Graul changes story again on freebies

Another new defense today from Mark Graul, the Mark Green staffer who shows up as taking all sorts of free tickets from indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who's at the center of a growing scandal. Graul's story changes every time he tells it.

Graul, who up until now has denied ever getting any tickets for anything from Abramoff or his office, tells Spivak and Bice a different story.

But Graul said this week that he's never met Abramoff and never went to see Limp Bizkit - "I thought it was a medical condition"- though he did see the Milwaukee Bucks play the Wizards in D.C. three times.

Graul said he didn't know if tickets to any of those games came compliments of Abramoff's firm. As to why his name is on the e-mails, he speculated that he was the contact person to receive freebies and he knew an Abramoff associate.

Besides, in the nation's Capitol, this is all business as usual.

"From time to time, people would call and offer tickets," Graul said. "There were a handful of times we said yes."

Egads - some state lawmakers would break out in a cold sweat just hearing that talk.
"I believe it's illegal in Madison" to take freebies, Graul said. "It's legal in Washington."

Actually, it's not legal in Washington for a staffer to accept a gift worth more than $50, this House rule says. And a pair of tickets to just about anything is worth more than that these days.

His comments to the Spice Boys are much different from what he's been telling WisPolitics about the tickets. He won't talk to Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, who broke the story, or to me, who's been faithfully repeating it.

Wonder what the next version will be.