Beware the Republican lie that Dems took money directly from Abramoff

From the Hotline blog:

An earlier post took the NRSC to task for claiming on their website that ""Forty of forty five members of the Democrat Senate Caucus took money from Jack Abramoff."

Not true; Abramoff personally gave money to GOPers only.

NRSC spokesman Brian Nick calls it a typo and correctly points out that other pages on the site add thge words "and associates and tribal clients" when writing of Abramoffian contributions to Dems.

Still, is it really fair to say that "40 of the 45 members of the Senate Democrat Caucus have taken money from Abramoff, his associates, and Indian tribe clients."

Abramoff AND the others? No -- just the others. Not Abramoff.

Abramoff himself did not donate a penny of his personal money to Democrats, so far as we can tell. So it'd be accurate to say that "Abramoff's associates and tribal clients" gave to Dems.

Some of the "Abramoff-related" money linked to Dems comes from Greenberg Traurig's political action committee. Greenberg is a huge bipartisan legal/lobby firm. It regularly gives money to members of both parties.

Abramoff had no hand in the PAC's donation distribution, according to Greenberg. So is Greenberg money really Abramoff money? (To be fair, the same question can be posed to Dems who say Greenberg contributions to GOPers are inherently tainted.)

Also: Rep. Roy Blunt today joined Tom DeLay in returning his Abramoff contributions. Sort of. His office says he'll only return the $8.5K donated to his PAC directly from Abramoff and he'll keep the money donated by associates and tribal clients.

Doesn't that undermine the GOP argument, at least a little bit, that the entire Abramoff money network was tainted and that Dems are smeared as much as GOPers?

As noted by a commenter to this post, the Republicans don't particularly care whether something is true or not. They'll be repeating the "40 of the 45 members of the Senate Democrat Caucus have taken money from Abramoff" lie hundreds of times over the weekend, untill you'll start hearing "news" people repeating it as fact.
Just keep in mind this actual fact. Not one single Democrat receieved money directly from Abramoff.

It's also nice of Roy Blunt to hold on to the money he got from Abramoff associates and tribabl clients, which is exactly the sources of the contributions which Evans, Nussle, and Durbin have already donated to charity.