Top Ashcroft Aide Refusing to Testify About Role In Abramoff Scandal

Politico reports that Dave Ayres, top aide to John Ashcroft in the Attorney General's office, is threatening to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights in the case against former Abramoff lobbyist Kevin Ring.

David Ayres, the top aide to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, is threatening to take the Fifth to avoid testifying in a case against a GOP lobbyist caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, according to lawyers for the lobbyist.

Ayres served as Ashcroft's chief of staff at the Justice Department and is currently the CEO of the Ashcroft Group, Ashcroft's consulting firm. The company has earned millions of dollars in fees from DOJ thanks to a controversial contract awarded the former attorney general to oversee a legal settlement with an Indiana medical devices company.

According to court documents filed by attorneys for Kevin Ring, a former Abramoff lobbyist, Ayres helped free up $16 million in DOJ grants that Abramoff sought for one of his oldest and most lucrative lobbying clients, the Mississippi Choctaw tribe...

In 2002, DOJ officials were balking at the Choctaws' request for $16 million in grant money to build a jail. Ayres, at the!request of Ring and other lobbyists working for the now imprisoned Abramoff, approved the grant over internal DOJ objections, according to Ring's defense team. 

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