Woohoo and welcome to Scruggsiana, Scott Horton!
My favorite blogger (a Southern- and very-D.C.-connected lawyer himself) has just posted stunning news about Trent Lott’s exposure in all this. “I have learned,” he writes,
that the criminal investigation that produced the indictments may have a connection with events that rattled Washington only 36 hours before a team of FBI agents descended upon the Scruggs Law Firm in Oxford, when Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, who just secured reelection last year and had five years left on his term to serve, suddenly and dramatically announced that he was resigning from the Senate to pursue other objectives. His explanations produced blank stares. Washington insiders who were close to Lott rushed to explain that due to changes in lobbying restrictions, Lott would benefit from a transition to a K Street practice by leaving before year’s end. Others were unconvinced. ( "Something’s seriously the matter, " one Republican strategist told me, "but I don’t have an inkling what it is. ")
Well, here comes Horton with the sort of inkling that
two senior law enforcement figures in Mississippi told me was "more than simply plausible. " The FBI had secured warrants to monitor Scruggs’s phone calls early in the course of the case, during the summer or early fall. In some of those conversations Dickie Scruggs asked for his brother-in-law’s help in fighting off Judge Acker’s attempts to have him prosecuted. Trent Lott picked up the phone and spoke with a few friends in the Justice Department … or perhaps even directly with a U.S. Attorney or two in Alabama, or a senator from Alabama … and asked them to lay off his misbehaving brother-in-law. My examination of prosecutions in Alabama over the last two years … of which the Siegelman case is the most notable … show that in few places in the country are the federal prosecutors’ offices so politically charged and motivated as in Alabama.
If the FBI was listening in, and it gathered information that Lott had tried to influence the situation to help bail out his brother-in-law, that would raise major issues. Politicians should not try to influence the course of specific criminal cases. Such interventions are not normally grist for a criminal investigation. Most likely they would evolve into an ethics investigation inside of Congress. Was Trent Lott facing this prospect when he decided to step down?
Hugh Gamble, Sen. Helmet-hair’s Lott’s counsel, responded to Horton’s request for comment, “Senator Lott’s announcement is in no way related to any legal issues and in no way has he been involved with this matter. U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee said, in a press conference, the matters were not related and drawing any connection based on a perceived plausibility is highly inaccurate and irresponsible.”
“Fair enough,” Horton agrees.
That said, the two prominent figures in the Mississippi legal community mentioned above told me that Lott has recently engaged a well-regarded local criminal lawyer to advise him on some questions relating to the Scruggs case. There’s no crime in hiring a lawyer, but it does point to Senator Lott having on-going dealings with the U.S. Attorney handling the Scruggs case.
Might the prosecutors have asked Trent Lott, one of Washington’s political titans, to resign as part of a deal? A week ago I would have found that very far-fetched, but now I am not so sure.
Scruggs’s office did not reply when asked for comment. I will update this story if they do.
You will want to read the whole thing.
lotus
Would Lott have picked up the bugged phone at Dickie’s house or office, or is the suggestion that they started bugging Lott’s phone, too?
Or would the FBI have asked the local and nearby USA’s whether Lott contacted them?
I can’t see from here how they could have overheard Lott on the phone.
Anybody?
My guess, LD, is that they picked him up on one or two Dickie wires first, then there was a bit of USA-DoJ co-ordination (IF we’re talking post Gonzo’s resignation).
I think LD has a point. There are just too many missing pieces from Horton’s very interesting, very suggestive post. I’d love a little more background on this sources.
If this guess is right, it raises another question: who broke silence and warned Lott? That could itself produce some serious repurcussions.
I’m just going to say “hmmmm” for now about this. I’m not convinced but I’m not unconvinced.
As to who broke silence, well, we ARE talking about two guys married to sisters, ain’t we?
Cherchez les soeurs?
I meant broke silence on the prosecution (that is, Justice Dept) side. Scruggs had no way of knowing what was coming on Monday. If Horton is right, someone had to have talked out of school to give Lott a heads up.
This is the Bush DoJ after all, NMC. They serve and protect their own, not us.
Has anyone been asking Lott about whether or not he’s received a target letter? It is interesting to think of who he might have picked up the phone and called at DOJ, but if Lott was tipped off by someone at DOJ about the upcoming events, you have to believe that they would have covered tracks very carefully, so I wonder if we will ever know?
Horton and you are burning this one up Lotus.
I
Mmm, cherchez la target letter: an excellent question, Mary, one that I hope some reporter soon borrows from you. Glad to have you back here, and thanks for your great CIA-tapes diary at Kos — go get ‘em! I would NOT want you on my trail, were I a miscreant.
If we do learn of a DoJ-to-Lott warning, it’ll be interesting to line its timing up against that of Gonzales’s immobilization and the clearing out of so many DoJ top-management types.
Seems to me, going after Trent Lott would have to mean enough career DoJ people finally got enough “loyal Bushies” out of their faces to go back to some legitimate chores. I’d be floored if any good close look at him took place while the Gonzales crowd was fully in control.
But by the time Balducci went to chat-up Judge Lackey, then well into the summer, they were suddenly over-occupied with testifying, trying to avoid testifying, losing emails, and organizing serial Friday afternoon resignations to-spend-more-time-with-my-family . . .
Still, no doubt enough GOP-first loyalists remained squirrelled away in DoJ to have given Ol’ Trent a timely whisper. As your diary (and so much else) proves, however, the mopes ain’t all THAT competent at tracks-covering, so it’s possible we’ll see the whole pattern yet.
I’d sure like that.