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WASHINGTON - E-mails obtained by the Associated Press suggest prominent Republican activist Grover Norquist facilitated contacts between the White House and clients for disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff - and that he did so at the same time Abramoff asked those clients for donations to Norquist's tax-exempt group.
The clients who were solicited or landed administration introductions included foreign figures and American Indian tribes, according to e-mails gathered by Senate investigators and federal prosecutors or obtained independently by the Associated Press. The e-mails suggest the clients were seeking access to President Bush or to his adviser Karl Rove.
The White House had no knowledge of any of these alleged solicitations, said a White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy.
"Can the tribes contribute $100,000 for the effort to bring state legislatures and those tribal leaders who have passed Bush resolutions to Washington?" Norquist wrote Abramoff in one e-mail in July 2002.
"When I have funding, I will ask Karl Rove for a date with the president. Karl has already said 'yes' in principle and knows you organized this last time and hope to this year," Norquist wrote in the e-mail.
A Senate committee that investigated Abramoff previously aired evidence showing Bush met briefly in 2001 at the White House with some of Abramoff's tribal clients after they donated money to Norquist's group.
The 2002 e-mail about a second White House meeting and donations, however, was not disclosed. The AP obtained the text from people with access to the document.
The tribes got to meet Bush at the White House in 2002 again and then donated to Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR.
Rove, however, was unaware that Norquist solicited any money in connection with ATR events in both 2001 and 2002 that brought Abramoff's tribal clients and others to the White House, the White House said.
"We do not solicit donations in exchange for meetings or events at the White House, and we don't have any knowledge of this activity taking place," Healy said.
Though Norquist's e-mail connects the $100,000 donation and the White House visit, ATR spokesman John Kartch said Norquist never offered to arrange meetings in exchange for money.
Instead, Norquist simply wanted Abramoff's tribes to help pay for a conference where lawmakers and tribal leaders passed resolutions supporting the Bush agenda, ultimately securing a brief encounter with Bush, Kartch said.
"No one from Americans for Tax Reform ever assisted Jack Abramoff in getting meetings or introductions with the White House or congressional leaders in exchange for contributions," Kartch said, suggesting the e-mails might be misleading.
"If you look at some of Abramoff's e-mails to third parties, they might be misread to suggest that he was misrepresenting or confusing support for a project with a specific meeting," Kartch said. "This could have been deliberate or just unclear."
Kartch said only tribes and legislators that passed resolutions supporting Bush during ATR's conference were invited for what he called a "thank you speech."