Stephen Griles, a former oil company lobbyist who served as second-in-command in the Interior Department during Pres. Bush’s first term, pleaded guilty today to lying to Congress about his relationship with the lobbyist and now convicted felon Jack Abramoff.

In November 2005, Griles told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that he did not know Abramoff. However, emails showed that he had carred out requests inside the Interior Department for Abramoff to benefit Abramoff’s Indian-tribe clients that had been funneled to him by his girlfriend, Italia Federici. Federici was head of a Washington, D.C.-based anti-environmentalism front group, the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), which appeared to have little other funding than donations from Abramoff.

The timing of emails from Abramoff to Federici requesting “favors” from Griles at Interior with donations to CREA from Abramoff’s clients suggests a quid pro quo. Abramoff donated between $225,000 and $500,000 to Federici’s group in the early years of the decade.

CREA was founded by Grover Norquist, the rightwing idealogue and associate of Karl Rove who issues daily talking points to GOP operatives, and Gail Norton, the anti-environmentalist whom Bush installed as his first secretary of the interior. It appears to have no offices, just a mail drop. Recent checks found that CREA’s website (GOP4environment.org) is gone, and that there is no corporate registration for the group in Washington, and no record that it ever paid taxes.

Griles was sentenced to five months in jail and five months in a halfway house or under house arrest.