Michael Scanlon's lawyers are trying to keep him out of federal prison. Abramoff pal pleads for leniency

Michael Scanlon, the one-time business partner of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, should not be sent to prison by a federal judge when he is sentenced on Friday, Scanlon’s attorneys argued in a legal motion filed Thursday.

Scanlon’s lawyers claim that since he helped take down Abramoff, former Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney (R) and more than a dozen other figures in the scandal, Scanlon should not spend “any time…in a federal prison” but rather receive “home confinement, a halfway house, on probation or all of the above, for a term substantially shorter than the 24 months requested by” the Department of Justice.


In addition, Scanlon’s defense team urged District Judge Ellen Huvelle to require Scanlon to only pay back a fraction of the $19.7 million in restitution stipulated to under his 2005 plea deal.

Abramoff and Scanlon were paid tens of millions of dollars by a number of Native-American tribes with casino operations, then worked - legally and illegally - to defend these tribes from other competitors and federal and state regulators. Abramoff, Scanlon and their associates gave illegal gifts - including meals and trips - to lawmakers, Capitol Hill staffers and federal officials in a bid to expand their web of influence. Abramoff eventually pled guilty in the case, as well as a bank fraud case in Florida, and he served 43 months in federal prison before being released last summer.

Scanlon, who was at the center of the Abramoff scandal, plead guilty in 2005 to conspiracy to bribe lawmakers and honest services fundraisers.

In a briefing filed in federal court Thursday, Scanlon’s attorneys describe the former DeLay press aide as a “repentant man, who did wrong and then did good to try to remedy the wrong.”

They also said that a recent movie starring Kevin Spacey as Abramoff and Barry Pepper as Scanlon ruined his image.

“His reputation has gone down the drain as well, and he will be stigmatized forever as the caricature of Mike Scanlon portrayed in the recent movie ‘Casino Jack’ rather than the true Mike Scanlon,” his lawyers argued.