Jack Abramoff- defense article?

So now not only is Jack Abramoff NOT being called a ganev, and the person who made one of the biggest Chillul Hashem's in our history; they are portraying him as this big tzaddik who got cought up in his actions...blah blah... Sick. PNS: A rule in Jewish law holds that when all the judges on the Jewish high court unanimously condemned an accused criminal, he must be set free. The very unanimity was suspicious and called into question the justice of the proceedings.Talk about unanimity. By now thousands of published articles, ranging from critical to hateful, have appeared about the famous Jack Abramoff — Orthodox Jew, former Washington super-lobbyist, product of an affluent Beverly Hills upbringing and future inmate of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He has pleaded guilty to mail fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy. As Abramoff told The Jewish Journal in a series of phone interviews earlier this month, “I had lost a sense of proportion and judgment. God sent me 1,000 hints that He didn’t want me to keep doing what I was doing. But I didn’t listen, so He set off a nuclear bomb.”In such a case, can there be room for giving the universally condemned man the benefit of the doubt? “What hurts the most is the way my co-religionists want to cut my head off,” Abramoff says.Predictably, he has been excoriated by some Jews who seem transparently thrilled to point to an Orthodox Jew with failings. The response from the Orthodox community is more aptly described as shock and frequently expressions of shame at the thought that Abramoff, a Jew, did what he did. But the story has another side. In presenting this alternate view, I don’t pretend to be disinterested. I have met Abramoff twice, and 10 years ago I enjoyed spending the first two festival days of Sukkot in his home. His fundraising efforts, related in his plea agreement, supported many Republican and Jewish causes including an organization I admire and once worked for — Toward Tradition. But those who so entirely condemn Abramoff are not all disinterested either. Many are eager to see the humiliation of Republican congressmen who received gifts and favors from the lobbyist. Others find in him confirmation of dearly held but more idiosyncratic beliefs, biases and bugbears.So having admitted biases all around, let’s try to understand Jack Abramoff and his Jewish journey.From an early age he was a religious rebel and an ardent idealist. His story is in many ways that of many other ba’alei teshuvah, Jews who returned to tradition. I, too, am in that group.....In the early 1990s, he put his work on pause to oversee the creation of the Torah School of Greater Washington, now 12 years in operation and thriving. The high school he started, Eshkol Academy, failed amid acrimony over unpaid salaries as Abramoff’s legal troubles deepened. Abramoff himself told The Journal he saved nothing and supported himself, his wife and five children from check to check.Although Jewish law asks us to give between 10 percent and 20 percent of net income to charity, Abramoff says, “I incorrectly didn’t follow the mitzvah of giving away at most 20 percent. I gave away everything. I was the softest touch in town.”Or are we soft to believe him about this? The Jewish newspaper in Abramoff’s area, the Washington Jewish Week, deserves credit for bothering to look beyond the negatives. A Jan. 11 article quoted a range of community members who personally witnessed the effects of Abramoff’s generosity, testifying with comments like: “Hundreds of kids in this area owe their Jewish day school education to Jack,” “We remain indebted to him,” and “How many Jews make millions of dollars in this town and don’t give ... anything” back?The Abramoff family lives in the same house in mostly drab Silver Spring, Md., that Abramoff bought in 1999 for $1.03 million. While far from a shack, such a house is equally far from a mansion by today’s standards. Clearly, his crimes weren’t committed to fund some ridiculously lavish lifestyle. Now that Abramoff’s personal fate for the next decade or so has been sealed with the plea agreement, the Jewish community must decide whether to give him the benefit of the doubt about his charitable works and contrition, or persist in thinking we’ve got him figured out, and in announcing to the world how embarrassed of him we are......