WASHINGTON - Prominent Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty to three felonies and agreed to help prosecutors probing political corruption, raising the possibility of a wider investigation that could embroil powerful members of Congress.

Yet the fact that some Democrats also had dealings with Mr. Abramoff clouded the question of whether the scandal will have a sharp partisan impact in the November 2006 midterm elections.

Making the bribery case especially striking -- and worrisome for members of Congress -- is that some of its elements include transactions that occur in Washington every day. It is commonplace for lawmakers to solicit campaign donations from lobbyists, who routinely offer them in hopes of gaining advantage. Yet Mr. Abramoff also went far beyond routine practice by furnishing lawmakers with lavish trips, free meals and entertainment as well.

It remains unclear which lawmakers prosecutors are looking at, and also how persuasive Mr. Abramoff could be in helping to make potential cases against any of them stick. A onetime chairman of College Republicans -- a close ally of such party luminaries as Tom DeLay, Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist -- Mr.
Abramoff says he has information that could implicate 60 lawmakers.

"The case is significant and the corruption scheme with Mr. Abramoff is very extensive," said Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division, at a news conference. She said prosecutors "will continue to follow it wherever it leads."

The plea deal follows a 21-month Justice Department investigation of whether Mr. Abramoff offered lawmakers and their aides gifts in exchange for helping his lobbying clients in Congress. Besides conspiring to bribe legislators this way, Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty to bilking Indian tribes who were his lobbying clients, by arranging kickbacks from associates.

The sums he and several associates collected from Indian tribes and other clients evidently were huge. For the period 2001-2004 alone, those fees topped $80 million, investigators say. Mr. Abramoff also pleaded guilty to tax evasion.

The criminal information (used in lieu of an indictment) discussed only one legislator, citing this person as having been "provided a stream of things of value" in return for official favors. It said the things provided included campaign donations, a lavish golf trip to Scotland, tickets to sporting events and other entertainments, and regular meals at a pricey Washington restaurant called Signatures that Mr. Abramoff once owned. (See the document1.)

Though the filing didn't name the congressman, the information pointed to Rep. Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican, and his office has acknowledged that he is the one meant. Rep. Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee, said he helped Mr. Abramoff's clients on the merits, not because of any improper influence.

Lawyers involved in the case say that prosecutors are looking at Mr.
Abramoff's dealings with at least three other members of Congress and more than a dozen current and former congressional aides. That in itself would make this the broadest federal corruption case involving Congress since Abscam, more than two decades ago, which resulted in bribery convictions of six lawmakers. Abscam was a probe in which Federal Bureau of Investigation agents posed as Arab sheiks or their representatives and offered bribes to members of Congress, transactions secretly filmed in some cases.

In a more recent case, Republican Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham of California resigned from Congress in November after pleading guilty to receiving $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors and evading more than $1 million in taxes.

At a minimum, Mr. Abramoff's plea agreement increases political pressure on Tom DeLay, the Texas Republican who has stepped aside as House Majority Leader while under indictment in an unrelated corruption investigation in his home state. Former DeLay press secretary Michael Scanlon, later a business associate of Mr. Abramoff, pleaded guilty in late November to joining in a fraud and bribery scheme with Mr. Abramoff.

Mr. Abramoff's plea deal twice refers to another onetime DeLay aide, Tony Rudy, who later worked as a lobbyist under Mr. Abramoff. In the plea arrangement, Mr. Abramoff said he and his lobbying partners attempted to bribe Mr. Rudy by paying his wife $50,000 in 10 equal payments from June 2000 to February 2001. Mr. Abramoff sought, in return, help both in stopping legislation regarding Internet gambling and in opposing postal rate increases, according to documents filed yesterday.

In fact, an Internet gambling bill failed in the House late that summer. And the alleged payments also followed a controversial golf trip by Mr. DeLay to Scotland in June 2000 organized by Mr. Abramoff, who hired an Arizona golf-tour company to make the arrangements.

Mr. DeLay said he had thought the trip was financed by a non-profit conservative group, the National Center for Public Policy Research, not by Mr. Abramoff or his clients. But House gift rules say such trips are acceptable only if they are principally designed for information gathering; instead, records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal indicate that recreation was the principal reason for the Scottish leg of Mr. DeLay's trip to Britain that June.

Former DeLay staffers say Mr. Rudy was a principal contact for Mr. Abramoff in the leadership's office, and Amy Ridenour, the center's president, has said she is "somewhat hazy about how Scotland got into it." Mr. Rudy, who has retained a defense attorney, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.

Richard Cullen, an attorney for Mr. DeLay, said that he "encourages people who have information to cooperate and tell the truth and has full confidence he will be exonerated."

There were immediate signs from some Republicans that Mr. Abramoff's plea might sink Mr. DeLay's hopes of reclaiming his post as majority leader. He has sought to put off election for a successor while he tries to gain vindication on the charges against him in Texas. But Republican Rep. Jim Leach of Iowa said the party would be "insane" not to move ahead with new elections. "This is arguably one of the most troubling scandals in modern times and it reflects very poorly on the Congress," Mr. Leach said.

Important Question

The most important political question is whether the case reflects equally poorly on both parties -- or boosts the Democrats' fight to reclaim control of Congress in November's elections. As the public's attitude toward the Republican-dominated Congress and the Bush administration soured throughout 2005, Democrats built a significant lead when Americans were asked which party they wanted to control Capitol Hill. In December's Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 46% preferred Democrats to be in charge; 38% said the Republicans.

Yet the same survey showed that public skepticism about politicians'
integrity is bipartisan. Roughly eight in 10 called corruption "equally a problem among both parties," raising questions about whether Democrats can make headway with their argument that Republican rule has created "a culture of corruption."

"I do think it will have a dramatic effect on future elections for both parties," said Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, a Republican moderate from Maryland.
"Part of it is going to be anti-incumbent. Part of it will be people who don't vote because there's no hope. Part of it will be disgust with Republicans, who seem to be indicted every other week." Democrats argue that even a general anti-incumbent backlash could benefit them, since Republicans now hold more seats.

Aside from Messrs. DeLay and Ney, prosecutors are believed to be examining two Republican lawmakers for their dealings with Mr. Abramoff, as well as more than a dozen current and former congressional aides. One is Rep. John Doolittle of California. A spokeswoman for Rep. Doolittle has dismissed as "simply ridiculous" the idea that he "had some improper involvement" with Mr. Abramoff.

The other Republican lawmaker prosecutors are believed to be looking at is Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana. Mr. Burns, the largest Senate recipient of campaign donations from Mr. Abramoff and his clients, helped one Abramoff client get $3 million in federal money one year. In 2001, Mr. Abramoff flew two of Mr. Burns's aides to the Super Bowl; Mr. Abramoff also hired a pair of Mr. Burns's aides.

Mr. Burns said in a statement that "I've returned or donated to charity the contributions I've received from Abramoff and his clients and associates and to date, I have not been contacted by the U.S. Justice Department." If it asks, he will cooperate in any way possible, he said.

Republicans say Mr. Abramoff's dealings with Democrats, such as Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, will help blunt the partisan fallout. In 2002, Messrs. Reid and Dorgan sent separate letters asking the Interior Department to block an Indian tribe in Louisiana from opening a casino that would have competed with an existing casino operated by one of Mr. Abramoff's clients. The day after Mr. Reid sent his letter, Mr. Abramoff's client, a tribe called the Coushattas, sent a $5,000 contribution to one of Mr. Reid's fund-raising groups.

A spokesman for Mr. Reid said that "he has long opposed the expansion of off-reservation Indian gaming," and any official action he took was consistent with that view. The spokesman said Mr. Reid has never met Mr.
Abramoff.

In 2002, Mr. Dorgan helped one of Mr. Abramoff's clients get $3 million in federal funding, and around the same time, Mr. Dorgan received $20,000 in campaign contributions from Mr. Abramoff's firm and clients. In fall 2003, Mr. Dorgan pushed Congress to consider granting federal recognition to a Massachusetts tribe that was an Abramoff client.

Mr. Dorgan has returned some $67,000 in donations he received from members of the lobbyist's firm and its clients, though he says all were legal and that he never met Mr. Abramoff. Yesterday Mr. Dorgan issued a statement taking credit for helping to expose "the corruption of Jack Abramoff" as a leader of the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs.

Congress may seek to inoculate itself from the scandal this year by pursuing legislation that would reform lobbying laws. Legislation proposed by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain would require lobbyists to disclose more about their contacts with members of Congress and congressional aides. Other proposals would bar lawmakers and aides from accepting meals or gifts from lobbyists.

Mr. Abramoff faced a maximum sentence of 30 years, but under the terms of his plea agreement that is likely to be reduced to between 9 and 11 years, the Justice Department said. That sentence could be reduced further, depending on the level of cooperation he provides in the case, which began in March 2004. Mr. Abramoff agreed to pay $25 million in restitution to the Indian tribes he admitted defrauding and pay $1.7 million to the Internal Revenue Service for taxes he had avoided.

According to the plea arrangement, Mr. Abramoff beginning in 2000 offered "Representative #1" and his staffers tickets to the Super Bowl, campaign contributions, meals and drinks and frequent "golf and related expenses" at Washington-area courses. In exchange, the agreement states, Representative #1 helped Mr. Abramoff and his clients 11 times.

In August 2001, it says, the legislator "used his position as chairman of a committee of the House to endorse and support a client of Abramoff as the provider of wireless telephone infrastructure to the House of Representatives." The legislator also helped Mr. Abramoff buy a casino-boat chain in Florida in 2000 and tried to add language to a bill that would have helped one of Mr. Abramoff's Native American clients, the plea deal says.

Rep. Ney, the man acknowledged by his own office to be Representative #1, said that "at the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature of Abramoff's activities." A spokesman said Mr. Ney would "absolutely not" step aside as chairman of the House Administration Committee. The committee oversees election law as well as the day-to-day operations of the House. Mr.
Ney, a former teacher, has represented a district in east-central Ohio since winning election in the Republicans' 1994 midterm election sweep.

'One Step at a Time'

Experts in Washington corruption cases said the language of the Abramoff plea deal makes clear the investigation will reach further. "It's not limited to Ney. The charges speak of 'public officials,'" said Stanley Brand, a veteran defense attorney and former Democratic counsel in the House. "It's a very, very tightly knit set of charges. They are not over pleading these cases. They are going one step at a time."

Campaign contributions aren't illegal unless there is an express agreement that the money is being paid in exchange for a particular action. That's one element that makes public-corruption cases difficult to bring, say former prosecutors. Unlike a crime such as robbery, there is often no clearly identifiable victim and usually little reason for either side to cooperate with law enforcement. That's what makes the deal with Mr. Abramoff key to what Justice Department officials describe as a wide-ranging, ongoing investigation.

Enlisting his testimony "is a huge break," said Randall Eliason, a law professor at American University and former head of the public-corruption unit for the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington. "He was in the meetings.
He was there when the deals, if any, took place and can say, 'I gave him this in exchange for this official action.'"

Prosecutors will need significant corroborating evidence to prove potential charges against Mr. Ney or other members of Congress. The lobbyists' guilty pleas themselves can be used by defense lawyers to impeach Mr. Abramoff's credibility, adding to the Justice Department's challenge in building additional cases.

The FBI has been engaged in an aggressive crackdown on public corruption, officials say. In the past two years, the bureau has helped convict more than 1,050 government employees accused of corrupt activities, including 177 federal officials.