Last week, we ran one of our first TPMmuckraker.com Advance Copy pieces on Rep. Don Young (R) of Alaska.

In the piece, one of our two new TPMmuckraker.com hires, Paul Kiel, reported on a congressional delegation Rep. Young led to the Marshall Islands in 1999 -- a trip that was put together by none other than Jack Abramoff.

On Sunday, Paul's story got picked up in the Anchorage Daily News.

ADN reporter Liz Ruskin reported on Paul's scoop and the trip. And Young's office denied that Abramoff had anything to do with it. (Young's office failed to return repeated requests for comment from TPMmuckraker.com.)

From Ruskin's article ...

Young's office says the article is wrong and that the trip was a normal part of his work then as chairman of the House Resources Committee, which has oversight over matters involving the Marshalls and other U.S.-affiliated islands.

...

Young's spokesman, Grant Thompson, said Abramoff didn't help plan the congressional delegation tour, or CODEL, as they're called.

"CODELs are planned and executed as official government travel. They are planned and executed in strict compliance with the law," Thompson wrote in an e-mail in response to the Daily News' questions.

He reiterated Young's previous assertion that he has had no personal or professional relationship with Abramoff. Further, he said, Young doesn't recall ever meeting the lobbyist.

We beg to differ.

Rep. Young's office says Abramoff had nothing to do with the visit. But in September 2001, Abramoff's former law firm Preston Gates filed court documents that say otherwise. They say Abramoff organized the trip right down to the delegation's schedule when they were in the Marshall Islands.

A former Marshall Islands government official familiar with the trip disagrees with Young too.

We'll be reporting more this week on Young's trip and the discrepancies surrounding his account of it.