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Channeling Robin Williams: GoodmorningScruggs-i-ana!
Last evening, commenter MSlawyer quoted the Clarion-Ledger columnist Sid Salter,
With confirmation that the FBI has executed search warrants at the home and office of Booneville attorney Joey Langston, one has wonder whether the state’s MCI settlement case — from which Langston and other lawyers used their outside counsel contract procured from Attorney General Jim Hood to garner a total of $14 million in legal fees off a $100 million plus property settlement to the state — is now under federal scrutiny.
Yesterday, the Sunday New York Times story Court Intrigue for the King of Torts, as David Rossmiller also noted, featured one of reporter Nelson D. Schwartz’s anonymous sources saying that USA Jim Greenlee’s office has asked the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice to “examine whether Mr. Scruggs has engaged in multiple bribery attempts of local judges.”
Now if you hung out around here pre-November 28, you’ll know why I deem the introduction of legal adventurers from D.C. bad news for anyone seeking the truth of what’s actually happened in Mississippi. That statement, I imagine, surprises some of you newer readers, but hear me out.
In normal times, the Public Integrity Section of Main Justice (it goes by the acronym PIN) routinely, and with no particular suspicion as to its motives, investigates corruption allegations against federal judges. But these are the Bush Years, abnormal times, when DoJ’s leaders consider themselves responsible not to the people and the Constitution but to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. Sure, we’re rid of Alberto Gonzales and some of those Regent kiddies, but with a new Attorney General who won’t call waterboarding the torture it is lest he confirm his boss’s criminality — well, what’s different here, please?
Look at PIN’s outrageous participation in the case against Alabama’s former governor Don Siegelman and you understand why I hereby warn each of Mississippi’s federal judges: That crowd that I bet your very own personal vote helped send to Washington will gleefully run right through you to get Dickie Scruggs. You might want to visit a proctologist to make sure everything’s nice and tidy for ‘em before they get up, down, or over your way.
But I do wonder how happily Jim Greenlee called in PIN. We hear his reputation is less partisan, more professional than his Southern District counterpart’s. Well, though I suppose he had little choice but to do it, aligning his office with the “loyal Bushies” of PIN will almost certainly bring pressures that could distort its work and undermine its credibility. Just sayin’ this is something to watch for.
I further speculate that the PIN crowd will ultimately be aiming for Jim Hood and Mike Moore — but may have to swerve and slue wildly to avoid hitting Trent Lott. It’s interesting to see, even at deep-Red Y’allPolitics, such comments as
I keep looking and waiting and waiting but I wonder how long it will be before we hear some news about dickies brother in law poor o boy Lott.
His resigning his seat so early in the game has to mean something other than "I’m just wanting to do something else "
and
I think you are 100% correct Jake. Lott did not resign by coincidence. I wonder how many tapes his voice came up on?
and
… The absolute silence of Jim Hood has been telling. Hood, who had to be in front of a camera almost daily tells much. He and Scruggs and Moore and Lott and all of the other characters had a good thing going. But as is the case with all good things, they must come to an end.
Of course, Y’allPers tend to be pro-insurer/anti-Scruggs, but recall this passage from an earlier folo post:
Anyhow, Rossmiller cracks me up with "I felt sorry for [former Forensic Analysis and Engineering Corp. engineer Brian] Ford that he appears to have gotten stuck on the phone with Trent Lott " , " leading to this intriguing sentence: "Interestingly, [Ford's] notes say that Lott was in communication with Kerri Rigsby, who as you remember is one of the sisters who copied numerous State Farm claims files from their employer, E.A. Renfroe, and gave them to Scruggs. " (And because he wouldn’t give them back when federal judge William Acker demanded, instead passing them to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, he’s got a criminal contempt case to fight in Alabama.) So do we have a United States Senator implicated in possibly-criminal contempt?
Today, Rossmiller’s first post discusses an AP story examining Main Justice’s conflict between the Scruggs situation and Ex rel. Rigsby, the sisters’ False Claims Act “whistleblower” lawsuit dating from April 2006:
The indictments announced last Thursday by U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee present an awkward question for the Justice Department’s civil division: Should the federal government take over a case brought by a lawyer now under federal indictment?
“It does put them in a little bit of quandary,” said Randy Maniloff, a Philadelphia-based lawyer who represents insurance companies and has closely followed the wave of litigation spawned by the Aug. 29, 2005, hurricane. …
However, legal experts say the department doesn’t need to take over Scruggs’ case to investigate allegations that insurers defrauded the federal government by falsely blaming Katrina’s flood waters for damage to homes.
As recently as Oct. 30, Justice Department attorneys said in court papers that they were conducting an “active civil investigation” of the allegations in Scruggs’ suit.
As of last week, according to this story, DoJ hadn’t decided whether to intervene, but it has until Jan. 31 to do so. Rossmiller says, “I don’t have any special insight as to what the Justice Department is going to do with this case,”
but one would suspect that with the two-year anniversary of Ex rel. Rigsby peeking its head up over the bushes, if the U.S. Attorney’s Office was going to do anything with this lawsuit it would have done it by now.One would also suspect the attraction of getting involved in this case — whatever this attraction may once have been, and it apparently has not been much– is diminished by the odor of scandal, alleged criminal activity and alleged ethical shortcomings now wafting steadily from the direction of Dickie Scruggs.
In light of the prosecution of Scruggs in federal court in Alabama over alleged violation of Judge William Acker’s injunction in the Renfroe v. Rigsby suit over the taking of State Farm claims documents by the Rigsby sisters, in light of the bribery indictment and, possibly, in light of whatever is going on with Langston, wouldn’t it kind of seem like the government is at war with itself for the Justice Department to step into Ex rel. Rigsby at present? …
Are you holding your breath? Breathe. And watch out for PIN.
lotus
UPDATE: Walter Olson’s latest post supports NMC’s contention below that the “Scruggs hardly knew Balducci” defense theory is pretty, um, squirrelly.
in an article this morning, the Jackson Clarion Ledger quotes Tony Farese stating that the search has to do with the fee litigation that was the subject of the NY Times article Sunday:
“Ashland lawyer Anthony Farese, a friend of Langston and who is representing Scruggs’ son, said the documents seized Monday were unrelated to the Katrina case but did involve an attorney fees dispute in which the Langston firm represented Scruggs.
He would not specify which case but said it was an old case in which New Albany lawyer Tim Balducci, indicted with Scruggs in the case, “was the one who did the work,” Farese said.”
That’s going to put a damper on the “Scruggs hardly knew Balducci defense.”
Morning, NMC, and thanks for the link. And yeah, it scotches that defense perty good.
You reckon it’s Luckey v. Scruggs whose files the Feds are so interested in? So much for A/C privilege — at least at the search stage — as the article says.
Wonder why they hit his house too. (Balducci said to look for something special there?)
Hope all these guys are in good cardiac health. The tension in their circle must be killah right about now.