They are finally getting around to sentencing Tony Rudy, one of the final defendants in the Abramoff matter, 6 years after he pled guilty.
The weird thing is that the prosecution and defense have agreed to have the agreed upon facts sealed for national security reasons:
Nearly six years after he pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff scandal, a former aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will likely be sentenced in the near future. But because of a joint motion granted by the federal judge hearing the case against Tony Rudy, the public wouldn’t see the filing listing agreed upon facts in the case.
The reason? National security.
The feds and Rudy’s defense team wrote that the disclosure of “sensitive information related to national security matters” likely “would compromise and negatively impact ongoing intelligence efforts.” They said the sensitive information had “no relationship to the Department of Justice’s investigation of Jack Abramoff or related persons.”
The folks at TPM got a comment from Abramoff about this, and he was pretty stunned by this.
My guess is that he probably did some work for a Persian Gulf monarchy, and the State Department wants it buried, but we’re likely to find out through a leak in the next few months.