Aug
28
Rove Raised Campaign Money for Judge in Minor Case
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice, John Whitfield, Karl Rove, Paul Minor, Wes Teel | Leave a Comment
The Raw Story
Lindsay Beyerstein and Larisa Alexandrovna
The federal judge who denied a prominent Democratic fundraiser’s motion for release pending appeal last week is a former client and protégé of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
On Aug. 15, US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Priscilla Owen (above right) upheld a lower court’s decision to keep Mississippi attorney Paul Minor in jail pending his appeal, adding more controversy to a case already steeped by allegations of both a politically motivated prosecution and conflicts of interest on the part of the US Attorney.
Minor, a once-prominent trial lawyer, was formerly Mississippi’s largest Democratic donor and made millions from a 1998 settlement with tobacco companies of a lawsuit for costs incurred by Medicare from smoking-related illnesses. The suit kindled resentment among Republicans who had been beneficiaries of the tobacco companies’ largesse.
Owen’s two-sentence order reads: “Minor has failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence that he is not likely to pose a danger to the community if released.”
Minor was convicted of mail fraud and bribery in 2007. The prosecution has contended that Minor is dangerous because he violated the terms of his pre-trial bond two years ago. The defense countered that Minor’s rule-breaking was trivial, non-violent in nature, and unlikely to recur because Minor has now been successfully treated for his drinking problem.
As reported in Raw Story’s ongoing award-nominated series, The Permanent Republican Majority, many saw the two Minor trials – which included as co-defendants Justices Wes Teel and John Whitfield, who were also found guilty, and Justice Oliver Diaz, who was not – as connected with the politicization of the US Department of Justice and the alleged use of US Attorneys by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to target political opponents and perceived enemies of the Bush administration. (See links to part 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the series following this article.)
Both Minor and Diaz allege that they were victims of political prosecution orchestrated by Rove.
It is the alleged involvement of Karl Rove in the prosecutions of Paul Minor – as well as the better-known case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman – that has raised eyebrows among Minor supporters about Owen’s recent ruling.
Aug
27
New Justice Department Push To Keep Bush Aides From Testifying
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice, Karl Rove | Leave a Comment
The Huffington Post
Murray Waas
The Justice Department filed papers in court late Monday asking a federal judge to temporarily set aside his own order directing White House officials to testify before Congress about the firings of nine U.S. attorneys.
The filing was in response to a July 31 opinion by U.S. District Court Judge John D. Bates that the Bush administration’s claims of executive privilege in refusing to allow White House officials to testify about the firings was “unprecedented” and “entirely unsupported by existing case law.”
The Bush administration action indicates that despite recent correspondence to Congress suggesting otherwise, it is still strongly resisting subpoenas of White House officials to testify about the politically sensitive issue of the firings of the U.S. attorneys.
In his decision, Bates said he doubted that if the White House or administration appealed his decision, they would have an even remote possibility of prevailing:
“The aspect of this lawsuit that is unprecedented is the notion that [former White House Counsel Harriett] Miers [one of those subpoenaed] is absolutely immune from compelled testimony.”
Aug
18
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Aug
18
Are Feds trying to Aid Wicker’s Election
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice | Leave a Comment
By Tim Kalich
Greenwood (MS) Commonwealth
I usually shy away from conspiracy theories.
When the Democrats and their attorneys began claiming last year that the Bush administration was using its prosecutorial might to target opposition candidates and their major financial supporters, I greeted the allegation with a skeptical eye.
I’m not so sure anymore.
This past week’s developments in the four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant seem timed to help derail Democrat Ronnie Musgrove’s bid to snatch one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats from Republican hands.
Three Georgia businessmen, one by one over the course of four days, entered guilty pleas to federal charges arising out of the Yalobusha County beef plant’s quick and costly demise.
The three, all executives with The Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., were largely left off the hook on the more serious charges that they had swindled the state out of at least $2 million and had left the plant’s vendors and contractors holding the bag.
Instead, they were allowed in a plea bargain to confess to trying to buy influence with Musgrove by steering $25,000 to the then-governor’s unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2003.
The orchestrated guilty pleas — and the prosecutors’ suggestion that more indictments could be forthcoming — are a boon to the campaign of Republican Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the vacant Senate seat in December but is considered vulnerable. They leave a cloud over Musgrove in voters minds and provide more fodder for negative campaign ads from the GOP camp, even though Musgrove has not been charged with any wrongdoing and there’s nothing in the court records to document he did anything illegal.
Musgrove may have put himself at risk of guilt by association by accepting campaign donations from some scoundrels. That’s a fact. But whose campaign finance reports, including Wicker’s or Gov. Haley Barbour’s, could stand up to the close scrutiny that the federal prosecutors decided to give this one?
Some of what The Facility Group did in helping Musgrove’s 2003 gubernatorial campaign is copied by businesses all the time. Corporations routinely form PACs as a way to skirt the $1,000 contribution limit on corporations, and they give money to candidates in hopes of securing access and favorable treatment. If the feds were to prosecute every political donor who had a state contract, they could fill up all of the federal courtrooms in Mississippi with defendants.
What the Facility Group did that was blatantly illegal, according to the original indictment, was how it got the company employees to pony up for Musgrove. The corporation’s executives allegedly asked employees to write $1,000 personal checks to the Musgrove campaign and then reimbursed them with enough bonus in their paychecks to cover the contribution, thus concealing that the money actually came from The Facility Group.
There’s no evidence, however, that Musgrove was aware of the scheme.
And as far as The Facility Group winning the $3.5 million contract in 2003 to manage the design and construction of the troubled plant, the indictment hints that Musgrove may have steered away another interested bidder, but it is thin on proof.
The Facility Group was awarded the contract by the state’s Land, Water and Timber Resources Board, not by Musgrove. The governor personally didn’t have a vote on that decision, although his economic development director, Bob Rohrlack, was co-chairman and did. However, also among the nine board members who voted unanimously to hire The Facility Group was the other co-chairman, Agriculture Commissioner Lester Spell. Spell, it should be remembered, avoided political demise from the beef plant debacle by conveniently converting to the Republican Party.
The point is, there are a lot of folks who share responsibility for what went wrong with Mississippi Beef Processors and the $55 million it cost taxpayers. The project was ill-conceived from the start. One crook, Richard Hall Jr., was recruited to own and run the plant. Another crook, Sean Carothers, was hired to build it. And then a team of crooks , The Facility Group , was paid to try to salvage it.
Musgrove, though, was at most a minor player in the mess.
Yet the efforts to link him publicly to the corruption scandal, using the combined power of the federal prosecutors and a Republican state auditor , have intensified since Musgrove announced his intentions to challenge Wicker for the Senate seat.
The conspiracy theorists see a pattern. They cite the unrelated bribery convictions of Democratic former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and Mississippi trial lawyer Paul Minor, a major donor to Democratic candidates, as earlier proof that political affiliation is determining who gets investigated and prosecuted by the Justice Department. That allegation is being looked at by congressional panels even while both convictions are on appeal.
As with most conspiracy theories, events don’t always fit the pattern perfectly. Richard Scruggs, Mississippi’s most famous and wealthiest trial lawyer, is now in federal prison following a separate bribery probe. Scruggs may have given more money over the years to Democrats than Republicans, but the brother-in-law of Trent Lott was also well-connected in the GOP.
Still, the federal government’s help in slandering Musgrove less than 90 days before the election has a suspicious feel to it.
Aug
12
Tobacco, Gambling and “Justice” in the Age of Rove
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice, Don Siegelman, Karl Rove, Paul Minor, Roger Shuler | Leave a Comment
Legal Schnauzer
Why have prominent Democrats in the Deep South been the victims of apparent political prosecutions under the Bush Justice Department?
The prosecutions of Paul Minor in Mississippi and Don Siegelman in Alabama can be traced to legal and political battles over tobacco and gambling, according to a compelling new article by Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane at Jackson Free Press.
Why are trial attorney Paul Minor and former Mississippi state judges Wes Teel and John Whitfield currently in federal prison? Alexandrovna and Kane point to Minor’s courtroom victories over tobacco companies in the 1990s. Teel and Whitfield appear to have been “collateral damage” in an effort to shut down Minor’s financial support of Democratic causes.
Minor represented plaintiffs in a case that wound up with the four largest American tobacco companies paying $246 billion to states in the largest civil settlement in history.
The tobacco companies–R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson, Lorillard, and Philip Morris–were not happy to see Minor make millions from the deal and then become a generous contributor to Democratic candidates and campaigns.
Republican supporters of the tobacco companies were even less pleased. GOP bitterness over the tobacco settlement led to a tort-reform movement, designed to give corporations the upper hand in legal battles with consumers. At the center of this movement was Karl Rove, who had served as a consultant for tobacco giant Philip Morris.
Rove helped Republicans take control of state courts in Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama. And when George W. Bush became president in 2000, it appears that Rove launched a plan to investigate and prosecute prominent progressives in the Deep South. Two of those progressives were Paul Minor in Mississippi and Don Siegelman in Alabama.
Alexandrovna and Kane show how the two states at the Heart of Dixie were entertwined in the GOP strategy. Siegelman’s plan for an education lottery in Alabama was considered a threat to gambling interests in Mississippi. So disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff led a campaign to raise money to defeat Siegelman’s plan and protect the gaming interests of Mississippi Choctaws, an Abramoff client.
Meanwhile, a plan was afoot in Mississippi for Republicans to take over the governorship for only the second time since Reconstruction. Paul Minor, a major Democratic donor and a leading opponent of tort reform, was under federal investigation, and word of that probe leaked at the height of the governor’s race.
That helped ensure that Haley Barbour would defeat Democrat Ronnie Musgrove in the governor’s race.
And what about Barbour’s background? He’s a former lobbyist for Philip Morris and Big Tobacco.
Since taking office in 2004, Barbour has called a special legislative session to ban class-action lawsuits and cap damages in most tort cases. He also won a lengthy court battle to withdraw funding from a program that had been successful in reducing smoking among middle- and high-school students.
Aug
12
By Scott Horton
“Truthiness,” a phrase coined by the comic Stephen Colbert, has emerged as one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration. Truthiness, Colbert tells us, is something a government spokesperson knows “from the gut”–without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. “Truthiness” has the outward appearance of truth. However, statements offered as “truthiness” are invariably false. Worse, the person who utters them usually knows they are false. But telling lies and getting away with it is a political art form. Call it the art of “truthiness.”
The Bush Justice Department has a huge truthiness problem. This helps explain why public confidence in the Justice Department just reached an all-time low point. Americans now have more confidence in the integrity and reliability of Post Office employees than they do in federal prosecutors and FBI agents. But is the Justice Department going to start coming to grips with its “truthiness” problem, or will it just plod along through inauguration day, 2009?
The clock is ticking on a series of important internal investigations. In recent weeks the public has gotten important details about a Bush Administration effort to pack the career-level ranks of the Justice Department with political hacks, in violation of laws protecting the integrity of the civil service. The Inspector General concluded that two figures, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, both trusted acolytes of Karl Rove, implemented this program, successfully hiring dozens of hacks for the Justice Department and firing or passing over career employees for a variety of illegal and unethical reasons. They were enabled in the process by an unprecedented sweeping authorization given them by Alberto Gonzales–an authorization designed to give Gonzales himself plausible deniability with respect to an illegal, and possibly criminal exercise.
In one case a former U.S. attorney was taken down based on unsubstantiated (and false) rumors that she was a lesbian. In another a prosecutor lost a promotion when it became known that he was married to a known Democrat. In a third an individual in an unguarded moment let slip some words of praise for Condoleezza Rice. True, Condi is a prominent Republican and a loyal Bushie to the core. But Monica Goodling found this expression of loyalty disturbing. After all, Condi supported abortion rights. The level of political vindictiveness that dominated this process of hiring and firing is astonishing—though not to those who have closely tracked developments at Justice over the last seven years.
Click here to keep reading.
Aug
12
Paul Minor Asks to be Freed on Appeal Bond
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice, Don Siegelman, Paul Minor | Leave a Comment
Jerry Mitchell
jmitchell@clarionledger.com
Imprisoned trial lawyer Paul Minor is asking to be freed on an appeal bond, just as former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was by an appeals court.
“Paul Minor’s case is every bit as compelling as Gov. Siegelman’s,” said a lawyer for Minor, Hiram Eastland Jr. of Greenwood.
Under the law, a federal judge can release a defendant on an appeal bond if the case raises “substantial questions of law or fact likely to result in reversal.”
In 2006, a federal jury in Alabama convicted Siegelman on corruption charges that accused him of trading contributions for political favors. Prosecutors said HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy arranged $500,000 in donations toward the campaign for a state lottery, led by Siegelman, who in turn appointed Scrushy to a hospital regulatory board, where he had served in past administrations.
The trial judge denied Siegelman’s request for bond, but the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Siegelman deserved to be free while his appeal is being heard.
Because of questions raised by the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department is now investigating the Siegelman case, the Minor case and others. “The media, Congress and even the Department of Justice have raised issues of impropriety in this case,” wrote Minor’s lawyers.
In 2007, a federal jury in Mississippi convicted Minor on corruption charges for helping guarantee or pay off campaign loans of judges who heard some of Minor’s cases. That verdict came two years after a jury deadlocked on some counts in the same case while acquitting state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. of all charges.
U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate of Jackson sentenced Minor to 11 years in prison and would not release him on appeal.
Since the judge revoked Minor’s bond Sept. 18, 2006, the lawyer has spent nearly two years behind bars.
Wingate said Minor posed a danger to the community because of his alcoholism.
Since court-ordered rehabilitation, Minor has been sober more than 27 months, defense lawyers say. Minor received the Bronze Star for heroism in the Vietnam War, but his inability to forget the horrors of war led him down to drink more, lawyers wrote.
A number of problems accelerated his alcoholism, including losing his home to Hurricane Katrina, the death of his father-in-law, his mother battling Alzheimer’s disease and his wife’s battle with brain cancer, lawyers wrote. “(Minor’s wife) is permanently disabled by cancer, requires full-time care and wants her husband to care for her.”
If Wingate grants Minor’s request for a hearing, Minor wants it heard by another judge.
Minor also is asking for Wingate to step down from hearing a related civil case in which USF&G Insurance Co. is suing Peoples Bank, Minor and former Chancery Judge Wes Teel.
On Dec. 18, 2001, Teel ruled in favor of Minor’s client, Peoples Bank, on the issue of liability in a case against USF&G. Two months later, USF&G settled for $1.5 million in favor of the bank.
Minor acknowledged guaranteeing loans for Teel but said he was only helping friends.
In February, USF&G complained in court papers that Teel and Minor had fraudulently obtained the $1.5 million.
USF&G lawyers say because Minor secretly guaranteed a loan to Teel at the same time Teel heard the case, USF&G was “defrauded and prejudiced.”
According to the motion filed this weekend by Minor’s lawyers, Wingate was contacted about an opening on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the eve of Minor’s second trial.
“While neither the basis for the legal allegations nor the law had changed from the first trial, Mr. Minor’s second trial in 2007 was conducted by Judge Wingate in a manner that was markedly different from the 2005 trial proceedings,” defense lawyers wrote.
The motion quotes from Harper’s magazine, which wrote, “Judge Wingate’s handling of the two trials was as different as night and day. In the second trial, he adopted a far more hostile posture toward the defense.”
Diaz wrote the House Judiciary Committee that Wingate issued opposite rulings on many questions. In the 2005 trial, Wingate told jurors a specific quid pro quo was required to prove bribery. In the second trial, Wingate didn’t require a quid pro quo.
Defense lawyers also point to Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich’s recent comment: “Bribery requires proof of a specific agreement of a quid pro quo of this for that.”
Siegelman’s lead counsel, Vincent Kilborn of Mobile, said if courts don’t require a quid pro quo in political bribery cases, “politicians are going to be running scared about accepting contributions and at a later point appointing anybody to a certain office or voting a certain way. It’s going to put a damper on democracy.”
Aug
11
The Ordeal of Wes Teel
Filed Under Department of Justice, Roger Shuler, Wes Teel | Leave a Comment
August 11, 2008
Legal Schnauzer
I had a profound experience recently, something I never dreamed would happen to me as a U.S. citizen.
In the morning, I read in the newspaper about the death of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author and dissident who shined a spotlight on the evil of gulag prison camps under Josef Stalin’s Communist regime.
My guess is that many Americans read about Solzhenitsyn’s death and thought that he had chronicled events that only could take place in another time and another place.
But that evening I returned home to find a letter that reminded me that a touch of Stalinism is present right here–in the United States–right now. And I wondered: How many Americans know about this evil that is taking place right under their noses? How many Americans are too busy chatting on cell phones while weaving through traffic in SUVs to even care that we have political prisoners in the United States–in 2008?
My letter was from Wes Teel, a former state judge in Mississippi who is in federal prison in Atlanta after being convicted in the Paul Minor case. Wes and I have never met; we’ve never even talked on the phone. But we got acquainted via e-mail when I began to write about the Minor case last September.
Wes and his codefendants, fellow state judge John Whitfield and well-know plaintiff’s attorney Paul Minor, had been convicted, and Wes was looking at reporting to federal prison in December 2007.
In our e-mail exchanges, I found Wes to be a man of keen intellect, common sense, and good humor–even in the face of going to prison for a crime he did not commit. I came to consider Wes a friend, and I shared his pain when he had a heart attack not long after reporting to federal prison. I shared his concerns about his wife, Myrna, who has multiple sclerosis and needed care while her husband was eight hours away in federal prison. I know he worried about his grandchildren and what they would grow up to think of a country that could imprison their grandfather simply for doing his job as a state judge.
Continue reading here.
Aug
8
U.S. Attorney Scandal Probe Enters White House
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice, Karl Rove | Leave a Comment
By Murray Waas
The Huffington Post
The Justice Department investigation into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys has been extended to encompass allegations that senior White House officials played a role in providing false and misleading information to Congress, according to numerous sources involved in the inquiry.
The widened scope raises the possibility that investigators will pursue criminal charges against some administration officials, and recommend appointment of a special prosecutor if there is evidence of criminal misconduct.
The investigators have been specifically probing the role of White House officials in the drafting and approval of a Feb. 23, 2007 letter sent to Congress by the Justice Department denying that Karl Rove (President Bush’s chief political adviser at the time) had anything to do with the firing of Bud Cummins, a U.S. Attorney from Arkansas. Cummins was fired in Dec. 2006 to make room for Tim Griffin, a protégé and former top aide of Rove’s.
The February 23 letter stated, “The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin,” and that the Justice Department was “not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin’s appointment.”
Federal investigators have obtained documents showing that Kyle Sampson, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Chris Oprison, then an associate White House counsel, drafted and approved the letter even though they had first-hand knowledge that the assertions were not true. The Justice Department later had to repudiate the Sampson-Oprison letter and sent a new one informing Congress that it could no longer stand by the earlier assertions.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General (IG) and the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) are jointly conducting the current investigation. Both can initiate disciplinary action only against Justice Department employees and neither has prosecutorial powers.
People close to the investigation say that the investigators’ final report will not only examine the reasons and circumstances behind the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys, but efforts by senior Justice Department and White House officials to mislead the public and Congress about the firings:
“It will be as much about the cover up as about the firings,” said one former senior Justice Department interviewed at length because of his personal role in the firings. This source believes the investigators “are going to tell a narrative, and they have taken their investigation right into the White House.”
Click here to continue reading.
Aug
7
Siegelman Attorney Asks for Canary Investigation
Filed Under Bush Administration, Department of Justice, Don Siegelman | Leave a Comment
8/5/2008, 5:21 p.m. ET
By BOB JOHNSON
The Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An attorney for former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman wants a Justice Department watchdog office to look into the role of U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in Siegelman’s case, including 500 pages of documents about her recusal being kept secret by the department.
Siegelman’s chief attorney, Vince Kilborn, made the request in a letter Monday to the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is investigating allegations that the prosecution of Siegelman, a Democrat, was politically motivated.
Canary is the wife of Bill Canary, a Republican Party operative with ties to former White House political adviser Karl Rove and Alabama’s Republican Gov. Bob Riley. She recused herself in 2002 after the investigation of Siegelman had begun.
“Investigators should determine why she was ever involved in the investigation of Governor Siegelman, given the obvious conflict of interest,” Kilborn wrote.
He asked OPR to determine if Canary played a role in the prosecution after recusing herself. And he told OPR’s head, H. Marshall Jarrett, that the office should review about 500 pages of documents about Canary’s recusal that the Justice Department has refused to release.
Kilborn said Tuesday the letter was in response to one from Justice Department officials informing Kilborn of the OPR investigation and asking Siegelman’s attorneys for input.
“I want them to look at everything,” Kilborn said. “The burden ought to be on the Justice Department to prove there was no politicization. We’re telling them everything we know, but we’re also telling them there’s a lot we don’t know.”
Canary said Tuesday she welcomes the OPR investigation.
“I have requested that OPR look into all aspects of the case and very much welcome their looking into my recusal,” Canary said.
A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment Tuesday.
Kilborn’s letter included a list of areas that “deserve deep inquiry.”
Along with Leura Canary’s role, Kilborn asked OPR to look into why a key witness against Siegelman at his 2006 trial, former aide Nick Bailey, apparently received extensive coaching before he testified. Kilborn also asked OPR to find out why allegations another key witness made concerning Republican elected officials were never followed up on by investigators.
The government witness, lobbyist and landfill developer Lanny Young, testified he provided gifts and cash to Siegelman in exchange for government favors. Kilborn said Young also told investigators about gifts, including plane rides, that he provided to prominent Republican officials, including former Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions. But, Kilborn said in his letter, “investigators demonstrated no similar interest in following up.”
Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy were convicted in 2006 of bribery and other charges. Scrushy is serving an almost seven-year sentence at the federal penitentiary in Beaumont, Texas. Siegelman was sentenced to more than seven years and is free on an appeal bond.
Kilborn said he is skeptical of the Justice Department. In his letter, he mentions the recent acknowledgment by the department that that defense was not told for more than a year that U.S. postal inspectors had investigated e-mails purportedly sent between jurors during the trial and had determined the e-mails to be fakes.
Kilborn said that incident “may well be only the tip of the iceberg of behavior that may violate various ethical standards and norms.”
“Your office has the tools to get to the bottom of this matter, and more important has the tools … to find out what else we have not been told,” Kilborn said in the letter.
