Another key figure in the on-going Abramoff scandals (with very, very close ties to the Bush administration's Department of the Interior) gets sentenced -- and she's now a cooperating witness:

Italia Federici, who served as lobbyist Jack Abramoff's conduit to the top ranks of the Interior Department, was sentenced yesterday to two months in a halfway house during a day in court that touched on her romantic liaisons, tax evasion and conduct before the Senate.

Federici, the onetime president of a Republican environmental group, had pleaded guilty to evading taxes and obstructing the Senate's investigation of Abramoff's lobbying for Indian tribes. Prosecutors suggested that she receive home detention instead of incarceration because of her cooperation with the ongoing investigation into the Abramoff scandal. For her colleague at the environmental group, Robert Jared Carpenter, who also pleaded guilty to tax evasion, prosecutors recommended a sentence of 10 to 16 months in jail.

But U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle rejected their recommendations, insisting that Federici serve some time, in part as an example to others. She gave Federici 60 days in a halfway house plus four years of probation and ordered her to pay $77,243 in restitution.

Italia Federici did plead guilty today.  She's going to cooperate: 

Republican activist and former Department of the Interior aide Italia Federici on Friday pleaded guilty to tax evasion and lying to Congress and agreed to cooperate in the ongoing Jack Abramoff investigation.

Tax evasion and lying to Congress are the crimes to which the conduit, Italia Federici, will plead guilty according to The Hill.  Ms. Federici was the link between Jack Abramoff and top officials at the Department of the Interior according to prosecutors: 

Federici is set to admit in federal court on Friday that she helped to forge a connection between Norton’s top deputy and now-jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to court documents filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Washington.

“During much of Griles’s tenure as [Department of the Interior] Deputy Secretary, defendant Federici served as a conduit for information between Abramoff and Griles in order to foster Abramoff’s and his client’s interests,” the court documents, filed by the Justice Department, state.

Federici is president of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), which evolved from a group Federici and Norton founded in 1997 with tax activist Grover Norquist to push for Republican environmental goals. It originally was funded with money Federici received from an inheritance.

The fallout from the Abramoff scandal continues. According to the Legal Times, Italia Federici is now a target in the probe of corruption related to Jack Abramoff. According to the report, Federici's former boyfriend is Stephen Griles. He was the number two official in the Bush Administration's Department of the Interior who pled guilty to to obstruction of justice in an Abramoff-related crime just last month:

Italia Federici, the one-time girlfriend of a convicted former senior official at the Interior Department, is a target of the ongoing federal influence-peddling investigation into the activities of former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to court documents obtained by Legal Times.

In a letter dated Jan. 19, the Justice Department informed Federici, founder of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, that she was a target of the federal probe.

“The investigation is focused on the allegedly illegal manner in which you operated the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy,” wrote Stephanie Evans, a trial attorney in the department’s Tax Division.

Federici co-founded CREA, a conservative-leaning environmental-advocacy group, in 1997 with Gale Norton, who became secretary of the Interior Department in 2001.