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09/20/2005:

"Ex-White House Aide Charged in Corruption Case"

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19 - A senior White House budget official who resigned abruptly last week was arrested Monday on charges of lying to investigators and obstructing a federal inquiry involving Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist who has been under scrutiny by the Justice Department for more than a year.

The arrest of the official, David H. Safavian, head of procurement policy at the Office of Management and Budget, was the first to result from the wide-ranging corruption investigation of Mr. Abramoff, once among the most powerful and best-paid lobbyists in Washington and a close friend of Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader.

According to court papers, Mr. Safavian, 38, is accused of lying about assistance that he gave Mr. Abramoff in his earlier work at the General Services Administration, where he was chief of staff from 2002 to 2004, and about an expensive golf trip he took with the lobbyist to Scotland in August 2002.

Mr. Abramoff, a former lobbying partner of Mr. Safavian, was indicted last month in Florida on unrelated federal fraud charges. He is not identified by name in the court papers involving Mr. Safavian's arrest. But "Lobbyist A" in an F.B.I. affidavit could only be Mr. Abramoff based on descriptive details in the documents filed in the Federal District Court here.
nytimes.com

He wasn't an 'ex-White House aide' as of last Friday.