This is from the FBI 302 for the November 2nd interview with Balducci. It’s got the biggest piece of news in today’s dump. This is one of the things Balducci told the FBI in the first couple of days he turned snitch (I expanded or translated some abbreviations):
Balducci told Dickie Scruggs that Balducci would see Judge Lackey and ask him as a favor to rule for arbitration in the [Jones] case. Balducci explained that Balducci felt pressure to go along with Dickie Scruggs’s request because Patterson Balducci had just started up and the firm was not generating any income at the time.
Balducci further explained, prior to this March 2007 meeting [with Scruggs], the Scruggs Law Firm (SLF) was trying to settle some Katarina [sic] Insurance cases with the State Farm Insurance Company (SFIC). SLF and SFIC were near a settlement, however, Dickie Scruggs (DS) learned that the Mississippi State Attorney Generals office had threatened to indict SFIC due to some impasses between the Attorney General’s office and SFIC. SFIC was not going to settle the civil cases with SLF, if the company was going to be indicted by the Attorney General’s office. DS asked Steve Patterson (SP) to speak with Attorney General Jim Hood since SP and Hood had a longstanding relationship. DS offered to pay Patterson Balducci $500,000 if they could get Hood to relent on indicting SFIC. Balducci accompanied SP to a meeting with Hood and Hood later agreed not to indict SFIC. SLF eventually settled with SFIC and that settlement yielded approximately $26 millions in attorneys fees. DS reneged on his pledge to pay Patterson Balducci $500,000, but later agreed to pay Patterson Balducci $100,000 per month over five months. The SLF first paid Patterson Balducci $100,000 in March 2007 and eventually paid the entire $500,000.
However, in March 2007, Balducci was concerned that Dickie Scruggs would refuse to pay the balance of the $500,000 if Balducci did not speak to Judge Lackey on Dickie Scruggs’s behalf. Also, during the March 2007 meeting, members of the SLF said SFIC would be the first of many Katrina related insurance settlements, that there would be more cases to settle and that the Jones Law firm would need to be replaced in the Scruggs Katrina Group (SKG). Balducci believed the Scruggs Law Firm would bring on Patterson Balducci in the SKG if Balducci could get Judge Lackey to rule for arbitration. Balducci described the unpaid balance on the $500,000 and the veiled offer to hire Patterson Balducci as a carrot and stick method to get Balducci to speak with Judge Lackey.
There’s more in this witness statement. For instance, Balducci calls P.L. Blake the bagman for Scruggs on the tobacco cases. Most of the rest is stuff we all ready know.
FBI memo of 11-2-07 interview with Balducci
Update:
Here’s my question: Is the meeting with Patterson, Balducci, and Hood the dinner conversation that State Farm’s lawyer alluded to in cross-examining Hood in Natchez?
The first and third para of the block quote and the para just before the word “update” were added, along with a link to the interview.
Now why would Hood relent?
I’m not sure I understand your question. I just did a big update, btw.
I’ve been posting all night with no time to read elsewhere Kingfish. These documents were all dumped early in the evening. Has any media picked up on the stuff about Hood I just quoted? I just happened to get to it at the end and wasn’t expecting it.
no but I am about to make sure some of them do. Mind if I post this transcript on my blog?
give me a nod, please.
btw, transcript was a misnomer I need to correct– it’s an interview memo
I meant relent on indicting SF. and I was being sarcastic.
actually, give me a nod & a link.
A link is better than a nod. Isn’t there some sort of saying to that effect?
sorry. I’m bleary-eyed and a little slow now. Look at the posting I’ve done this evening. I had a very full day of work from 7:30 am till 5:30 pm and then did all those posts for fun tonight.
I’m glad someone is still up to be the audience now that I’m done.
sure. that is what I was going to do. I just wanted your permissions that was all. idnd’t want to spoil an exclusive if it was one.
once it’s on the internet all i want is a link
thanks for asking though.
shoot me a quick email. kingfish1935@gmail.com
suppose someone had Pacer, could he find the memo?
Goodbye Jim Hood. Its been 145 years NMC since Sherman burned Jackson to the ground. I dare say you’ve just lit the torch again. Watch for smoke in the distance once the sun rises on these parts. Chimneyville 2008.
The memo is up there linked in the post, Kingfisher. It came off Pacer, and anyone with Pacer has access to it.
holy canoli!!! Hood would relent so the skg clients could get their money. Nothing wrong with that. But didn’t hood deny this meeting in Natchez? Question is why would hood deny this? He did nothing wrong until he lied about it. Also who in the federal government leaked this to sf lawyers?
Bleary-eyed first take:
1. Did you notice that Delaney IDs the “contact date” as “11/02/2007″ and consistently misspells “Katrina” as “Katarina”? Strangely sloppy — but, hey, it’s gummint work, right?
2. To my mind, the four lawyers become disbarrable by the top of page 2 in this memo, when nobody objects to “DS … asked the CHS to go see Judge Lackey and see if Judge Lackey would be amenable to move the case to arbitration.”
3. While I wonder what “some impasses between the Attorney Generals [sic] office and SFIC” includes, “DS offered to pay Patterson Balducci $500,000 if they could get Hood to relent on indicting SFIC. The CHS accompanied Patterson to a meeting with Hood and Hood later agreed not to indict SFIC” should burn Hood to the ground, no matter what the “impasses” were.
4. “DS reneged on his pledge to pay Patterson Balducci $500,000 …”: just can’t help himself, can he? No wonder “the CHS was concerned that DS would refuse to pay the balance of the $500,000 if the CHS did not speak to Judge Lackey on DS’s behalf.”
5. High on page 3, “The CHS told Judge Lackey that the CHS was not personally involved in the civil suit, but the CHS would benefit if Judge Lackey ruled in favor of the SLF and ruled for arbitration …”: If that‘s the way Tim thought Mississippi lawyering is done . . .
6. “After leaving the meeting with Judge Lackey, the CHS went to the SLF and met with SB. The CHS told SB how the meeting went, SB said okay, and asked the CHS to let him know what happens next” satisfies me that Sid Backstrom never had any business with a law license. (But I’m just prissy like that.)
7. Low on page 5, after the “Blake = Dickie’s bagman on tobacco” news, “Blake is paid approximately $1 million per year out of attorney’s fees controlled by DS. Blake receives the money directly from DS, the CHS does not know why … .” The big hanging chad here is still “Why didn’t PLB make the first round of indictments?”
That is very interesting to say the least.
It makes you wonder just how much other evidence the feds have uncovered at this point.
When Balducci said he knew where some bodies (operative form here being plural rather than singular) were buried, he wasn’t kidding, was he?
If Patterson corroborated this in his interviews, and you have to figure he did, I would say that Scruggs entrapment defense just bit the dust in the best case scenario, and he has another indictment coming in the worst.
Good catch there, NMC.
lotus, regarding 19 #7 I think P.L. actually gets $2 million per year (paid in quarterly payments) for 20 years. With the big $10 million initial down payment this would make the $50 million total as discussed in the Scruggs v Luckey depositions. This for cutting out paper dolls? Circles and cycles!!
During the recent hearings in Natchez, the State Farm lawyer asked Hood about the dinner with Balducci and Patterson. Since none of this info was public at the time, how did that lawyer know about the meeting? He could not have had access to this FBI 302, could he?
perhaps Blake gets 2 mil per year but only gets to keep one mil. The other mil perhaps goes to someone else or to a proverbial slush fund?
expat 22, that’s one helluva good question, as is confounded’s 23.
When oh when will we finally see the flames under all this pall of black smoke?
confounded, I have thought that all along. I’ll bet a big part of the $10 million down payment went elsewhere. The big question is WHERE!
expat, I think he’d heard about the meeting but didn’t have details– if he’d had this 302, he’d have hit a lot closer to home in asking about what went down in that dinner meeting.
Lotus, the agent testified that this interview was 11/2/7.
someone asks “what if Patterson corroborates this? I have a better question: What if the payment of $500,000 by Scruggs to Balducci in the spring/summer of 07 corroborates this?
I think that both Patterson and the payment will corroborate.
Thanks, NMC 26.
Here’s a question– remember the term “burn rate”– the rate a startup goes through the cash?
just what was the burn rate for Patterson-Balducci? Here they have a BRAND NEW law firm and get a fee that takes no effort but pays $100K a month for months 3-7 of their existence, but yet they were frantic over cash! Just what kind of cashflow did they expect when they started that firm?
NMC 28, however much that was, I also wonder how much of said cashflow they counted on their Biden connections to provide.
Hmmm. It will be interesting to see how Hood spins this. Can you spell “indictment?”
Yep, irate, but I still wanna know whether Presley L. Blake can! (He can’t spell much, as I remember, but I sure want his dreams haunted by that particular word.)
NMC, This cash flow is what blows a number-crunchers mind, its as if they are drunken sailors at a slot machine, with no respect for the value of money. Anyone who has made payroll or done a set of books will tell you 500,000.00 is hell of lot of money on the books. Now who is paying taxes on this which would be the first thing a savey person would need to take care of. These people including P L Blake is a bunch of money launders, and their value of money is unbelievable. The IRS should be in this up to their eyeballs.
Lotus, I imagine the Feds have spoken at length with PL or his attorney. There’s still so much we don’t know and so many people who have yet to be indicted. What a strange road it’s been so far!
lotus, the only explanation that I have as to Mr Blake avoiding the big “I” is that he may have been lending a helping hand.
irate and jim, yes, but Balducci’s been their mainstay from November 1 on — so if his indictment was in the first round, where’s Presley’s?
What’s the point/use of this invisibility?
lotus,jim and irate..Something is not right here on P L Blake. Sure there is lots we don’t know, but it appears right now there is hanky-panky or a cover-up on PL. We know the big elephant in the room .
lotus, remember me questioning the chance of bridging to other cases? I think Presley is of future value. He may be the featured chef when the bigger fish are fried??–hell I never have been able to figure him out!
P’raps, jim. I know you’ve got a good fried-chicken background, so what batter do you recommend for bottom-feeding P.L.? And how’re yer hushpuppies?
jim, read Scruggs’ deposition in the Luckey case. The P.L. Blake payments, the Anderson Sears (Developing Markets Group, LLC) payments, and the Grover Norquist (Americans for Tax Reform) payment are all discussed. The way I read it, Blake got $10 million in 3 payments but it is not clear whether he distributed most of it. Separately, Norquist got $4.3 million for lobbying against a tax on the attorney fees, but reported it as a contribution to his non-profit.
Then of the quarterly payments, it appears that DMG, LLC (Anderson, Sears, Hoppenstein) gets $250K, and Blake gets $219K. Merkel rounded up to make that come out to $2 million/year and $40 million over 20 years. Blake would not get $50 million, the way I read the transcript.
In Natchez Hood was asked whether B-P delivered a threat that Scruggs would fund an opponent if Hood did not drop the criminal case. Hood admitted that he had dinner one night with B & P, but not at the restaurant in question and said that they talked about B & P’s new firm. That all may be true, though not the full story.
This should, but probably will not, end any argument that Hood started the criminal case as part of a conspiracy with Scruggs. Why would Scruggs pay $500K to squeeze Hood if Hood was in on the deal?
The deal was announced on Jan. 23, 2007. The date of this dinner is very important here. From about Jan. 9 until Hood relented, Scruggs was going public with the fact that Hood was holding up the settlement. He was quoted by Anita Lee in the Sun Herald. On Jan. 18, Don Barrett wrote Sheila Birnbaum to say her offer to Hood was a good deal, but urged that she continue to work with SKG if Hood did not have the wisdom to accept it. Where would this dinner fit in? Wouldn’t Scruggs try the behind the scenes squeeze before he went to Anita Lee?
In Natchez, Hood says he dropped the criminal case because State Farm agreed to his terms in his civil case in state court, not because of the Scruggs deal. He said that SF agreed to reevaluate each claim based on standards approved by the federal court. That is not the way Scruggs or State Farm have portrayed the Jan. 23 events, but that is Hood’s story.
Researcher, I just did a freestanding post about this (your comment is a great addition to it).
Here’s more data: I’m assuming the meeting was post Jan-1 because that’s when Patterson Balducci launched, although I may be wrong. When was the filing deadline for state office? Surely the Butler Snow lawyer would have known the timing on that as a premise for his question? (that is, I’m not saying the threat was necessarily delivered, but saying that the implication of threat would be meaningless if Hood could have answered, “Heck no, that meeting was after the filing deadline.”)
And Researcher, you are right that, if true, this kills the whole conspiracy theory espoused by State Farm.
What it doesn’t kill is my theory that these folks were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
Balducci and Patterson received 500K and what did Scruggs donate to General Hood.
what did P&B donate to General Hood? Anyone check?
NMC, Bet Alben knows without looking it up.
Thanks for your hard work, NMC. Keep shining the light on Hood!! He’s the most dangerous of them all, as he still holds the power to prosecute!
Researcher, why did the P.L. Blake payments go through Langston to Blake rather than directly from Scruggs to Blake?
Who’s Alben, mag?
Not really important in the “Grand Scheme” of things, but I wonder why Hood didn’t point out the bar violation of a Patterson (non-lawyer) Balducci Law Firm, if, as Hood claims, they were meeting to discuss the new firm.
Last night, when the weather knocked out my internet connection, I knew I was going to miss a lot, but I’m really catching up on it this morning. Thank you so much for keeping us informed. This is far better than the “Perils of Pauline” , although most of you are too young to recognize the reference.
lotus, Alben would be Alben Hopkins, Hood’s Republican opponent.
Haw, Dixie, we’re getting run over by a speeding locomotive called the NMC Express!
Thanks, Sailor.
Patterson to Hood 05/06 $10,000
Joey to Hood 05/06 $15K
Dickie to Hood 07/09 In Kind $33,000
Patterson to Hood 06/06 $10K
Nutt to Hood 05/;17 In Kind $552.00
Joey to Hood 05/14 $5250.00 In Kind
To DAGA from Joey $100K 1003
To DAGA from Scruggs $100K 1002
To DAGA from Scruggs $250K 1017
Still looking for the Balducci contribution
Does Balducci have any money to contribute?
I know I’ve seen it, just haven’t found it. But I thought the same thing DN, when I read that Langston didn’t have the cash to front for something and Balducci did. Also, if Patterson had $20,000 to donate… ???
Jim,
No one has offered any explanation why the first $10 million went to Langston and then to Blake rather than simply from Scruggs to Blake. Scruggs says Blake may have requested it.
The deposition does reveal that $6 million of that first $10 million to Blake came from Ness Motley’s share; $4 million and the subsequent millions in quarterly payments came from Scruggs’ share. When Merkel asks why that split, Scruggs says that was the agreement they reached with Ness Motley.
Scruggs money to P/B on to Hood..Hoods memory on the stand was they discussed the start up of P/B Firm..I guess they did, and it was figured out a win/win situation..If you do this, he will pay this, and we donate this..
When did Anderson leave Lott’s office..Down thru the years I have always heard this money was Anderson’s but did not know Anderson’s or his connections. We need the time line on when Anderson left Lott and if he every had to make another dime, or if he laundered this money on thru PL.
By the way, there was also another DAGA to Hood contribution on 07/06/07 of $300K. Then on 08/03/07, Hood apparently paid DAGA back $300K and reported as “return contribution.”
Some of where the burn went. I don’t see much extra for campaign donations here:
http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/uploads/519e047bb2.jpg
Addition for timeline…07/16/07 Hood/Courtney letter to Alice Martin naming Scruggs as “confidential informant”
Its All Good, If Mike Moore had shared his good fortune with Mr. Johnson, If Dickie Scruggs had shared his good fortune with Mr. Wilson, If Joey Langston had shared his good fortune with Mr. Balducci if if if
Researcher, Thanks much. I just have to think that the $10 million was circulated in some high and influential places. I just do not think that P.L. was paid that kind of money to read the paper and watch CSPAN.
Mag,#61, is my memory shot, or didn’t Anderson leave Lott to run for Congress following Larkin Smith’s untimely death (89 or 90)? And wasn’t it following Smith’s visitation where the ambitious Mike Moore stood vigil at the casket, thus earning him the moniker, “Morbid Mike,” during his unsuccessful bid for said congressional seat?
Gene Taylor beat Anderson in ’89 for that seat
Heh, heh – Morbid Mike. He does rather look like an undertaker.
Sailor, your memory is fine. Sheila Smith, widow of Larkin, was prepared to stand for the seat as a place-holder until the GOP could groom a candidate to replace her. But Trent insisted on sticking his l0ngtime AA, Anderson, into the race. Anderson had been away from the district for years in D.C., and was not widely liked in any event. That, in short, is how the most Republican congressional district (at that time, at least) fell into Democratic hands. Taylor has worked the constituent-services pump to burrow in like a tick, and probably cannot be dislodged.
Thanks, Gardenia, you are right. Gene is probably the most beloved Congressman in the nation following Katrina. He is a TRUE populist, albeit a “Blue Dog” which bothers many a Yellow Dog Democrat. So now, back to Mag’s question: what has become of Anderson’s fortunes? Does he not have something to do w/ Domino’s pizza?
While I am at it, it seems obvious that P.L. Blake has become an asset of the Justice Department. No one has seen hide nor hair of him nor heard a peep about him since this story broke. Given the pivotal role he played in events under investigation, you know that the Feds would not leave him unindicted, unarrested, and non-cooperating — just wandering around Northern Alabama, where he could suddenly decide to move to Belize, where he could be whacked by someone we haven’t even met yet, or where he could die of natural causes.
Same deal with Ed Peters. He has flat disappeared, but he remains unindicted. My guess is that both of these parties are cooperating and, to borrow a metaphor from the oil bid’ness, they have been fraced and are producing at maximum efficient rates.
I am saying the Feds have had P.L. in the chicken coop for sometime. They connected a lot of dots in rapid fashion.
Gardenia, it is almost a lock that the feds don’t have a deal with Peters– last week, when Keker tried to ask he be called as a witness, the US Atty said that Peters lawyer would probably recommend he take the Fifth. That is not what happens with a cooperating witness.
I also think that anything said about were the government is with regard to P.L. Blake is total speculation. He’s produced more speculation than any other figure in this mess, probably because so little is actually known about him. But I’d bet against him having a deal at this point.
Does anyone know who represents PL Blake? Is it Fred Thompson again. (JK) Has anyone seen him since Christmas? It does indeed look like he was flipped early which would have panicked Joey and caused him to take quick deal. If they have him, then they have three bag men, PL, Balducci, and Joey already with several inferences of more in the transcripts.
Which begs the question how many damn bag men did Dickie have?