"What are you benching, buff guy?"

Matt Drudge (whom I really have no choice about linking to, in this instance) has excerpts of a Vanity Fair interview with disgraced lobbyist and future whistleblower Jack Abramoff.

Some excerpts:

"You're really no one in this town unless you haven't met me. This is not an age when you can run away from facts. I had to deal with my records, and others will have to deal with theirs."

"In a different era I'd be killed on the street or have poison poured into my coffee."

On President Bush, who claims not to remember having his picture taken with Abramoff. According to Abramoff, at one time, the president joked with Abramoff about his weight lifting past: "What are you benching, buff guy?"

Newt Gingrich, whose spokesman Rick Tyler tells Margolick that "Before [Abramoff's] picture appeared on TV and in the newspapers, Newt wouldn't have known him if he fell across him. He hadn't seen him in 10 years." A rankled Abramoff says "I have more pictures of [Newt] than I have of my wife." Abramoff shows Margolick numerous photographs: "Here's Newt. Newt. Newt. Newt. More Newt. Newt with Grover [Norquist, the Washington conservative Republican Über-strategist and longtime Abramoff friend] this time. But Newt never met me. Ollie North. Newt. Can't be Newt ... he never met me. Oh, Newt! What's he doing there? Must be a Newt look-alike.... Newt again! It's sick! I thought he never met me!"