Abramoff Atones

In the next hour, Jack Abramoff is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle to face sentencing for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. He faces 11 years under federal sentencing guidelines, but the government has asked Huvelle to reduce the sentence to a little over three years, based on his cooperation in the ongoing influence-peddling investigation.

The lobbyist, who became the symbol of Washington's worst ways, has been imprisoned in a minimum-security federal prison in Cumberland, Md, since November 2006 for his fraudulent purchase of a cruise line in Florida.

Abaramoff is expected to speak, or rather to repent, at his hearing today. But he's already repented on paper. In a letter filed with Huvelle last night, Abramoff said his solitude led to self-discovery.

"As I have sat alone in prison, realizing what my actions have done to permanently injure people, especially my family, I see that my crimes all had the same cause — my short-sighted and selfish view that the ends could justify the means. I am not a bad man... but I did many bad things."

The chief of Saginaw Chippewa Tribe, a victim of Abramoff's fraud — the former lobbyist has agreed to pay the tribe $540,000 in restitution — filed a letter of his own last night, asking Huvelle to give Abramoff the maximum sentence.

"The Saginaw Tribe has not heard one word of apology, regret or sorrow for his crimes against the tribe — not one," wrote Federico Cantu Jr.

The letter, Cantu wrote, is meant in part to head off a member of the tribe who is expected to address the court at the sentencing — a member "who takes the position that Mr. Abramoff has done nothing wrong."

"We thought we had experienced our darkest hour during the Treaty period but that is not so," Cantu wrote, comparing Abramoff's fraud to that pacts the government used to strip the tribe of land. "Our darkest hour as a tribe has been and continues to be the result of Abramoff's activities.

The lobbyist said he has tried, over the past three years, to show that he was "sorry," pointing to his extensive cooperation with federal investigators in a probe that has generated the guilty pleas of more than a dozen public officials.

"Sorry to my clients who expected better, sorry to my colleagues whom I owed more, and sorry to the government system I devoted my life to," Abramoff wrote.