is it any do you have a sense I mean you wouldn't have experience but you have a sense that it's difference is I think it was less subtle frankly years ago but it's from the stories I you know I I when I first started my political career I knew lobbyists who were senior at that point and we're active in the sixties in the 50s and they said there was less less subtle when LBJ would call you in there wouldn't be any niceties so where's your hundred thousand dollars yeah there'd be members of Congress who said you want to sit down with me come up where's the cat it wasn't checks by the way it wasn't you know fifty two thousand dollar checks it was a hundred thousand dollars in cash where's your money so on the one hand it was it was more discussed more openly outrageous and I think today one of the ways that members of Congress get around feeling horrible about themselves is their subtlety is their dissimulation is trying to make it out to be something other than what it is gee by the way I'm having a fundraiser next Tuesday night just in case you happen to be in the room with extra money falling out of your pocket yeah I'm having a boner sir they mean the same thing okay so they're let there more subtle that might make it easier to feel good about themselves but you also point to them asking for money for things that don't directly benefit them so for example $25,000 for their charity or $50,000 in Congressional Campaign Committee is it your perception that the shift is a wave the kind of legaia vich or the weather Randy Duke Cunningham type of corruption which is you know what are you going to do for my checking accounts personal checking accounts and more towards how do we exercise influence for these things that indirectly benefit b-but aren't really about me getting a boat well no because you know the thing is Randy Cunningham and Blagojevich and William Jefferson and people like that who are Bob ney even who got their hand out and wanted you to actually put cash in there or will give you a menu like Randy Cunningham and Duke Cunningham but you know if you want to have an appetizer that's going to be two thousand dollars or a hundred thousand this that kind of stuff is rare but the fact is these members are not asking for contributions to something they're disinterested in if it's a charity oftentimes these charity will pay for their travel where these charities will hire their wives or their or their children if they're asking for money for the Republican or Democratic congressional committee it's because they've been given a requirement by those committee just to raise a certain amount of money so they get their chairmanships there's no very few or altruistically raising money for you know the Goodwill Industries right out there there they're raising money for things that they are involved in so it's not directly into their bank account but might as well being really right okay and then and then another dimension of this story that you tell which is really rich and interesting is that money of course is just one technique that the lobbyists can deploy money gifts become another aspect of this kind of money but you know terrifying things to read about for example you describe how lobbyists with great influence and certain representatives can actually cause the advent of congressional hearing and to do so utterly destroy whomever the client wishes to destroy because the costs are preparing for a hearing could be up to a million dollars for this kind of hearing so these this is a this is a kind of weapon that you get to deploy in a way to guarantee that people line up and the way that you want them to line up yeah I think most people probably don't think about the fact that the government has become a weapon for people and it's not merely a weapon to go fight Wars it's a weapon to fight wars at home and lobbyists and frankly this one shame to tell you that this was the kind of lobbyist I was I knew what the what the deal was if they if somebody's called up for a hearing but just give you an idea what a hearing is and in the senator in the house people think he's House and Senate URIs or like trials and you get a lawyer you go up there and you get a fair hearing and everything's hunky-dory it's not hearings are kangaroo courts in Congress most hearings are designed to achieve a goal that's not ever expressed and in in in the sense that lobbyists would push a hearing it would be for the purpose of putting your opponent whoever that might be on defense and setting them back to prepare properly for a congressional hearing a hearing that could theoretically land you in prison by the way if you perjure yourself or even if they decide to hold you in contempt of their body of the house of the Senate could actually get you they have a cell they have a jail cell in the building Wow that they can put you in and by the way when ID was called up for my hearing this was very mindful to me that that cell was there so and it can it can destroy your reputation it can destroy everything you have but even if it goes well you're going to spend a million dollars preparing for your hearing you're gonna spend weeks and weeks not sleeping preparing for your hearing you're not going to do anything that might be a problem meaning anything your opponents might be able to come after you so one of the great ways to disable your opponent is to organize a hearing unfortunately it's done all the time there are about 35 standing committees or I forget with a number of us at this point on the hill and they're holding hearings every all the day every day and just multiply that out and you see how the lobbyist is able to play and how the special interests are able to play in a way that in most Americans are just totally unaware of what's going on there and the people who go who get called to these hearings I mean I mean who pays them to be going to these hearings pays them well I mean even like their expenses I mean it's like an ordinary person from Boston or California as a witness for the committee and somebody who is a tool in the sometimes the committee will pay their expenses to get there most the time not if there are a target down no obviously if they're not Atari if their target and then the other dimension of like a weapon that you could deploy you know we often think that the most important influence is the influence over the member but you quite strongly signal that the most important influence to establish for a lobbyist is the influence over the staffers right and that if you can signal to the staffer Jim Cooper a Democrat from Tennessee described Congress as increasingly a farm League for K Street and he didn't mean just the members he meant the staffers and so if you can signal to the staffer that you know you might have a future in my very profitable law firm then you've got a very valuable resource as you put it quote his paycheck may have been signed by Congress but he was already working for me influencing his office for my clients best interest it was a perfect and perfectly corrupt arrangement even though as you say no law no rules had been broken at least not yet so is this just a Jack Abramoff innovation there was this the common prat is this the common practice inside of well I I didn't innovate anything I mean I you know as I look back on my career you know of infamy be nice even to say well here are the kind of things I innovated I learned everything I I did I didn't I don't think I I may have pushed all of them over the normal boundaries which is what in part got me in trouble but there are a lot of smart people in Washington and they think of everything and one of the reasons lobbyists laugh at most of the efforts to reform the system is because they know that no matter what is thrown at them by the people throwing it at them they're gonna overcome it and so the innovation of staff versus members is one that becomes immediately apparent to you when you're a lobbyist or when you're working with Congress the truth is congressman used to have no staff Ganga Webster had no no staff you know the great minds of our past great leaders of our past wrote their own bills wrote their own correspondents did all their own meetings and seemed to somehow find time for it now since the federal government is involved in so much and in so many areas of our lives they have large staffs and like corporations and like other places the staff runs a show and so that becomes apparent to a lobbyist immediately the ones who are going to make the decision are going to give you the access to the staff so the other thing that you figure out pretty quickly is that most members of Congress are pretty lazy they don't want to do the work they they run for office they love the camera they love the hot you know when the klieg lights go on then want to be on TV they want to raise money and then want to win their elections but they don't want to do any work they certainly don't want to read the bills that for certain I can't understand yeah well busy reading comic books so they don't have time for the bills but they they are they're not they're not really running the trains the staff is so when the time came that I started hiring as I started building my lobbying practice most people would try to hire a congressman because of the marquee value of the name and things like that I had a totally different tact I would never hire a congressman I hired one congressman I was actually asked by the leadership hire a nice guy a bit of adults who couldn't get a job and I hired him and but he turned out to be utterly worthless to us I always hired staff because the staff were hungry and they were killers and that's the operation I had now what I noticed and what I wrote about in the book is as I started hiring staff at first I would hire them to come to work immediately because I needed somebody and so I'd say come to work tomorrow or come to work next week but then as I started hiring staff and I particularly chiefs of staff and said look when do you want to leave the hill well I don't want to leave for two years okay in two years I'll hire you I hired him right then the minute they knew they were coming to work for me their whole job changed they were all and they're human beings I mean they you know if you have a job and you know you're going somewhere else you're not gonna you know you're gonna at least be thinking about the next job and you don't want that business that to go away so what they do unfortunately and one of the real pernicious and corrupt parts of the system and again completely legally and and unknown entirely I'm and when I tell people this they look at me and that figure it's obvious when I say it but until I do they don't understand it that the staffer becomes my staffer so for two years that staffer is not only my staffer by the by not only working like in my office but is better than my staffer because my staffers can't find the things that person's going to find and look out for our interests more than our interests the more than we could and that's what I found was going on and that's one of the reasons and we'll get to it I'm sure one of the prescriptions I have is that those staffers can never become lobbyists right so but but if you think about what's striking about the problems you described in the book is that they're completely unrelated logically at least to the actual crimes you were convicted of all right so you're convicted of crimes I mean one of the end of this is an innovation you know you might want to be humble about it but you you had an interesting innovation of creating a firm with Mike Scanlon whose job it was to recruit business leaders who might be affected by some particular legislation so that you could produce 5,000 very powerful people overnight who would call a congress person and say no you can't possibly do this Bute no and that and that was kind of you know kind of its sent to you it's a kind of steve job jobs ish kind of thing where you look in retrospect you say it's kind of obvious why didn't everybody do this but nobody was doing it I mean this was interesting but you failed to disclose that you had a financial interest in that firm and that was one of the things you were convicted of you had tax evasion because you were diverting funds to charities and you had a conviction you had an honest service fraud which I guess that there's a question whether after the Supreme Court case how that might play out but what's striking is none of the problems you're talking about have anything to do with those particular crimes so if you you could be describing lobbyists who never crossed the line at all and yet are producing all of the problems you're talking about so it's not criminals here that that you think are at the source of this problem they're very few criminals in this system they're very few Randy Cunningham's and Bill Jeffersons and Jack Abramoff you know I just I just couldn't care where the line was I just wanted to win and so I just kept going there aren't a lot of people like that first of all lobbyists are lazy too for the most part so then we're gonna you know that keeps them from becoming criminals I guess for better for worse at times but the problem that I've tried to focus people on is that it's not what's illegal that's the problem it's what's that what is legal that's the problem the lines in the sand are so ridiculously drawn one would actually have to ask myself why do you even need to go over those lines if they're so absurd and that's a good question that I hope one day to answer to myself but what's legal in this system is the problem and that's where America's attention has got to be focused okay so what I want to do is outline the reforms you've described and then I want to hire Jack Abramoff the lobbyists to wargame those reforms so imagine the reforms you described we're enacted tomorrow and now I want to really experts and I want you to be on the legal side of this line this time but I want a really expert lobbyists to help me figure out how I get around this reformed world so the reforms you've described key ones that I think are very interesting and important number one you want to eliminate entirely any contribution by lot of those lobbying the government or participating in federal contracts or otherwise financially benefiting from federal from public funds you don't want to limit you you want don't want to limit it you want to eliminate it same thing with those who get perks from elected officials whether it's a company or a union or Association or a law firm you shouldn't be able to give so much as one dollar so zero you can make a choice you want to be a lobbyist then you can't give money you want to give you can't be a lobbyist simple or you want to get money from the government get money from the government you can't be giving at the same time okay that's that's one important category next you want to eliminate the revolving door should you choose to serve in Congress or on staff this is very interesting you should be barred for life from working for any company organization or Association which lobbies the federal government so do your time and go home and number three you have a term limits proposal you serve for three terms of two years and senators for two terms of six years and number four is not clear how this relates but it's fun repeal the 17th amendment which that's the amendment that made senators elected so that now we would have senators I guess the original form was they were appointed by the legislature maybe a better system would be appointed by the governor but whatever repeal the 17th amendment all right so that's now the reformed government also all laws need to apply do congressmen any of the right that's so obvious a yeah that's of course all laws need to apply universally to everybody and they're right now Congress exempt itself that's one of the issues that's been raised by this insider trading right yeah okay so we have those reforms Congress has now passed that overwhelmingly the president assigned it now I hire you Jack Abramoff to get my special interest legislation through this system what do you do well you're hiring the jackie abramoff who's not going to break the law I break the law all right I just got a check with Jack a proper re the the our agency rents out different the in other words your question is what is a what does the lobbyist do in a non corrupt environment well in this environment the question is whether they're still corruption possible well trying to get to what is the real problem here well if if money is removed from the system so as a lobbyist I have no ability to convey any money or any gratuity or anything that could cause gratitude on the part of the public servant toward me or my clients okay if that has happened but you're not being creative enough Jack how so all right so you're right you as the lobbyist can't come in and take credit right but you can't tell me that Mike Scanlon and you couldn't put together a nice little operation which would effectively make it so that those rich people you otherwise could be lobbying for would be signaling in some I don't know those rich people couldn't give money either under what I proposed nobody who gets a benefit that the rest of us don't get can give any money so who are those six people in the United States you don't get some benefit from the federal cuts of benefits no no I don't mean Bennett when I say better I don't mean Social Security check okay I'm talking about people go in for grants and contracts and things like basically they're getting special favors there they are the special okay what about Wall Street yes Wall Street can't lock yes those guys can't give any me now any corporation that has a relationship with the federal government or that is getting special attention from the federal government or trying to achieve something the federal government is exempted from giving money can not give any money so then I ask again who can give money well farmers they can't give money people people out there people out there like I was before I was a lobbyist who believe in certain congressmen who believe in certain causes that are general causes you know let's say I was Pro legalization of marijuana let's say I'm not well I probably am I don't know after prison I probably am ya know the my children are watching no let's use that as an example all right I want to have Congress legalized marijuana all right or I want to have Congress ban abortion or I want to have Congress do something in the general sense that applies to everybody doesn't apply to my company doesn't apply to my industry doesn't create a financial incentive for me you know I haven't drafted by the way the legislation and nor am I going to of the legislation I've just read you you've got well I was never a drafter I had other people do that the knucklehead I thought of how to talk to people but but it's the world that I'm trying to get to and I think it's the world that you're trying to get to and frankly I think any reasonable person is getting to is where in essence bribery is taken out of the system okay begin so let's say Republicans want to cut the taxes right of the very rich the very rich not allowed to give money to the Republican well see I would I would say if somebody is trying to cut taxes across the board that that's a general interest across the cutting yeah sure cutting taxes now the wealthy are also getting a tax cut there I still I hope that's a general interest we're going to disagree on certain of these things because you're gonna see in some things that I think the special interests I'm going to see in certain things special interests that you want I guess and again I don't have it's hard for me to to drill into the details of this because I didn't I didn't create my book in that way and and I should just maybe mention that how I came up with these things the sort of bizarre you know kind of suggestions that are the opposite of what I used to be I came up with him walking the walking track in prison while I started thinking you know what if I were still lobbyists what are the kind of reforms that I would I try to stop what would I try to stop because the kind of reforms that they had now you know the reform is in Congress I'll give you an idea you can't buy a congressman a meal all right if they sit down and they use a fork and a knife and they eat on a plate that's a meal you can't bottom that but they stand up and they use their fingers that they can do they consider that a reform ok another reform you can't buy somebody at $25 state where I guess in DC a hamburger probably $25 hammer can't buy me a hamburger I can't if you're a congressman I can't go to lunch and have a hamburger with you and $25 but if I declare our lunch a fundraising event and I pull out of my my jacket five five thousand dollar checks from PACs and handed to you and say he brought in a fundraising event here you go that's completely legal in their minds that's performed so I was thinking what are the kind of things I would I would go out of my way to stop where I stole a lobbyist and that's where I came to for this stuff so putting aside the the details of it for now I mean obviously they're there as you drill into these things that's where they become difficult alright and there's an end but there are plenty of great minds that can do it I'm not one of them but there are plenty of great minds we can with the will if I were in a system where money was removed where I couldn't give money I couldn't buy them lunch I couldn't take him to see the Washington Redskins although I'm not sure that was ever a benefit to anybody to see the Redskins but you know I couldn't take him to the football game and I couldn't take him out to play golf and I couldn't put him on an airplane travel I couldn't do anything except what anybody could do if they walked in at that point all of my discussion becomes on the merits politically and philosophically for them okay so I I have no disagreement about the effectiveness of that kind of narrow question about what lobbyists need to be allowed to gift or not gift or give and even the idea of taking lobbyists out of the business of giving money Charles freed on behalf of the ABA lobbying committee came up with a proposal which was essentially the same here which said that lobbyist rich just not be in the business of raising money for people they are lobbying so that's that much as is fine but I guess the question is whether that alone is enough and the way you've made it more than that is you've feels like you've opened this morass of trying to decide when I'm allowed to be giving depending on whether the issue is really special interest to me or a general interest so if it's a ray if it's taxing carried interest at the same rate that other capital gains are rate same income rate as opposed to a cap capital gains rate is that a special interest or is that a general interest so it's seems like it's a morass and I just wonder whether an alternative and you know you know where I'm going here because you've read the book the alternative of thinking about a more creative funding system for elections wouldn't be as effective without being so restrictive on the freedom of people to participate in the political process because you you know here you are Jack Abramoff the libertarian telling all sorts of people they're not allowed to participate in the political process because they have a special interest here right but the alternative would be what if we funded you know elections with small contributions you know my system fair elections now act system says basically you opt into a system where you get a hundred dollars from a citizen that's matched four to one by the government I have a proposal of you know I'll rebate you fifty dollars of your taxes you can use that as a voucher to give to people who only take the voucher plus a hundred dollars but it would be a system where all of the funding comes from small dollars in that system would we have to worry about whether the particular benefit that I might get from the government is a special interest or not I don't know I mean I'm I'm open to that I'm open to that yeah I mean yeah no I I think anything that gets the money out of the system anything that removes the bribes basically is is worth worth considering you know they're they're philosophical issues of not as much with your thing but people who are in favor of public financing of campaigns and things like that but I think that the essential message that I'm trying to put for it is to stop the corruption you've got to remove the money because that's what I used when I was being corrupt when I was doing that thing like that is what does it and so that's that's the deal okay well thank you so we'd like to now invite people to participate through questions and our strategy for questions is in all of our events and we're going to adopt this rule here to is that I will control the queue we have two mics that go around and so you signal to me that you want to be on the queue and I will signal back to you that I see that you're on the queue and you'll get the mic and then you'll speak and the mic will be delivered while the other questions being asked so why don't we start here with Dennis Dennis Thompson I once several years ago wrote a book called ethics and Congress which obviously had an enormous impact on Washington my favorite book yeah all the movie we're waiting for the movie doesn't Spacey was otherwise occupied the I I guess the this goes to something that Larry was touching on why should we pay attention to somebody who's convicted of a crime that has actually nothing much to do with the reforms that he's proposing and you know we don't ask Barry Bonds about how to make baseball better the we might ask him about how to avoid the temptations of cheating and violating the law and we might ask lobbyists like you how to actually get reforms through but what Larry was hiring you and that he ended up lobbying you for his proposal but you didn't answer that what you did was in the book and tonight lists half a dozen proposals which I'm not sure you're in the best position to suggest to know what's the connection between your recommendations and your experience and one recommendation that Larry didn't mention and you didn't mention it is a major one in the book is that we should have a smaller government that sounds like the plank of a political party and I'm not sure again how that follows exactly from your own experience so could you tell us why your experience really has anything to do with the reforms that you're actually proposing I appreciate your question that I've been probably in 200 interviews since I got out of prison that's the first time anybody asked that like that so I appreciate your doing so look I was in the middle of that world and in terms of people asked me how do we know you're sincere how do we know you're you're telling us the truth my response is I'm not sure that it's important whether you know I'm sincere or not I'm not here to run for president and I'm not here to win a popularity contest I don't think with my my name brand I'm going to win any popularity contest anytime in the next century or so but I do have experience deep experience in this world and I've been in rooms that a lot of people haven't been in and I know what that world hates and so once I had the benefit of a two-by-four cracking me in the head and came a little bit to my senses in terms of the damage this world does I'm somebody who I think has something to say about it in the sense that I've been there now in terms of the smaller government part of it there are 30,000 lobbyists or whatever the number is it seems every day it's different 20,000 30,000 there let's say it's 20,000 lobbyists walking around Washington not because the government is the size it was in 1912 it's because the government is the size it is in 2011 and one of the frustrations that people have is that there's just too many people lobbying there are too many special interests I would pause it and I don't think it's I don't know how one argues that one of the reasons this is the case it's the government's involvement a lot of things and so when I say that the government needs to get out of a lot of this stuff sure I personally believe in having a smaller government I am NOT big on government to begin with I had to go live with the government for about three and a half years and wasn't fun and I believe though that that is consistent with wanting to get rid of the special interests get the government out of some of this stuff were devolved to other places but lobbyists want by the way and what I wanted to some degree when I was in there is you want power concentrated if you could have it you would have one person making every decision and then you just go Lobby that person and you make sure that that person is in your pocket the more diffuse power is the more difficult it is for lobbyists and that's that's basically why I think that's here only I anyway can you hear me I can hear my name is Irwin Shapiro and I haven't written any book of relevance I've written book but it's too technical to discuss I have two questions one very specific and one more general the last second of which you may have covered your book which I confess I haven't read the first question is seems to me there are three functions of a lobbyist three weapons the lobbyist has one is the bribe two is the threat and three is the fig-leaf what do I mean by the third I mean giving the representative senator or whatever an excuse or a rationale to do the unreasonable to pretend to be in favor of a certain bill because of some reason which is probably not valid do lobbying firms have special teams which whose sole job is to develop the fig-leaf or develop the cover story or what or is it just generic in any lobbying firm its genetic and every lobbyist I mean it is that's what lobbies do you want to give political cover to whoever you're asking a favor from you want to make sure that they have the political cover necessary to get away with it basically to do it with a straight face and to be able to explain it and it's even even something that's reasonable and good and wonderful that always becomes part of the discussion with with congressmen and with their staff how can we do this in our district we would constantly have you know my view was 435 congressmen they all represent the entire country because they're all sitting on different committees that had things to do it so to me it was nothing to go to a congressman from Ohio to help me out for something in Florida or something in Texas as I did in fact unfortunately he also went to prison for this you know and but but lobbyists don't view it that congressmen are just from their district they're for everything and so then one needs to craft and lobbyists do reasons why this is defensible at home with the if you get asked so it is part of every lobbying effort how would you foresee reforms like you suggested actually come into being have you got any master plan I didn't know that was important wait a minute to be yeah now it's it's gonna be demo let's not kid ourselves you're asking the very people who benefit from this lifestyle to get rid of this lifestyle and ultimately it's going to be a question of the media shining daylight on this stuff and exposing it like what 60 minutes did with the insider trading scandal I don't know how many people solve this but until they did do that nobody was thinking about that you know we kind of when I was law just kind of heard about members and staff I I own some restaurants and they would come in sometimes and say hey you know I just made a killing in you know defense or something like that you know and we're gonna have there's gonna be a big bill and I just bought a bunch of stock frankly I thought they were knuckleheads any of buying a hundred shares or something and making $200 a who cares you know it didn't dawn on me really I I didn't focus on them but they were saying to me which was they were insider trading legally legally so but until the media starts talking about it nobody's doing anything now the bill went from six sponsors I think to fifty something sponsors in a couple weeks so if the American people if the media continue to focus on this space and there is more and more focused and by the way this is probably what accounts for the fact that Congress has an approval rating of under 10 percent people look at the Congress they look at the government and they think you guys are a bunch of jerks you know you're a bunch of blowhards who are getting rich on our dime usually and it's not fair and so they ignore the system or they get angry about the system or they get out and occupy something or they get out and have a tea party and go organize an election but the more that that happens on the left on the right and in the middle the more likely it is I think that something might happen agon chalukyan I am well at Harvard Law School in the 70s early 70s I hooked up with the gentleman by the name of Stanley Suri he and he was a professor here he at that time introduced me to Wilbur Mills and Russell long I became a tax analyst on Capitol Hill in the joint committees years later I ended up sitting on a board of directors in Los Angeles beneficial standard corporation with Alfred Bloomingdale spent a lot of time with that clan ended up on Reagan's kitchen cabinet knowing the players as I do and my memory at this point in time did they have much of an impact on you you came in that same neck of the woods I gather that's that's a culture by itself that has not been discussed tonight but to ignore that culture that was unique it didn't my father was president of diners club franchises when Bloomingdale was chairman and I met Bloomingdale a couple times but I I don't think he had a big influence on me and frankly I didn't meet any of the other kitchen cabinet guys until sort of the end of their lives when they were trying to in the second term when I headed to President Reagan's Lobby I met a few of them but it didn't really impact me what frankly shaped me more than anything was my experience at Brandeis University you know the bastion or right-wing political activism okay right here thank you mr. Abramoff I imagine it was James Williamson I imagine it was fun to meet Alex Gibney as well by the way here in Massachusetts we mentioned lobbying at the state level and of course here in Massachusetts we really don't have any problem with corruption there except the occasional Speaker of the House I because of your background in lobbying around gambling I'd be very interested to hear if you have any insights into recently legislation was passed and signed in Massachusetts to authorize gambling and there was some opposition to it but it was roundly defeated what should we have been looking for in the lobbying process in the in here in Massachusetts and what should we be looking for what should we be alert to in the ongoing decisions that are going to be made about where the gambling is going to take place and who's going to get to profit from it and how would we go about getting that information well gambling is all political of course everything about the gambling industry is politics and I spend a lot of my time stopping gambling when it was in the interests of my clients who were casinos to not have competition and stopping I don't know what happened here to be honest Lee I haven't followed it and I'm not even certain exactly what has transpired but stopping gambling is easier than getting something through so the fact that they got it through is remarkable it generally doesn't happen so I'm sure there was a lot of money involved obviously these campaigns are not cheap in terms of going forward what do you need to be watching for I think that probably the degree you can you want to try to get some legislation through if it's doable to prohibit anybody in that industry from giving any money politically or they will own your state they did this in New Jersey and they kept the casinos for years without having any real political power in the state of event as an employer so to the degree that it's possible if I were at this point trying to do something to control it I would try to prohibit them from giving any money politically at any level because even at the local level giving to mayoral races and things like that these companies can have a tremendous impact and don't forget how much cash gets kicked out by a casino and I don't know if we're talking about one casino or a bunch of three casinos in Boston area or three to three different regions around the state of it they're probably gonna be very lucrative and the problem gonna have a lot there's some success you know and where if they're smart from the other side if I were the casino what I would do is use my money to consolidate the political control so that number one it could never be undone and number two when I wanted to expand I would do it and number three maybe the most important is to make sure there aren't four casinos thank you so I'm Matt Bieber from the Divinity School and can you I haven't read the book so could you talk a little bit about the conversion process the sort of personal reflective you know self inquiry kind of driven a conversion process that you've gone through to sort of get to a place where you saw what you've done before is not so savory and could you also say a word or two about what it's like to to to sort of be that the object of so much shame and derision and and whether you hope that and what your hopes are for whether that reputation will change over the course of your life well I would love to say that I in the middle of my lobbying career while I was making you know boatloads of money that it hit me all of a sudden that I should have been in that business but I can't say that it only hit me after I was out of that business and I guess I'm made the kind of person who needed to have the entire house cave in common before they realized that they were living in a house of cards and but that's what happened and so with me my and came rather suddenly within a period of a couple months I went from everything was great to nothing was was there everything was obliterated and it probably took that and then by the way and then was two more years before I went to prison so for two years I sat and basically trying to work through what was going on and where what did I what did I do you know well first I had I asked myself because here when it started I did have to be honest with you I thought what are they talking about I didn't do anything wrong I just did what everybody else does you know I didn't I didn't innovate any of this I just did more of it okay so I had 72 said the Redskins Stadium which unfortunately what I had as opposed to four okay so what's the difference that's the first thoughts I had well I should say and that's not even the first time the first thought I had was this will blow over man it's a little bump in the road won't be any problem and when the first Washington Post article came out and the article the essence the article was that I charge a lot of money in my clients that was no different than articles that had been on the front page New York Times in the Wall Street Journal about me that I put on our firm's website all right as advertising so I I look back now and you know it's kind of morbid but the email exchange between my firm in me after the first article was should we put this up on the website you know is the picture okay you know that kind of stupidity we were just absolutely in a different universe so at first I thought it would go away and then it became clear wasn't going away and it was a basically I was in denial why what did I do wrong what's this all about that didn't last long by the way because very quickly I was able to somehow objectively sit down and get outside of myself and look at what I was and look at what I was doing and I don't want to say everything I did was wrong it wasn't first of all certainly most of what I did was legal but put that aside for a second most of what I did in life I don't think was wrong or bad but I was involved in areas that were bad and it was those areas and those weren't areas by the way I went to prison for you know I mean things that I did go to prison for I was wrong about and I regret and I regret all of this of course but it wasn't it wasn't a matter of my saying alright well let me look exactly legally what did I do wrong what are the precise things I'm gonna be sorry about that and everything else to hell with you all I didn't take that approach I took the approach of let me look at what morally I should have been doing you know the things I had studied my whole life that I somehow separated yeah you know I separated my religious and philosophical beliefs from my activities and I'm not the first person to do that obviously many people do that but the fact that I did it and when I woke up to it it was dreadful it was horrific to me and it was depressing and I was in depression you know and there be mornings when I never thought I wanted to kill myself but but I thought gee wanted wanted been better if I wasn't ever here and that's a horrible feeling but I have a family I have five kids and a wife who were also suffering my mother and my father my mother passed away unfortunately you know through this and so it was a horrific process but it was a necessary process and so by the time I got to prison I had already reconstructed my belief system I hadn't been able to speak about it because first of all the media weren't really interested in hearing me to be honest with you I became a cartoon I put on a rain hat because it was raining one day when I went to go plea I went to go to the courtroom you know give an idea what it's like for somebody who was in my circumstance the media camped outside your house you know they cost your family wherever you go they they rush you and the paparazzi in the medium and I called them paparazzi the camera people they're not like decent journalists you know that Tom Brokaw and things like that they're nasty and what they want is for you to look at them because they want to get a picture of you looking at them so they'll scream stuff at you that's unimaginable or they'll they'll a Const you physically they'll make you walk into them and eventually by the way I mean I'm you know not as strong as I used to be but I'm not completely weak finally I just started walking right into them and knocking them over you know they were in the way I didn't care but that's kind of the sort of weird horrible situation and and I became a cartoon so I came out of I went to court I wanted to avoid them when I was going to court that was a big day for me to play and it was January it was a January fourth or something six and in DC and it's cold it was raining I got up early I left my house in the dark I wanted to get to court way before hours before my court appointment time because I wanted to be at the media in there was raining so I grabbed the Hat yeah I'm look I'm an Orthodox Jew we have hats yeah yeah that's just sort of the deal and so I put on this hat and I put on this raincoat and I left and my wife was sleeping she normally would look at me and say what are you what are you nuts what he wearing you look like Boris badenov or something like that you know what she was living and I went out and I walked in and I got in with none of the media there and I had some other things on my mind that day I was pleading guilty to crimes and going to face the fact that I would be taken away from my family so I we finished and I was with the Justice Department and the FBI guys who by the way treated me very fairly and very appropriately never abused me in any way you know I know that that happens but they didn't to me and I put my hat on and my coat on to leave thinking alright we're done and I walk out and the media starts screaming at me you know are you a gangster are you a mafia guy and I'm looking who are they talking to mafia guy no mobster dresses like this since George Raft I mean you know mobsters just like Tony Soprano who they talking about and it was me and so I kind of you know oh my god I should've worn my hat and coat I guess and I became a cartoon and so I couldn't talk to the media I couldn't talk to anybody but before I got to prison this is what I was thinking I was thinking you know I'm part of a system and I'm probably the the razor's edge of a system that's destructive and really is against everything I'd always thought about for our country and whether it was greed or whether was just power or whether was wanting to win or whatever was I should have been there I should have been doing that and I'm about to get punished I know before I went to prison I I knew I was going to prison and when I went to prison I didn't know how long I'd be in prison and it was until I was there 22 months that I even got my sentence so I hope nobody in this room has been to prison prison is horrible but every night in prison is terrible but to be there not knowing you're leaving prison is indescribable so finally I got sentenced and I got more time than the Justice Department have even asked for okay that's fine and I went back and did my sentence but when I was there and - that is when I started really thinking and I started thinking okay it's not enough that I know I'm wrong it's not enough that I you know okay I'm never gonna do that again obviously I'm not gonna do that again who's gonna hire me as a lobbyist imagine that meeting on Capitol Hill yeah congressman Jack earmuffs here to see you yeah you know you know it's not gonna happen so so I have to I figure I got to go do something else and I don't want to stick my head out and become public to be honest with you it's not it doesn't feel good to hear things about yourself like they said about me and and they still say you know but I guess you get some thick skin but you really never get that pick of skin and so I decided you know this isn't what I should be doing I shouldn't be hiding I shouldn't go away I should come back and try to do something about what I was doing and in my head I have experiences of that world that are unlike a lot of the people in our country and most people who know what I know aren't going to talk about it because they're earning money with it right now even tonight and so I decided to go back in and I've been attacked pretty severely by the way by my former world not that I frankly care but a lot of people who don't want to hear what I have to say not for the reasons that they think oh you're a criminal and you're a felon who wants to hear from you okay that I understand you know people have that view I understand that but from the point of view of shut up Abramoff go away and I you know get out get out of here you're ruining you for the rest of us well I don't consider myself part of that rest of us anymore I consider myself part of the rest of us sorry on the question of here yeah I tell you Livingston probably the most pernicious special interest lobbying Washington ironically enough is the one that's probably closest to your own heart which is the Israel lobby your own Capitol athletic fund funneled 140 thousand dollars to illegal settlers militia for equipment and sniper training even though it wasn't a charity that performed what it had stated that it was going to do you recently also expressed great undying gratitude to your friend Tom DeLay for his defense of Israel throughout as many years why is it convicted felons and unscrupulous people like you and delay feel so close to the outlaw State of Israel is it that birds of a feather flock together I don't know I like Ireland too I don't know if that counts but I like Ireland too but a lot of countries I like but I don't know how to answer you obviously we don't agree on Israel we don't agree on Israel what can I tell you look I went to jail for for misusing nonprofit money and I'm sorry I did do it but I'm an unabashed supporter of Israel and well they weren't they weren't settled they weren't settlers but you know it's not we're gonna have to agree to disagree right here I am Tom Ferguson I was actually on NPR with you a couple of weeks ago on the program on insider trading I teach at UMass Boston I just want to ask you about the analytics of this I mean it's a very interesting discussion but a lot of folks who tried to understand the logic of lobbying have had trouble trying to trace it through when they think about exactly how does a congressman or a woman price the services they're doing I asked because when you look at sort of what's paid and for what they get you get some odd cases like maybe you might sell I'm gonna make it up 6% of the defense budget one night for $200,000 and then a week later somebody will contribute a million dollars and get just a gambling resort or something like that could you shed some light on the the process under what you call the primary or libertarian so you must in the tradition of libertarianism in the United States they love the price system you must understand what my questions point is I'd be quite grateful for any insight you could shed on that well I I don't think there's a rational answer to the question it's a good question but I my experience is that those members of Congress which was most of them who are into raising money and trying to not necessarily do what they would consider to be an illegal quid pro quo but an essence of quid pro quo they are they're just trying to get as much money for anything they do no matter what it is and so if a million dollars is available they're gonna try to get a million dollars it's a hundred thousand dollars available they're gonna try to do that so I'm not certain that if I understood the question correctly but I don't know that there's a necessarily a rationale here it's it's more of a Congress fears not being reelected and not getting not advancing in the system and not being able to become a committee chairperson and so money is the oil that makes that engine go and they're gonna try to get whatever they can get so I don't know that there's necessarily a pricing system there wasn't with us I mean so I'm gonna we're but let me push a little bit more on the question it's a very good question it's been you know it's one of the puzzles at the center of whether money is actually corrupting the system and and in one form of it is the price is so low you know you you and your your book talk about the you know the return on investment right that you got from lobbying you know you said your clients you got them 80,000 I can't remember the number some huge percentage return on investment and the economists would say well how is that possible why doesn't the system just bid the price up so that the return is something like a market return like why is it so irrational why why do they wasn't the government hold out for more right so that they demands you know that I get if I'm going to get a billion dollar subsidy which the sugar people get because of the tariffs a billion dollar subsidy you should have to pay you lobbyists more than just you know a million dollars for that you should be being half a billion dollars for that billion dollar subsidy why does it work like that because they're dealing in stolen goods stolen goods yeah I mean in essence that this isn't a normal business they're dealing in stolen goods they're taking things out of the public trust and selling them so you're not going to get a lot of do cunningham's with a price chart too bad there are these guys yeah okay hi I'm Abbi Brown I'm a fellow at the center I'm wondering if you can walk us through presumably there are some idealists who get elected to Congress still who go there with some public interest in mind can you walk us through how you go about corrupting them what's how did what's it what's the rhetoric of that conversation how how do you reel them in and when a member of Congress a new member of Congress shows up in Washington these days the first thing they meet is not the lobbyists they meet their leadership and their leadership introduces them to the lobbyists in the following way they say that you're a new member of Congress and the most important thing for you is to get reelected next time because if we lose your seat then we're gonna have to fight and get it back the time after that so since that's the most important thing and since most of them 80% of them come with debt the first thing we're gonna have you do is you've got to retire your debt and now we're talking about before the Congress has even convened we're talking about in December after the November election and here's a group of people who are very good at helping you retire your debt meet the lobbyists and that's where it starts and even if they're the best folks in the world and they have the most the greatest names and by the way some of them will say look I have just no interest I'm not gonna take any lobbyist money I'm not gonna get involved that the first year and maybe in the second year but when they're there 20 years even if they think they're you know I'm taking the campaign contribution I'm gonna take that $2,000 but I don't sell my vote for $2,000 they're wrong they sell their vote for a glass of water not consciously but they're human beings and if somebody does something for you and you're a decent person what is the thing you're gonna think in your mind gee that person did something nice for me now you can either be a jerk and just say I hate them so if you do something nice for me I hate you and a lot of parents complain that sometimes kids act like that but or you can be a decent person well gee I can't give them with that but I'm gonna root for him or I can't do that but maybe I could do this that's how it starts it is not a moment where somebody walks into Bob ney and gives them $50,000 in casino chips that is very rare what I just described you is virtually everybody and it's just a matter of time before they are beholden to the lobbyists at one level or another mr. Abramoff thank you very much for being here my name is David Coyne I'm a professor of pathology at the Medical School the Harvard Medical School um there's probably a lot of agreement in this room certainly that the root of evil is the money right that's what you're saying but if a miracle were to happen and there was legislation passed as some have been trying to do for a very long time to make the system a publicly funded system and get rid of some of the temptation don't you think that the Supreme Court would rule that a First Amendment violation and overturn the legislation in other words there's there seems to be a hopelessness about the route road to a solution for a problem that a cause of which is very generally understood and accepted how do you get rid of it well there's an interesting case in North Carolina right now that just the Fourth Circuit is affirmed which bans lobbyists contributions in North Carolina and it'll be very interesting to see where that goes but somebody who chooses path a you know the rights aren't taken away they're making a choice to engage in lobbying or engage in getting money out of the public till or whatever they're doing for them to forego and a right we do have that you know in society and it seems that that case in North Carolina may wind up being a real a seminal case in this regard and it does bring hope that obviously if the Supreme Court knocks it down or says that that's not going to work we're gonna have to go back and look at other remedies there are ways around the Supreme Court ooh okay they're difficult there are constitutional amendments and they're very very either impossible when's the last time Constitution was amended I would venture to say most the people in the room weren't born yet so it's a difficult process but I think that there is an opening here to to go after it we'll see what happens but David was asking about public funding which you from moments opened your eyes to but then now you've let me show you a little bit more on this because yeah because again what you're talking about is limits ways to limit people from participating and you can't really in the heart of your heart of hearts believe I mean you might have a very accurate political judgement about the likelihood of public funding mm-hmm but you can't your heart of hearts really believe that if all we do is limit the wealthiest 1% won't just find another way around the system to exert their influence inside the system it's well look first of all things are drawn tightly I can tell you I sat in prison with a bunch of guys who try to work their way around the system okay and they were convicted and prosecuted and thrown in prison so I don't want you know if you've been to prison you don't want anybody to ever go to prison and I don't want to see people in prison but if that's the penalty for playing games you're gonna get rid of a lot it there too but let me tell you why I'm against public funding among other reasons first of all I I'm you know I am a conservative I am a libertarian type conservatives so who wants to silence a bunch of speakers well I mean I want to I want to silence if they make a choice I'm giving them the choice nobody's forcing anybody to be a lobbyist I wasn't forced to be a lobbyist and people make a choice I think that they like in all things in life you give up certain things if you choose other things but in terms of public funding look I have a distrust of the government I have to be honest with you and not needless to say I have a distrust the government after what I've been through just in the last period of time you know they say that a a conservative is a liberal who was mugged well a libertarian is a conservative who was indicted okay and so I you know I lived in complete government control so maybe that does influence my thinking a little more than others I don't and I'm not trying to disparage everybody works with government surely not but generally I don't like the idea of putting in the hands of people power to make decisions right okay but but then vouchers done too okay yeah I said the voucher thing actually I was much more open to in terms of from my own philosophical you know point of view when I read your book I thought that was a much more that the grant and Franklin Franklin approach that would be something much more I mean personally as a conservative much more amenable to and I think it's very important we talked briefly before to get this stuff fixed we're gonna have to find something that people on the right and people on the left are gonna be able to agree to and to overcome the kind of bitter political divide that's that's in this country it's something that both sides can get ahold of and I I think that might that might be one way to do it thank you so I'm Jeff Bridges I'm a student at the Divinity School before I was there though I worked in politics for about ten years and it really just completely sucked my soul dry and I think you understand and and in so coming here and going to Divinity School and I got involved with Occupy Harvard and it's really been a redemptive experience for me and I came here tonight thinking oh this is Jack Abramoff he's writing a book to make money and now he's trying to sell it to Harvard students naturally that's just what the guy is doing that's what you do you write a book something bad happens to write a book but then when you were talking about your experience of being arrested and reflecting on how you you you operated as a lobbyist it really spoke to me and I I believe you I buy it I want to know why you're doing what you're doing right now what what do you hope to accomplish with the path you've chosen now well I mean as I said what I want to do is I've got some role to play in solving this problem it's a problem I've come to recognize it as a problem I mean you all recognize it intuitively I'm ashamed that I didn't like it but I didn't and not only didn't I recognize it I was in it and not only was I in it I might have let it all right but okay that was prelapsarian at this point and so what I'm doing now is as hard as it is bow though it's not easy to sit here and say the things I'm saying to you all I mean you know it's just not and you're not the only ones I'm saying it to and I've said it in front of big TV audiences and I probably I got to believe in their heart of hearts my family probably wishes I wouldn't say it although they've been nothing but encouraging because they also say that this is not a system look none of my kids you know I was very political my wife worked for the Republican National Committee we were both political junkies not one of my children one of my children is joining me College Republicans but that not one of my kids wants anything to do with American politics not just because of what happened to us because they see that it's just utterly hopeless they think it's not really hopeless more look so I think just even for them I want to do something to try to move the ball forward I'm not gonna do it by myself frankly I wish I were back in the position I wish I came to this while I was where I was you know when I said in prison you know when you're in prison all you're thinking about is how do I get out of here how do I get out of here even an hour earlier just please God get me out of here it's just impossible to describe what it's like 24 hours a day people screaming you know the the you know we lived six men to a 150 square foot space it's just a nightmare so you're thinking every minute how do I get out of here so what was I thinking of course I was thinking darn why didn't I think of this when I was a lobbyist I could have had the laws changed I'd figured some way to have gotten me out of here if there's it happen obviously that's silly but I do often sit back and think you know what if I still was in that game boy I could really do some damage if I was in there and it occurred to me what has occurred to me in a sense obviously I'm not there and I can't so what I can do is I can speak about it and I can tell people what went on and I wrote about it and you know I have a book out I have a 44 million dollar restitution order this book would have to outsell the Bible for me to to see any you know any money and I didn't do it to make money in the industry anyway is everybody who writes books knows you know is in terrible shape people aren't making unless you're you know Rawlings or whoever not making a lot of money I did it because I think it's vital people know and if they know maybe they'll get angry and if they get angry maybe it'll do something and maybe maybe this great country and it is a great country and a great people will rise up and try to get something changed that's why I did it so we have last question so make it really really good a lot of pressure now my name is Howie Melman I just you were saying before when telling when your story broke how you were in denial and you were just in a different world and I immediately wondered do you think that politicians and staffers are equally in denial and in that different world yes there absolutely not only are they not recognizing what is being now become clear to me and has been cleared all you from the beginning but think about folks who can go around trading on insider information and buying stock on the one hand and then reading the paper that Raj Rajaratnam gets sent away for 11 years and they're doing exactly the same thing it's not worse than he did and they not only don't feel bad they feel good about it so and and they don't understand in these same guys and by the way I do talk to congressmen still they're quiet about it obviously no congressman wants it done the paper they're talking to me but and they and they they don't get it why is it that we're so unpopular why is it that nine percent approval rating how is that possible what Obama has a better approval rating than we do are you kidding are you kidding that's the world they live in they don't live in unfortunately they totally disassociate themselves from a reality that everybody else intuitively sees and by the way as did I in those days so I understand it but I and I feel bad for them in a certain respect you know so Jack Abramoff thank you for coming [Applause] you

Channel: Harvard Law School

Views: 48,626

Rating: 4.8814015 out of 5

Keywords: Harvard, Law, School, HLS, Lawrence, Lessig, Jack, Abramoff, Edmond, Safra, Center, for, Ethics, Republic, Lost

Id: pkvIS5pZ0eI

Length: 85min 18sec (5118 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2011

Reddit Comments

[u/Plato_Karamazov]

This needs to be on the front page.