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David Safavian got his start in Washington as a lobbyist with Grover Norquist back in 1998.  They lobbied, for example, for H1-B cheap labor visas for American Business for Legal Immigration, and for some of the same Indian tribes Jack Abramoff ripped off. 

Safavian, Norquist, and several others, notably Thaddeus Bingel and Bethany Noble, lobbied as the Merritt Group for and with the American Immigration Lawyers Association at that time.

Safavian was also lobbying in 1998 with Preston Gates Ellis & Rouvelas Meeds, the lobbying firm where Jack Abramoff worked.  Safavian was teamed with Abramoff on every client Safavian had.

In 1999, Safavian was participating, to a lesser degree, in the great Indian rip off that Abramoff has become famous for.  While Jack Abramoff collected $3.12 million from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians that year, David Safavian only took them for $720,000 in lobbying fees.  (But the next year he almost got a full million out of them.)

Also in 1999, Safavian formed the lobbying firm Janus-Merritt with Grover Norquist, continuing to represent Indian tribes, immigration profiteers, and gambling interests among others. 

Lobby disclosure records show Safavian's fees with Janus-Merritt in 2000 totaling $1.3 million.

In early 2001, Safavian stopped lobbying, apparently, to take a job as chief of staff for Congressman Chris Cannon of Utah. 

Cannon was in serious financial trouble in early 2001, having lost over a million dollars in an ill-conceived business venture called CFOUR Communications.  The company was still bleeding red ink, and sinking.  [See memo from Scott Wares, the president of CFOUR Communications, from March, 2001.]

Email records in my possession from a computer hard drive in use at the company detail a plan then in the works to form a 527 political group as a way to raise money and retire the Congressman's debt. 

The plan was well underway when Safavian took over Cannon's Capitol Hill office. 

Safavian wasted no time in pushing out the Utah members of the 527 scheme, and installing himself as the director and agent for the 527, which was called the Western Leadership Fund. 

Serving as co-directors were his boss, Chris Cannon, and a colleague from the Norquist lobbying team named Bethany Noble. 

The trio met with little success, and Safavian and Noble soon bailed.  The Western Leadership Fund was sent back to Utah. 

Safavian took a job in an administrative position with the General Services Administration where he remained until President Bush nominated him to administer the procurement (!) program at the Office of Management and Budget.

Meanwhile, Bethany Noble continued to lobby with Grover Norquist, and, on at least one occasion, raised money for the Cannon for Congress campaign.

One of her best clients was her boss.  Noble collected nearly a half million dollars in fees every six months from Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, which paid itself the enormous fees to lobby Congress on behalf of itself.

Thadeus Bingel, one of the Merritt Group lobbyists, took over Safavian's duties in Cannon's House office.  It is he Cannon appears to thank publicly at an AILA gathering for working with the same AILA personnel with whom he formerly lobbied on drafting, apparently, the AgJOBS amnesty.

About the time Safavian was nominated by President Bush to head the OMB's procurement office, Jack Abramoff was beginning to feel the heat from investigators and left the lobbying firm he was then with, Miami-based Greenberg Traurig.  Abramoff's old spot at Greenberg Traurig is now filled by none other than Bethany Noble.

Today, Bethany Noble remains at Greenberg Traurig where she heads the Federal Marketing Practice.

David Safavian has undertaken a major intiative, which he describes as "controversial," to open up many of the functions currently performed by federal employees to "competitive bidding."

Surprised? 

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