We all know Bush doesn't know jack about many things....but he does know Jack Abramoff. Time Magazine has seen the pics. Despite the Bush team's effort to act like they've never heard of Abramoff, Jack was, after all, a major Bush fundraiser earning the distinction of being a "Pioneer." Since Time posted the photos article, both AP and Reuters have picked up the story and distributed it very widely. Time's take:
As details poured out about the illegal and unseemly activities of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, White House officials sought to portray the scandal as a Capitol Hill affair with little relevance to them. Peppered for days with questions about Abramoff's visits to the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan said the now disgraced lobbyist had attended two huge holiday receptions and a few "staff-level meetings" that were not worth describing further. "The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him," McClellan said.It's just a matter of time before we see the pictures. The longer the White House stonewalls, the worse it gets for them. And, you know, this White House will stonewall.
The President's memory may soon be unhappily refreshed. TIME has seen five photographs of Abramoff and the President that suggest a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed. While TIME's source refused to provide the pictures for publication, they are likely to see the light of day eventually because celebrity tabloids are on the prowl for them. And that has been a fear of the Bush team's for the past several months: that a picture of the President with the admitted felon could become the iconic image of direct presidential involvement in a burgeoning corruption scandal like the shots of President Bill Clinton at White House coffees for campaign contributors in the mid-1990s.
