E-Mail Notes Say Lobbyist Met President Many Times

The disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff told a magazine editor in recent days that he had met with President Bush many times and was invited to the president's Texas ranch for a gathering of campaign contributors in 2003, the editor said Thursday.

The journalist, Kim Eisler, national editor of Washingtonian magazine, said in an interview that he had received the information in e-mail messages from Mr. Abramoff, a major Republican fund-raiser who pleaded guilty last month to conspiring to bribe public officials. The messages suggest an effort by Mr. Abramoff to cast doubt on Mr. Bush's insistence that he does not recall the two of them meeting and that whatever contact they might have had was fleeting and for the purposes of a handshake and a picture.

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