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WASHINGTON — Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff says in the April edition of Vanity Fair that he had a long and contentious relationship with Sen. John McCain, and believes the Arizona Republican deliberately humiliated him.

Abramoff, who once represented several Indian tribes with casinos, pleaded guilty earlier this year to federal felony charges related to congressional influence peddling.

In the several-pages-long article, the lobbyist says he believes a series of high-profile hearings McCain held examining whether he defrauded his Indian clients were unfair, and he implies they were motivated by a personal grudge.

Although McCain's staff denies the senator knew Abramoff, the lobbyist says he met McCain several years back. Abramoff says he raised money for President Bush in 2000 and urged tribes not to contribute to McCain, Bush's opponent in the primary that year.

McCain, who chairs the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, in September 2004 began investigating Abramoff's dealings with the tribes alongside a probe by the Justice Department. In the hearings, the committee made public hundreds of pages of documents, including pages of e-mails between Abramoff, his clients and business associates.

Abramoff told Vanity Fair that McCain's staff deliberately distributed the humiliating and damning e-mails to the press.

"Mr. Abramoff flatters himself," McCain's chief of staff, Mark Salter, responds in the article.

In an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, Salter also said the office checked McCain's schedule back to 1993, and there is no official record of him ever meeting the lobbyist.

"No one here knew Abramoff," said Salter, adding that McCain "doesn't know him."

But Abramoff says in the article that Salter is wrong. "As best I can remember, when I met with (McCain) he didn't have his eyes shut," Abramoff told the magazine. "I'm surprised that Senator McCain has joined the chorus of amnesiacs."

In another part of the article, Abramoff says "any important Republican who comes out and says they didn't know me is almost certainly lying."

Abramoff says Bush knew him well enough to joke with him about weight lifting. "What are you benching, buff guy?" Abramoff said Bush asked him.

The president has said he doesn't know Abramoff.

Abramoff said he finds it hard to believe Bush doesn't remember the 10 or so photos he and members of his family had snapped with the president and first lady.

"He (Bush) has one of the best memories of any politician I have ever met," Abramoff wrote in an e-mail, according to Vanity Fair's April issue being released this week. "Perhaps he has forgotten everything. Who knows?"