A profile of former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who spent time in prison for corruption and fraud charges. Abramoff is back in the public eye and wants to help with government reform, but it’s unclear if his intentions are completely sincere:
“Many who knew Abramoff in his past life view his reform efforts with skepticism. I could almost hear some of them rolling their eyes on the other end of the line when I called. A couple of them sighed loudly when I explained what I was working on. One suspected I was just a pawn in Abramoff’s comeback strategy, asking if he was ‘pushing’ me to do the story. (For the record, I approached Abramoff for this article, not the other way around.)
“‘Time will tell whether Jack’s doing this to get a seat at the big-boy table again in Washington,’ says Neil Volz, who worked with him at Greenberg Traurig. ‘He likes to win. He wants to engage in politics in probably the only issue that he currently can—and win.’”
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