“What are you benching, buff guy?”

– President Bush to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff

Now, of course, President Bush claims never to have met Abramoff,or even to remember him. Abramoff says Bush is lying:

Abramoff said he finds it hard to believe Bush doesn’t remember the 10 or so photos he and members of his family had snapped with the president and first lady.

“He (Bush) has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met,” Abramoff wrote in an e-mail, according to Vanity Fair’s April issue being released this week. “Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows…?”

“I had my picture taken with him, evidently,” Bush said of Abramoff on Jan. 26. “I’ve had my picture taken with a lot of people.”

“I frankly don’t even remember having my picture taken with the guy,” Bush added. “I don’t know him.”

A few days later, Abramoff wrote to Washingtonian magazine that he had met briefly with the president nearly a dozen times and that Bush knew him well enough to make joking references to Abramoff’s family…

The lobbyist said that when Bush made a speech to fundraisers in 2003, he sat just a few feet from the president. Abramoff, the only lobbyist on the dais, was seated between Republican Sens. George Allen of Virginia and Orrin Hatch of Utah.

Three former associates of Abramoff have told The Associated Press the lobbyist frequently told them he had strong ties to the White House through its deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove…

Rove dined several times at Abramoff’s former restaurant in Washington, Signatures, and was Abramoff’s guest in the owner’s box of the NCAA basketball playoffs a few years ago, sitting for much of the game at Abramoff’s side, Vanity Fair reported.

The White House has not released any photos that Bush took with Abramoff, but acknowledged the authenticity of one that has been made public. In the 2001 photo, Bush is seen shaking hands with the leader of an Indian tribe that was an Abramoff client. The lobbyist is in the background.

Abramoff said he thought about, but decided against, selling his photos with the Bushes for money. Publications were making Abramoff offers that rose to the low seven figures, Vanity Fair reports.

He blames the Bush administration for the media attention.

“My so-called relationship with Bush, Rove and everyone else at the White House has only become important because instead of just releasing details about the very few times I was there, they created a feeding frenzy by their deafening silence,” Abramoff told the magazine.