Will an Alaska Appeal Bring Justice?

Earlier this month former Alaska State Representative Peter Kott (pictured) was told for the second time by a U.S. District Judge that he would not get a chance at a second trial even though a bombshell hit allegedly showing prosecutorial misconduct by the Alaska U.S. Attorney's Office.

The prosecutors who targeted Kott were the same Rove Republican Racket members who wrongfully targeted former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska by engaging in prosecutorial misconduct and withholding evidence. The star witness in both federal cases was the unreliable and convicted felon Bill Allen, now the center of an explosive sex scandal.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder vacated the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens in April, launched an internal probe, and reassigned the federal prosectuors involved.

The Anchorage Daily News reported:

U.S. District Judge John Sedwick ...told Kott he won't reconsider his Jan. 13 ruling denying Kott a new trial or dismissal of charges. New information that surfaced the day after his January ruling was insignificant and won't change his mind, Sedwick said in a one-page, unsigned order from chambers.

Kott has been arguing for months that federal prosecutors improperly withheld information that he could have used in his defense. But in his Jan. 13 ruling, Sedwick said the withheld evidence wouldn't have made a difference in Kott's 2007 conviction. And he told Kott his decision was final: "This court will not entertain any motion for reconsideration," Sedwick said.

But then came a surprise: Prosecutors came into possession of 105 pages of handwritten notes by the attorney who represented Bill Allen, the former oil-services company chief who admitted bribing Kott and others. Allen was the government's chief witness. The notes were made by Anchorage attorney Bob Bundy as he sat through several debriefings of Allen by the FBI and Justice Department lawyers.

Kott has one more shot at justice. He remains free on appeal and awaits a hearing on a motion to dismiss with the federal court of appeals next month.

Obama's DOJ Taking a Hard Look

With the collapse of several backdating cases and the expected shredding of the dishonest "honest services fraud" law by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Rove Republican Racket is imploding.

Now the Obama Administration and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder are taking a hard look at those two areas of law that were pumped up by the Rove-Bush-Cheney Administration.

Main Justice blog writes:

Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, the head of the Criminal Division, said in a recent interview with Main Justice that the department was taking a “hard look” at the backdating cases. “We take a hard look — whether we’re talking about stock options cases or whether we’re talking about honest services cases, where it’s our obligation to assess the state of the law,” Breuer said. “That’s what we’re doing in the Criminal Division and that’s what the U.S. Attorneys’ offices are doing.”

Misconduct Rocks U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles

Breaking News from the Associated Press. On the heels of the Broadcom backdating case that was tossed out by a federal judge in December because of prosecutorial misconduct, Los Angeles was rocked  today with another legal case of  misconduct in a backdating case against KB Home.

The Rove Repubican Racket targeted companies who were accused of backdating stock options and other financial instruments.

Filed at 3:54 p.m. ET LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Federal prosecutors are accused of intimidating two KB Home employees while soliciting testimony in a felony-backdating case against the building giant's former chief executive. The U.S. attorney's office says the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bruce Karatz case are detailed in some 20 motions a judge will consider Tuesday in Los Angeles.

Karatz's lawyers said in a court filing in January that the two employees changed their stories after meeting with prosecutors. They're seeking a pretrial hearing to determine whether the workers were improperly influenced. The U.S. attorney's office said prosecutors acted appropriately. Karatz has pleaded not guilty to 19 counts, including making false statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Flop of Tort

Right-wing Mississippi blogger Alan Lange and his lying co-author, former Assistant U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Mississippi Tom Dawson, self-published a 288-page book that has flopped titled, Kings of Tort.

Sources tell us sales were so awful that each author has lost a huge chunk of change and the only ones to make money on the deal were the owners of Pediment Publishing.

The co-authors, members of the Rove Republican Racket, relied on inside knowledge and set up the idea of writing the book while Dawson was still serving as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the fall of 2008. Days after retiring in January of 2009, Dawson obtained a secret six-month (book writing?) contract from then-U.S. Attorney Jim H. Greenlee.

Dawson, a former protege of Ken Starr, tells media that he only worked two-days a week on contract and was serving in a "consiglieri" position like in the movie The Godfather.

As they would say in Italy, bugiardo!

Dawson was intricately and centrally involved in plea deals involving a corrupt lawyer and state judge while serving supposedly as a "consiglieri" for the Rove Republican Mafia.

As one reader put it, "Dawson acts like he was the grandfatherly advisor two days a week in Oxford [Mississippi]. He should add a rocking chair and pipe to his bullshit story."

The only thing the Flop of Tort has produced is questions, lots of questions, including the suspicion that a federal employee on the clock was used to help write the book.  The book is about the prosecution of two well-known Democrats: trial lawyer Dickie Scruggs and fundraiser Paul Minor.

Besides being a flop, the book has had disastrous implications about the professional ethics of Dawson and his supervisors in the U.S. Department of Justice.

With a hefty debt and hundreds of copies in storage, sometimes Lange and Dawson may feel they are waking up with a bloody horse's head in their bed, only to realize the nightmare was caused by their own, self-aggrandizing egos.

Morrison Helps Sink Ohio Investors

As a follow up to Wednesday's posting on the Fair Finance mess, today the news is not pretty for investors.

The Akron Beacon Journal writes:

Nine employees of Fair Finance Co. — all that remains of the Akron firm — are working out of an undisclosed location to try to resurrect the business, a company executive testified Thursday in bankruptcy proceedings. Robert Letham, vice president and director of operations, testified Thursday afternoon in U.S. Bankruptcy Court  [and] was the first Fair Finance executive to make public statements about the company's operations since federal investigators closed the company down late last year.''We are open to a degree,'' Letham said. A certified public accountant with training in fraud investigations testified that the public documents he reviewed basically showed that Fair Finance and Fair Holdings were insolvent.

Letham was not involved at all, according to the news report, with the investor certificates (allegedly a Ponzi scheme) that led to the federal raid.and collapse.

So who was?

Letham said it was his understanding that Indiana businessmen Timothy Durham and James Cochran, the co-owners of Fair Finance and its Ohio parent company, Fair Holdings, made most of the top-level decisions. Letham said he knew little about the part of the business that sold and serviced investment certificates.

Yes, that's right: the two political bedfellows of embattled Bush-appointed U.S. Timothy M. Morrison of the Southern District of Indiana!

Rove Republican Racket member Timothy S. Durham and his co-conspirator James Cochran have been running free like wild foxes. Durham, a major donor in Republican circles in Indiana, was allowed to keep his cash, luxury cars, and mansions by Morrison while Cochran was allowed to have an estate sale and keep the proceeds.

Allegations of running a Ponzi scheme, these multi-millionaires have been laughing at retirees who invested in these junk certificates and making a mockery of the judicial system, all with a little help of Morrison's do-nothing attitude.

Even in their banckruptcy pleading, they blamed the federal government and us (Internet commetators)  for their loses. Phooey!

Eleven Weeks to Point Fingers

Embattled Acting U.S. Attorney Timothy M. Morrison of the Southern District of Indiana let them keep quiet and finally they have started pointing fingers. 

In November, Morrison helped his Rove Republican Racket friend Timothy S. Durham keep all his cash and assets even though Durham allegedly operated a Ponzi scheme that may have defrauded thousands of investors, mostly retirees, of millions.

The alleged scheme was operated through Fair Finance Company of Ohio. The company, since November, has remained quiet until now.

Fair Finance is now headed to bankruptcy court and in court filings Fair Finance blames all its economic woes on...us (yes, us!) and the FBI.

The (Wooster, Ohio) Daily-Record reports today that in the filing, Fair Finance Company lawyers write:

"Until ... FBI agents stormed Fair's home office in Akron and seized the computers and business records that it must have to operate, Fair had never missed a scheduled payment to any of its investment certificate holders," the filing said. "If not for the FBI's surprise raid and the seizure of the tools Fair needs to do business, the company would likely be making timely payments to its certificate holders today. For the past 11 weeks since its offices were raided, Fair, its officers and its affiliates have been subjected to withering -- and false -- attacks from the media, from Internet commentators, from politicians, and from understandably confused and upset certificate holders."

This is pathetic. Pathetic finger pointing.

Durham could have simply called HP, ordered a few new computers and used a back-up drive to set-up shop again. Fair Finance and their shark attorneys appear to be full of it.  In this day and age, to blame millions of dollars in losses on the incapacity to replace a hard drive or computer network in 11 weeks time is just not believable.

Although we have reported the facts including the connection of political bedfellows Morrison and Durham, to blame our commentaries on their losses is beyond pathetic; it is, as the politically incorrect term applies, retarded.

Permanently Disbarring an Arrogant Prosecutor

On the eve of Mardi Gras, the Louisiana Supreme Court permanently disbarred a former assistant city attorney of New Orleans, Darryl Jackson, who according to news reports was convicted of malfeasance in office in 2006 for accepting $500 to dismiss a drunken driving case.

According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Jackson had the felony conviction expunged last year, but Louisiana's Office of Disciplinary Counsel had already filed misconduct charges against him in 2007. The state disciplinary board asked the state Supreme Court to permanently strip Jackson of his law license.

Why? Because of Jackson's arrogance.  The Times Picayune quotes Jackson:

"A city attorney can do whatever they want to with a case, at any time," Jackson said. "Yeah, I dismissed it. It was my church member. Did I take $500 for it? No. It's never been proven."

The Times-Picayune reports:

In an eight-page decision released Friday, a unanimous state Supreme Court revoked his law license. "Among the aggravating factors present is Jackson's absolute refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of his conduct," the court said. "We find this conduct amounts to intentional corruption of the judicial process."

Silicon Valley Softening

Dolores Carr, the Rove Republican Racket member from the Silicon Valley and District Attorney of Santa Clara County, California, is softening her boycott of a judge who ripped her staff for gross prosecutorial misconduct.

Carr hit the nuclear button at the tail end of last month and ordered a boycott of the judge.

Now, she's changing her tune.

The Associated Press reports:

The Santa Clara County District Attorney appears to be softening her boycott of a superior court judge. Dolores Carr had come under fire from some in the legal community after instructing prosecutors on her staff last month not to bring any criminal cases before Judge Andrea Bryan. But a spokesman for Carr said Monday she only intended for the ban to cover felonies, not misdemeanors such as petty theft and trespassing.  Carr had said in January her decision was based on a number of Bryan's rulings. Bryan had angered the district attorney's office earlier that month when she ordered the release of a man convicted of child molestation, citing prosecutorial misconduct. Some legal experts were critical of Carr's decision, saying it could affect judicial oversight of prosecutors.

Snowed Out

Due to the severe blizzard conditions in Washington, DC, our blog has failed to post regularly. We are back at work although our friends in government will return tomorrow.

Who is this Contractor?

The Neilson saga of Northern Mississippi is possibly creating an even larger web of lies. 

The public relations war between disgraced former U.S. Attorney Jim H. Greenlee (pictured) and indicted FBI Agent Hal "The Canary" Neilson has escalated.  Last week, when discussing the secret property partnership Neilson allegedly had in a building and for which he was indicted, we pointedly asked:

How did Greenlee's office learn of Neilson's financial interest in the building?

Now an answer has been given in an article in The Oxford Enterprise:

Sources also say that Neilson’s part ownership of the FBI building was discovered after a local contractor tipped off the U.S. Attorney’s office.

So now we ask: Who is this local contractor? What is his relationship with Greenlee's staff? Does he have some connection to the other three partners of the property deal?

Greenlee looks like he set Neilson up, recused himself, and then kicked the ball over to Louisiana (which eventually indictedNeilson).

And now, are we to believe the U.S. Department of Justice's entire investigation is based on the allegation of a single building contractor?  How did he know? 

This smells dirty. Real dirty. Mississippi dirty.

Kentucky Woman

Sue Schmitz, the former Democratic State Representative of Alabama and grandmother, reported to prison on January 28th. She is serving a 30 month prison term at a minimum-security prison camp for women in Lexington, Kentucky.

Her political crime? Being a Democrat during the Rove Bush Cheney era. What was she convicted of? The silliest of non-crimes: doing little or no work for a nice salary. Problem was her salary was funded in part by federal funds. Karl Rove and friends said, "Gotcha!"

Throwing Honest Services Fraud Away

The Rove Republican Racket's favorite legal weapon of choice, the "honest services" fraud law, is being tossed over the side of the bridge by federal prosecutors.

The Chicago Tribune reported last week:

With a U.S. Supreme Court decision looming on the disputed "honest services" fraud law, federal prosecutors Thursday revised their indictment against former [Illinois] Gov. Rod Blagojevich, restructuring the charges without altering the specific allegations against him. Prosecutors added eight counts that mirror other charges in the indictment but that don't rely on honest services fraud. That way, if the Supreme Court limits or tosses the controversial law, prosecutors can simply drop those counts and proceed to trial as scheduled on June 3. The newly added counts, based on other statutes, would ensure Blagojevich would still face the same allegations — that he sought to improperly profit from his office, including by trying to sell a vacated U.S. Senate seat.

As reader's know, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has ripped the dishonest "honest services fraud" law to shreds saying that someone who calls in sick to go to a ball game would be guilty of a crime under this law. Across the country, during the Rove-Bush-Cheney years, Democrats and other political operatives were tossed in jail based on this vague and harmful law. Maybe the dozens of political prisoners sitting in federal prisons around the country will see freedom soon.

Neilson Sings like a Canary

The Mississippi Canary has begun to sing.

Let the hemorrhaging begin! Greenlee and his racist, corrupt, unconscionable, and unethical stooges deserve to be publicly humiliated.

As details emerge, it looks more and more like FBI Whistleblower Hal Neilson was set up and retaliated against by Rove Racket Republican and former U.S. Attorney Jim H. Greenlee of the Northern District of Mississippi.

With the headline "Greenlee was out to get me," the Daily Journal reports:

FBI agent Hal Neilson’s professional troubles apparently began some five years ago, when he says he discovered a U.S. attorney’s office investigation for “no reason” into nearly 150 north Mississippi residents of Middle Eastern origins and then later questioned the handling of the Mississippi Beef Plant investigation. When Neilson reported his concerns, he asked his employer for protection against retaliation. At that time, he was the FBI’s resident agent in Oxford. As of today, he reportedly has never heard a response.

Neilson’s accusations come from his own e-mail to Mississippi’s congressional delegation months ago and other documents supplied to the Daily Journal, though not by him. In the messages, he voices his concern about his job and why he believes his relationship with Greenlee fell apart starting about 2004. Chiefly, Neilson points to his opposition to the so-called Convenience Store Initiative, which involved the Middle Easterners, and internal pressure about the beef plant case.

After leading the [Beef Plant] effort for about a year, [Neilson] was removed from the investigation and told by his supervisor that Greenlee complained the case was at a standstill. Neilson apparently told his supervisor that any holdups were due to attempts by the U.S. attorney’s office to steer the investigation.

Neilson, who was indicted last month on a property scheme, states in documents obtained by the Daily Journal:

“A subsequent FBI Inspection investigation followed and found absolutely no wrongdoing on my part,” Neilson’s e-mail said. A few months later, Neilson wrote, he learned he was under investigation about a 2005 investment and its financial disclosure – which bypassed the FBI to the Department of Justice’s inspector general and the Baton Rouge, La., U.S. attorney. Neilson told the congressional delegation he received an “oral” OK from the FBI to make the investment, and offered to take a polygraph and leave the area to get away from the situation.“It has cost me my lifetime savings for my four children’s college education and more,” he noted. “I have just one year left to retire and am concerned if I will even make it.”

We alluded to this scheme last week as Greenlee and friends attempted damage control.  Now the mainstream media has confirmed it.

Sing. Sing a song. Sing out loud. Sing out strong!

h/t NorthMissCommentor

Morrison's Continued Negligence

Embattled Acting U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of Indiana Timothy M. Morrison is sweating a little more under the collar.

Last week, hundreds of defrauded investors of an alleged Ponzi scheme, most of them retirees, attended a town hall meeting in Wooster, Ohio regarding the company Fair Finance.

Morrison, a Rove-Bush-Cheney Republican appointee, has protected the kingpin of this alleged fraud, Timothy S. Durham, who is recognized as one of the biggest contributors to the Republican Party of Indiana and to the current Republican Governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels.

Morrison has kept a tight lid on everything.

A local television station in Indianapolis reports:

"I have not received one piece of information from Fair Finance," said one woman, echoing the sentiments of dozens of other people. Those in the meeting, mostly older investors, trusted Fair Finance with their investments. The FBI raided Durham's business in Ohio and his office in Indianapolis in November. "What are you doing with our money? Where are you putting it?" said another woman. "Are you investing it in something else?"

In reality, Morrison has done nothing and has let Durham and associates keep their cash and even hold estate sales as investors worry sick.

One investor, so worried sick, died because of the Morrison's negligence with the Fair Finance fraud case.

It's time U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and the U.S. Department of Justice overtake this case and banish Morrison to a dunce's corner.

Goodbye Jim!

Embattled and disgraced U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Mississippi Jim Greenlee served his last day in office yesterday.  But it ain't over, yet!

Greenlee, one of the Rove Republican Racket's most loyal members racially targeted innocent convenience store owners for having Islamic-sounding names, offered a "sweet deal" of immunity to a corrupt DA named Ed "Pied Piper" Peters, handed out a secret six month (book-writing?) contract to his lying and "retired" Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Dawson, and finally, retaliated against FBI whistleblower Hal Neilson for betraying his loyalty to Greenlee.

Now that he is a private citizen, Greenlee will most likely be deposed over his immunity deal to the Pied Piper Peters that let Peters keep $425,000 of a $1 million bribery pay-off. Peters claimed he had losses.

Patsy R. Brumfield, a Mississippi journalist, reported last week:

Attorneys for attorney Roberts Wilson of Oxford will ask former State Auditor Steven Patterson under oath questions in their quest to get the federal court to turn over $425,000 to Wilson in the aftermath of the Scruggs et al prosecutions. Wilson claims he is owed the money, which allegedly is what’s left of former D.A. Ed Peters’ fees related to his help against Wilson’s lawsuit v. Scruggs, presided over by then-Judge Bobby DeLaughter in Hinds County.

The questioning, called a deposition, is set for Feb. 24-25 at the Federal Prison Camp at Montgomery, Ala., where Patterson is serving his sentence for his guilty plea in the case in which he and others were accused of attempting to bribe Circuit Judge Henry Lackey of Calhoun City. Wilson also has asked to do the same with others accused of knowledge about these cases.

Justice, even in backwards Mississippi, shall prevail.