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Balducci’s grand jury testimony is now semi-available. The transcript that Zach Scruggs’s motion includes is incredibly annoying. It contains every other page, roughly, and I guess is designed to impede somewhat the flow of information into the public sphere. It does that to the point that any reader (e.g. including judges and law clerks) will find it very frustrating. But some things can be gleaned from it in spite of the lacunae. I am going to hold for a later post the key question: Whether it really can be said that Balducci lied about the 11/1 meeting and Zach Scruggs. Here’s what I see in the rest:

• Backstom called Balducci to tell him about the problem with Jones.
• One thing that was dangled in front of Balducci was replacing Jones and getting ‘potentially millions of dollars in fees.”
• When asked why he took this on, one of the things he talked about was his approach to Hood. There was a “significant issue…impeding the settlement. And it was the fact that the Attorney General … Jim Hood, was investigating and threatening to criminally prosecute State Farm. … [W]hat was happening was a real strange dynamic. You had on the one hand the Scruggs Group which was suing State Farm and aggressively pursuing them in civil litigation. And at the same time you had the Attorney General who was investigating and threatening to indict the company and prosecute them criminally.” State Farm would not settle unless “State Farm got essentially world peace.” Balducci was to “try to help them almost mediate the dispute and try to get that dispute between the Attorney General and State Farm resolved.” If Balducci did that, if “we were successful in lobbying and working with the Attorney General’s lawyers to bring that to a resolution that they would pay us $500,000.” They were successful. They went back to Scruggs and told him they had completed the job and he owed $500,000. Scruggs paid $100,000, owed $400,000 and Balducci was worried about getting the rest. “I was nervous and suspicious that if I didn’t do this for him that he had already reneged on the deal once that we made. I was nervous and suspicious that he might try to renege altogether and not pay us the money that he had promised.”
• Balducci was surprised at Lackey’s inquiry about getting some help in September. “I was a little surprised. But I said, well, Judge, I don’t know. What kind of help are you talking about. And he said, well not anything unreasonable. And I knew he was talking about money. But he said not anything unreasonable. Well, I didn’t know what that meant. When you talk about 26 million dollars I don’t know what’s reasonable and what’s unreasonable. And so I said, well, look, let me find out.” He talked to Patterson about it first.
• In the call where Backstrom told him the Scruggs firm would cover the $40,000, Balducci was standing in his driveway at his home in New Albany, having just pulled in from work and got out of his truck. He can’t remember if his cell phone rang or the home phone, but when he knew it was Sid, “I needed to separate myself from my wife and children and go outside for privacy” so he went to his driveway and had the conversation there. Backstrom said the $40,000 was covered, do it.
• A few days after September 27th, there was a meeting with Steve Patterson and Dickie Scruggs in the Scruggs firm. Scruggs was heavily involved in the campaign for Gary Anderson for Insurance Commissioner.
• In a meeting [the transcript has so much missing text it is hard to say when. October, not Nov. 1], the judge said that he had drafted a different order that accomplished the same thing, that he wanted it to reflect more the way he did things, the way he styles his orders.
• After meeting with Judge Lackey, Balducci called Backstom to say it was done, that the order was ready to be entered. He went to the office and Backstrom wasn’t there, and so Balducci left a copy with Zach and said the original would be filed in a few days. [Here the gap in the transcripts omits Balducci's conversation with Zach].
• Balducci says he is concerned about the safety of his family and has asked for protection.

That’s the core of it. For an annoying read, here are excerpts from Balducci’s grand jury testimony.