Ex-Team Abramoff Lobbyist Goes From Scandal, Prison to New Gig

Lobbyist Kevin Ring has a notable gap on his resume: prison time.

After his downfall on K Street for his part in the Jack Abramoff influence scandal, Ring shifted from representing high-powered corporate clients and Native American Indian tribes flush with casino revenue to advocating for an overhaul of the nation’s criminal justice laws.

This week he begins a new role as vice president of criminal justice advocacy at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic and policy outfit started by billionaires John and Laura Arnold. Ring recently left FAMM, the sentencing and prison overhaul group that was the rare place that would hire him back in 2008 on the cusp of indictment.

“At that time, all of us who were involved in that were pariahs,” said Ring, who lost jobs with the firms Greenberg Traurig, where Abramoff was his boss, and then later at Barnes & Thornburg. “I just thought I’d be a grant writer,” he added of his initial and low-profile position at FAMM.

He became FAMM’s president in 2017, two years after getting out of prison for an honest services fraud conviction. Ring, who worked for Republicans on the Hill, was one of several people including Abramoff, former Hill aides and lobbyists, and a member of Congress (ex-Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio) to face legal consequences for the wide-ranging scandal that became Hollywood fodder in the 2010 film “Casino Jack.”

Kevin Ring, who was implicated in the Abramoff lobbying scandal, speaks with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) as part of FAMM’s lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill in June.

Photo by Molly Gill provided by FAMM

Ring said he’s moving to Arnold Ventures in the hopes of putting a bigger imprint on the criminal justice movement, which he said is struggling to meet the recent rising crime rates and partisan fights about policing, sentencing, and prison conditions. Arnold Ventures funds numerous other organizations working on criminal justice matters, including FAMM, and works on federal, state and local matters.

“These past few years, I was getting frustrated with the criminal justice movement because I didn’t think we had responded as smartly and strategically as we could have in the face of the uptick in crime that we saw starting in 2020,” he said in a recent interview. “We were being pushed on defense by the moment, and it had gotten ideological and we lost our moorings a little bit.”

Ring, who as a congressional aide helped write some of the sentencing laws that he now opposes, said his previous K Street work on the Abramoff team was more lucrative but led him astray.

“I was on a different path. I wasn’t as present for the things that matter,” he said. “I never want to lose that feeling of what I did wrong before because I lost myself in that work. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, but I wouldn’t trade it, either.”

Facing Pushback

Years of falling crime rates had buoyed the movement and led to a signature legislative success, a 2018 law that shortened some federal prison sentences and aimed to improve conditions for incarcerated people, such as having them serve time in prisons close to family. It had bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill, and the support of then-President Donald Trump.

As Trump seeks to make a comeback to the White House, some of his Republican rivals, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, have criticized the law, known as the First Step Act.

DeSantis said repealing that law is one of the first things he would do as president. “The idea that they’re releasing people who have not been rehabilitated early so that they can prey on people in our society is a huge, huge mistake,” DeSantis said recently on the podcast of conservative Ben Shapiro.

Ring, who noted that DeSantis while in Congress supported an earlier iteration of the measure, said it’s up to advocates like him to take such attacks seriously and to counter with data but not to decamp for partisan corners.

“The problems that plague our criminal justice system make all of us less safe,” Ring said. “We have to message in a way that wins converts.”

Hill Visits

It was against that charged backdrop that Ring led a group of 72 FAMM members, people who had formerly done time or those with loved ones serving sentences, around Capitol Hill during his final days with the organization in late June.

They hailed from all over the country and met with lawmakers and congressional aides from both sides of the aisle, pressing for such changes as removing the federal sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine convictions and for improved prison conditions.

Stephanie Nodd, who served time in prison for a drug conviction, was on Capitol Hill in June lobbying for changes in the criminal justice system.

Photo by Kate Ackley

Stephanie Nodd, who spent 21 years in prison for a crack cocaine-related conviction, said she had meetings in the offices of her state’s senators, Katie Britt and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.).

Nodd got out in November 2011 after Ring highlighted her case at FAMM.

Ring said hers was one of the first stories he worked on when he started at FAMM, as his own trial loomed. Her sentence was originally for 30 years; it would have been five years if her charges had related to powder cocaine, she said. “It didn’t take 21 years for me to learn a lesson,” said Nodd, whose oldest of five children was in second grade, and her youngest not yet born, when she went to prison.

Ring said that chronicling stories like Nodd’s helped him grapple with his own conviction and eventual time in a federal prison in Cumberland, Md.

“Him featuring my story, putting it out there, it put more light on my story. I think he made a big impact,” Nodd said during an interview in the cafeteria of the Senate Dirksen Office Building between lobbying visits. “I think I helped him by preparing him what to expect in prison. He had two little girls, and that really broke my heart.”

Dejarion Echols, a FAMM advocate from Dallas who was released from prison in June 2021 because of changes enacted in the 2018 law, said Ring’s background as a lobbyist combined with his time in prison have made him a powerful advocate for revamping the criminal justice system.

“He has a unique perspective in that he himself was formerly incarcerated,” Echols said while on the Hill for the lobbying visits.

Echols and other FAMM advocates met with Sens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and John Boozman (R-Ark.). He said he tries to bring a personal story to the statistics about crime and recidivism rates.

Talking Across the Aisle

Ring’s new boss James Williams, who is Arnold Ventures’ executive vice president of advocacy, joined in 2020 and began working with Ring through its funding of FAMM. Ring, he said, can talk easily across the political spectrum, to the most progressive to most conservative lawmakers and advocates.

When Arnold Ventures announced this spring that it was hiring Ring, Williams and others put together a five-minute video featuring shout-outs from lawmakers in both parties: Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), David Trone (D-Md.) and John Rutherford (R-Fla.)

“There’s just really no one like Kevin with the breath of experience and this incredible uniqueness to him,” Williams said.