folo

Another transcript in the batch today is an excerpt from the November 1st meeting where Balducci finishes delivering the cash to Judge Lackey just before the FBI nabs Balducci and gives him his come-to-Jesus moment.

This is 17 pages, about 19 pages after the start of the conversation, and doesn’t include the main business (where perhaps we have Balducci say, “Here’s more cash, Judge Lackey”) and doesn’t include the end of the conversation. What it does include is Balducci going wild — he notes that he’s got all this criminal defense business now (I originally wrote “criminal business” and realized that with Balducci that was ambiguous), and then says he’s got this other thing, he’s reluctant to bring up, may not ought to “go to the well” again, but…

Oh, why not!

He has this case he brought with him from Joey Langston involving a manslaughter charge against the nephew of a state transportation commissioner. The nephew has apparently been a bad boy, and, tanked up on meth and other drugs, killed someone on the road and was charged with vehicular homicide in Marshall County. Balducci was going to do the case as a favor, but Langston said no, and demanded $30K, which was paid. When Balducci left Langston’s firm, the client wanted to go with Balducci, who’d been hired to begin with, but Langston kept the money. Balducci proposes to Judge Lackey that there is a basis to throw out the defendant’s urine test (which is needed to show vehicular homicide) and then the case will at worst go to the Mississippi Supreme Court, and that Balducci can hit up the family for $20k to handle that, which Balducci will split with Judge Lackey.

I’m assuming that all of this made Judge Lackey feel better about Tim Balducci’s eventual fate. It sure doesn’t suggest Balducci was a reluctant participant in judicial bribery.

Here’s the November 1st partial transcript.

The Scruggs memorandum cites this as suggesting that Balducci wasn’t acting on behalf of the conspiracy, he was freelancing, and that the agent’s affidavit for the search warrant was misleading for omitting this. Right.