hard deadlines

You can get the facts from the Washington Post — Stephen Payne, a Bush appointee to the Homeland Security Advisory Council and lobbyist, appears in a hidden camera video offering to arrange meetings with senior US officials on behalf of a former central Asian leader. Standard lobbyist/public relations consulting fare, except for one point in the video where he uses language that seems to imply a donation to the Bush Presidential Library should be part of the package:

"I think that the family, children, whatever [of Akayev], should probably look at making a contribution to the Bush library... enough to show they're serious."
— via Washington Post

HuffPo has more background here. You can see the original Times of London story that started the ruckus here. In the video, the person identified as Payne appears to imply that positive statements about the former president of Kyrgyzstan could be elicited from administration officials. (Which, to be fair, is what lobbyists do all the time, quite legally.)

The Chicago Tribune did more digging and has pdfs of e-mails, obtained from Payne, memorializing his conversations with the Times undercover team.

Of course, promising meetings and action from government officials in exchange for donations would be illegal and unacceptable, Payne notes in his e-mails. And in his statement, linked in the Tribune story, he asserts that the Times piece was "gotcha journalism" and that he is the victim of a "confidence game."

So we can be sure that nothing untoward was intended. End of story. Nothing to see here. Move along.