When the last State Farm v. Hood hearing happened, I posted a long quote from a series of cross-examination questions that the State Farm lawyer asked Hood about a meeting with Patterson and Balducci. The questions contained dark intimations that Patterson and Balducci had delivered a threat to Hood if Hood did not toe-the-line on Scruggs’s settlement. I posted about that here. It would now be interesting to compare those questions and Hood statements to what Balducci said in the FBI interview, described here.
I am assuming for present purposes that the questions from the hearing were directed toward the same meeting Balducci describes in his FBI interview.
Hood’s testimony is pretty equivocal. Here’s what I glean from the State Farm v. Hood testimony:
- He admits a dinner meeting with Patterson and Balducci and says they had just left the firm they were in and implies they were talking about their new firm.
- He denies knowing whether Patterson and Balducci were sent by Scruggs, but at the level of “I can’t know what is in another man’s mind.”
- He denies eating at Crechale’s.
- He denies that he was threatened. It’s equivocal to me whether he denies they talked about Democratic opposition for him.
- He does not deny (or admit) they were talking about Katrina cases or State Farm.
Inquiring minds wish that the State Farm lawyer had pinned Hood down just a tad more.
Someone with a handle on the class action settlement timeline might try to place this meeting in time. Balducci and Patterson started their firm in January. The meeting was enough pre-late-March that Balducci was sweating whether they were going to get the promised $500k.
When was the filing deadline for state elections last year? Mid-January?
A Researcher comment here and my comment following it shed some light on this.
“It would not be interesting …”
Do you mean “now” there instead, NMC?
not is now now, Lotus
(yes it was a typo, and is fixed)
Early March
is that the filing deadline question, My Thoughts?
March 1–yes, sorry. Filing deadline for state election was March 1, 2007 at 5pm
but the meeting transcript reads “prior to this March meeting,” so, that’s still plausible, correct?
The State Farm settlement was announced January 23, 2007. Scruggs and State Farm supposedly agreed to terms in November or December, but State Farm held the settlement hostage to pressure Scruggs to pressure Hood to drop the criminal case, so this dinner would have to be in December or January.
In one of the November phone transcripts, didn’t Balducci tell Backstrom that Hood had not spoken to him in months, and they talked about Hood planting his flag with Langston?
There was something about Hood not dancing with the ones who brought him. So, despite pressuring/threatening Hood and undermining his case against State Farm, these guys still felt that Hood owed them his allegiance.
Right, Researcher, but apparently I can’t figure out the right way to ask Ms. Searchbox for it.
Motion to dismiss outrageous conduct…Exhibit 2 pg 49, I think
It’s sound like the meeting was in the first 3 weeks of January and Scruggs was stringing P&B along about their payment until late March.
Trying hard to make some sense out of this. Boy do you folks look like some plugged in people.
I’d like to know where the Trent Lott piece to this puzzle fits in, if at all. He was subjected to the Karl Rove treatment long ago. Rove never liked him, disapproved of how much George Bush liked him, and was on that dumb Strom Thurmond comment like a duck on a June bug.
Since Lott & Rove have that well-documented connection, Lott is connected to Dickie Scruggs, and Dickie Scruggs belongs to the club of wealthy, influential, almost exclusively Democrat Mississippi trial lawyers who have been targeted by DoJ, how do you feel about the connection that has been suggested between this whole mess, and the Justice Department’s ongoing attempt to purge the federal jucidiary of anyone other than people who are willing to go along with the program?
Are the crimes you are discussing here being selectively prosecuted? Are there any Republicans in the Mississippi legal fraternity who might be brought up on similar financial shenanigans, but who aren’t being so brought up?
Hi and welcome to folo, deadeye. Your best bet for catching up is the Search box at top left. Type “Lott” or any other name or phrase you’re curious about into that sucker, hit the button, and STAND BACK.
On down from there, in the list of Pages, “Scruggsiana: Greatest Hits” will deliver an interesting afternoon’s worth too.
Enjoy.
Deadeye, the part of this case in Jackson inolves some names not consistent with a justice-dept-ax-grinding (DeLaughter, a Republican, Mike Allred (the lawyer for the Republican party for years , Ed Peters, who I’m sure ran for years as a Democrat but is not associated particularly with partisan politics). Also, there are many who think Dickie Scruggs got a pass on the Paul Minor prosecution because of his Republican connections. And don’t forget that as of 2006, Scruggs was the largest contributor to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, to the tune of over $4 million.
I think this is a straight-up political corruption scandal. I think it is still playing out at such an early stage that we can’t yet know whether the justice dept will follow this everywhere it may lead. I hope so.
This is not political at all. It is not associated with Rove like Minor or Seigelman. Not directly anyway. It is connected in that this starts up shortly after Rove resigns. Hence good US attorneys are allowed to bring cases even if they involve big donors or Republicans as this one clearly does.
Hood responds: (an AP report from the Daily Journal)
http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=266971&pub=1&div=News
Deadeye, that kind of defense to being caught committing a crime never really gets any traction with me.
If anything, their political relationship with the Democratic state attorneys general in Mississippi, the first line of defense for the state against corruption, is what allowed them to get this far before being pulled up short.
And, there are enough Republicans showing up in this thing to show that among this crowd, political ideology takes at least a second place to doing whatever is required to keep the cash flowing in.