Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)
CONTRIBUTIONS — VITTER RECEIVED $6,000 FROM ABRAMOFF CLIENTS: “Vitter received $6,000 from Abramoff tribes from 1999 to 2001 and refunded it the day before he sent one of his letters to Norton in February 2002. He also used Abramoff’s restaurant for a September 2003 fund-raiser but failed to reimburse for it until this year.”
COUSHATTA CAMPAIGN — VITTER INSERTED LANGUAGE INTO BILL HELPING ABRAMOFF CLIENT: One of Abramoff’s tribal clients, the Coushattas, “opposed a plan by the Jena Band of Choctaw Indians to open a casino at a non-reservation site, expected at the time to be outside Shreveport, La., not far from a casino owned by the Coushattas.” Vitter “inserted language in the fiscal 2004 Interior appropriations bill — completed late in 2003 — requesting that the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the National Indian Gaming Commission deny an application from the Jena Choctaw Tribe of Louisiana for land for a gambling casino.” To encourage him, Abramoff had hosted a September 2003 fundraiser at his restaurant, “just two months before Vitter inserted a provision in an Interior spending bill helping one of Abramoff’s tribal clients .”