Courtesy of NPR.
Tag: public corruption
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Here is the Indictment in United States v. Robert Menendez and Salomon Melgen. Here is the Washington Post story.
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The New York Times has the story, with a link to the criminal complaint, here. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara followed his longstanding tradition of holding a press conference in order to make inflammatory, prejudicial, and improper public comments about the case.
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If it was not such a serious abuse of power, it would almost be funny. It certainly has its comic elements. Wallace Hall is a Member of the University of Texas System Board of Regents, appointed to that position in 2011 by Governor Rick Perry. The Board of Regents is the governing body for the entire University of Texas System. Hall started snooping around and uncovered several things that troubled him, including:
1. An allegedly secret forgivable loan program for favored law professors at the University of Texas School of Law.
2. Allegedly incorrect accounting treatment of certain in-kind donations to the University's fund-raising campaign. The University had to restate its fund-raising figures after the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education rejected the school's accounting theory.
3. Admission of students to the University of Texas School of Law who had LSAT scores below the average for entering U.T. Freshlaws. Some of the admitted students were related or connected to powerful state legislators with key roles in funding the university and law school.
That last revelation was apparently too much for the legislature (or "the leg" as we called it in my day) and impeachment hearings were commenced by the House Select Committee on Transparency in State Agency Operations ("Transparency Committee").
As I said, the controversy has had its comic moments. The Transparency Committee voted to recommend impeachment of Hall before deigning to draft any Articles of Impeachment. And Transparency Committee Co-Chair Dan Flynn wrote a public letter stating that: 1) there were insufficient grounds to impeach Hall; 2) Hall should resign anyway; and 3) Hall should be impeached if he did not resign. When Hall refused to resign, Flynn voted to impeach him. (The Texas Tribune has a good story here on Flynn's remarkable letter and the response he received from Representative Eric Johnson. Both letters are attached to the story in PDF format.)
The fight between Hall and the legislature is apparently part of a larger years-long battle between th Board of Regents and UT President Bill Powers. The Regents have Governor Perry and company on their side and Powers has legislative allies on his. I'm not concerned about that. I have reviewed Hall's purportedly impeachable offenses and find the allegations against him unpersuasive, but I would not be writing about these things on a white collar blog if impeachment hearings were the only thing going on. Unfortunately, there's more.
The Transparency Committee's Co-Chairs also referred Hall to the Travis County District Attorney's Public Integrity Unit, which has opened an investigation into possible criminal wrongdoing by Hall. This is the same office that brought dubious charges against former U.S. House Speaker Tom DeLay and has a long history of questionable public corruption prosecutions. The Public Integrity Unit is an odd creature of Texas law, housed in the Travis County DA's Office with statewide jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute state officials. The old Travis County DA was Ronnie Earle. The current Travis County DA is Rosemary Lehmberg, an Earle disciple, who refused to resign from office after pleading guilty to Driving While Intoxicated.
One of the House Transparency Committee members made the mistake of asking the U.T. System to review whether Hall had violated state or federal law. The U.T. System hired outside counsel Philip Hilder, a nationally known and well-regarded white-collar heavyweight, to research the issue and write a report. The Hilder Report found "no credible evidence" that Hall violated the Texas Government Code or "any other state or federal law."
In a normal world Hall would be breathing easier. But with the Public Integrity Unit lurking in the background, anything is possible.
To me Hall looks like a classic whistle-blower, albeit a powerful one. He may not have the purest of motives. I really don't know and certainly don't care. But he has uncovered, or helped to uncover, potentially serious problems in the U.T. System. His reward? A criminal referral by the powerful interests whom he has offended. And that is an outrage.
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USA Today has this story. Here is the interesting part, at least to federal sentencing aficionados. Renzi took the government to trial. Judge David Bury calculated Renzi's U.S. Sentencing Guidelines range at 97-121 months. (The government asked for a 9-12 year sentence.) Judge Bury downwardly varied to 36 months. This is striking, and yet another example of the Guidelines losing their luster in white collar cases. Under the law the Guidelines must be considered, but in an increasing number of cases they are being considered and ignored or discounted.
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In a major blow to the government, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has reversed the convictions of each and every defendant in U.S. v. Douglas C. Adams, et al. This was a high-profile RICO public corruption prosecution (premised on an alleged vote-buying scheme) brought by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky. The Sixth Circuit vacated and remanded based on the following evidentiary errors: 1) admitting testimony from three cooperators regarding their drug-dealing activities with some of the defendants, which activities occurred 10 years prior to the alleged vote-buying scheme; 2) admitting an Inside Edition video that also discussed drug-dealing activities in the community; 3) admitting evidence of witness intimidation that could not be tied to any of the defendants; 4) the trial court's making of unprompted, substantive changes to the government's tape transcripts; 5) permitting use before the jury of the inaccurate transcripts that resulted from the unprompted changes; 6) admitting un-redacted, and highly prejudicial, versions of state election records which contained statements implicating the defendants in vote-buying schemes. This appears to be a case of government overkill in the presentation of its evidence, as the Sixth Circuit had no problem affirming the sufficiency of the evidence. The unanimous panel opinion was written by Judge Karen Nelson Moore. John Kline, Trevor Wells, and Jason Barclay argued the case for Appellants. With them on the various briefs were: Larry Mackey, Marty Pinales, Candace Crouse, Kent Westberry, Elizabeth Hughes, Jerry Gilbert, Robert Abell, Scott White, and Russ Baldani. Congratulations to all.
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Hat tip to Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice for his outstanding post on Judge James B. Zagel's unfortunate public criticisms of one of Rod Blagojevich's criminal defense attorneys, Lauren Kaeseberg. Kaeseberg had the temerity to file a post-judgment Emergency Motion For Evidentiary Hearing Regarding Potential Juror Misconduct, based on news reports that the Blagojevich jury foreperson was publicly displaying her juror questionnaire, arguably in violation of a prior court order. Zagel denied the motion from the bench, calling it "harebrained," according to the Chicago Sun-Times' Abdon Pallasch. The Lake County News-Sun, picked up the "harebrained" comment and placed it in the headline of its story about the ruling. Above the Law piled on with a frivolous post, and Kaeseberg has apparently been taking additional criticism on her web site. You can read the Emergency Motion above for yourself and draw your own conclusions. On its face, I see absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Judge Zagel also hit Kaeseberg, sworn in as an attorney in 2008, with the following zingers:
"The motion was prepared without any adequate thought." It looks thoughtful enough to me. Sometimes criminal defense attorneys, particularly in the post-sentencing, pre-notice of appeal context, have to move swiftly in order to obtain a fact-finding hearing, make a record, and/or preserve error.
"[The filing was] beyond my imagination." That's not exactly the legal standard.
"You should seek outside counsel…and send a letter of apology to the juror." Why? The Emergency Motion was temperate in its discussion of the foreperson, who "has made many public appearances since the verdict…touting her decision and role in the Blagojevich jury."
"By the absence of precedent, I assume you couldn't find precedent." As Greenfield correctly points out, lawyers don't always have on-all-fours (or, as they say in Chicago, "white horse") precedent at hand. The dedicated, imaginative lawyer works with principles and analogous cases and tries to make new precedent. It's called lawyering.
Pallach also reports Judge Zagel saying that he "could hold Kaeseberg in contempt of court but was cutting her slack because she was a fairly new lawyer." On its face, the motion does not seem to be improper at all, much less contemptuous. Perhaps there is some backstory here that we are not aware of. The press seldom reports everything. But this is a serious public allegation for a federal judge to throw at a young lawyer, particularly given the unexceptionable nature of the Emergency Motion.
Ms. Kaeseberg defended her motion in the press. She stands by it. She is proud of it. Good for her. She has guts. She should wear Judge Zagel's criticisms as a badge of honor.
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The Washington Post, via AP, has the story here.
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Surprise, surprise, surprise. According to Joe Palazzolo at WSJ's Law Blog, DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility has cleared Brenda Morris of any wrongdoing whatsoever in the Ted Stevens case. The story is here.
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For those interested in delving into the details of the Alaskan federal corruption cases, I recommend Cliff Groh's excellent Alaska Political Corruption blog. Cliff is a thoughtful commentator who has worked as a prosecutor and defense attorney. He attended all but one of the Alaskan federal corruption trials.
(wisenberg)
MattBray.net 