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Since yesterday, we’ve posted a bunch about explosive allegations in two New Orleans federal court cases involving James Perdigao, in which he has filed a motion aimed at the U.S. Attorney and then sued his former firm, Adams and Reese. We did a 3 part series, and posted about an ABA Journal article. (Lawyers Gone Wild, Parts One, Two, Three, and Four, and the ABA Journal post are all here).

There are three players who are trying to put across their narratives in this mess. Here they are, with my understanding of the story they are trying to tell:

1. Perdigao: I had this $30 mil sitting in cash that I’d skimmed and had led a life of crime and bribery with my law partners and clients, and then when I tried to repent, the government wouldn’t listen to me because they were so deeply involved with some of my co-criminals and determined to save the Edwards prosecution.
2. The Government: He is a liar. We are sputtering with rage to the point of incoherence about Perdigao’s accusations.
3. Adams and Reese: While we were tending to other business, this rogue partner skimmed $30 whole million from us. Gosh, we were surprised.

None of it quite adds up. You read Perdigao’s pleadings and come away thinking: That’s a stunner, but it doesn’t really make sense. It doesn’t add up to a coherent narrative of any sort. The government’s pleadings basically say “$#$% no!” Not much to convince me there. Adams and Reese’s response raises more questions than answers, among many: Just how does someone run $30 million in fraudulent billings and fake deals over 13 years and not get noticed?

So what narrative could these folks try to sell, based on the public facts? My wife said the term “slush fund” in reference to the $30 mil in accounts and suddenly I could imagine a coherent narrative for Perdigao: “My law firm had these gambling clients who, in order to do business in Louisiana in that day, had to have funds readily available for bribes. We did all sorts of sham transactions to make that money disappear from their books, and then held it in slush funds so it’d been ready and available when the time came. I was the luckless grind whose name was used for the accounts.”

There’s all kind of loose facts this would explain– e.g. how a client just wouldn’t notice when Perdigao pocketed like a half million dollars in tax refunds after a closing. But Pardigao isn’t trying to put forward a story that sensible (maybe coherent-narrative-making isn’t part of the skill-set for a luckless grind).

The government response has created a problem for Perdigao. They’ve now used every imaginable word for “liar” in response to his motion, which I would think makes it pretty unlikely they’ll offer him a deal that involves using him as a witness. But I don’t understand them to have a coherent narrative, either. Why did they keep talking to him for two years? They did, didn’t they? (They don’t seem to be denying that). And, reading the pleadings, I really have to believe the government will get the better of the proof on the allegations Perdigao has made. This is going to be a hard case for him to make out. Yet, unlike with Perdigao, I can’t guess what the government’s “story” might be here.

That leaves Adams and Reese. They state that they are victims here, and had this rogue partner in their midst. Honestly, I have trouble believing all of the stuff in Perdigao’s complaint. One of the reasons people keep comparing it to legal thrillers is that it is so over the top. At some saturation point, I’m ready to apply the maximum falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus to that RICO complaint and write it off. But there’s that $30 million accumulated over thirteen years.

It’s just hard to say what’s going on here, don’t you think?

Update: Minor edit of a confusing sentence.

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For our Saturday animal goody, I commend to your attention the video on NYT’s front page right now (or if it’s changed by the time you read this, the one here, complete with story and still photos): inmates in a women’s prison training Golden and Lab puppies to be service dogs for Iraq-war veterans.

Beautiful.

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In tomorrow’s Washington Post, Jonathan Yardley’s review of the McClellan book more or less takes Scott McClellan’s word that his perceptions of the President and Administration he served have only gradually changed, leaving him more sad than angry.

But Yardley repeatedly wonders what many of us do: how can it have possibly taken the author as long to “get it” as he claims, why, and what’s with all this self-blaming? Whether disingenuousness or something else explains McClellan’s vow that he still likes and admires Bush, that hardly matches up with the story he tells.

Oh well. What I really want to point out is the nifty segue Yardley makes as he brings the review to a close:

… At last, though, [McClellan] seems to have decided to be loyal to himself and the principles in which he insists he believes. This means that in what must now be a tiny circle of diehard Bushies he will be excoriated as a traitor, but mostly these complaints are likely to fall on deaf ears. George W. Bush, as the direct consequence of his own character and actions, is the most unpopular president in American history, and the campaign now beginning in earnest will in great measure be a referendum on him and his record. What McClellan reports in this book is part of that record, and doubtless we will hear more about it as the campaign progresses.

The Washington in which the next president will hold sway is depicted herein as “broken and dominated by partisan warfare and the culture of deception it spawns.” McClellan is right about this, and in his final chapter he offers some sensible suggestions for changing the atmosphere.

Since the candidates have sought to minimize negative campaigning in the coming five months, perhaps the winner will be more open to bipartisanship, cooperation and compromise than were his predecessors, Bush and Bill Clinton alike. But the poison here built up over a long time, and it’s not going to vanish overnight.

Nope, but we gotta start somewhere, and most of the country is on board for it. At least and at last, we’ve got that going for us.

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In her story in yesterday’s Eagle, Alyssa Schnugg solves a little mystery for us:

The sentencing date for [Dickie and Zach Scruggs and Sid Backstrom] was originally ordered for June 18, but the senior Scruggs objected to the first sentencing date, claiming he did not receive the pre-sentence report until May 27. The defendants are granted 14 days to review the reports and make comments. Then the Probation Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have seven days to respond to those comments. The original order by Biggers said Scruggs and the others should have received their reports by May 23, but since they did not, he granted them additional time and changed the sentencing date to July 2.

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Though (strangely) some of my favorite area-expert bloggers and the London papers aren’t mentioning this, several U.S. and Asian news organizations are reporting that George W. Bush’s favorite strongman, Pervez Musharraf, may be down to his last few days in Pakistan.

The New York Times and Associated Press both have him denying resignation rumors, but his words — especially combined with other information in these reports — are hardly convincing. Among other things, we learn that Pakistan Army chief Ashfaq Kiyani visited him on Wednesday, apparently to tell him to go — and underscored the message by removing the commander of the “Triple-One” Brigade, the unit providing presidential security in Rawalpindi.

Asif Ali Zardari, leader of the ruling coalition in Parliament and head of the Pakistani People’s Party (Benazir Bhutto’s old power-base), has previously sounded somewhat supportive of Musharraf, but now he’s joined coalition-partner Nawaz Sharif, former prime minister and head of the PML-N party, in calling for him to get out now.

Adding their voices to the chorus, several Pakistani newspapers are editorializing that he’s gotta go (one calling him “King Musharraf,” a reference to Nepal’s freshly-deposed King Gyanendra). And according to a report on the Indian site Mangalorean.com,

An umbrella group of Pakistani lawyers has threatened to take out a long march from Islamabad to the General Headquarters in the adjacent garrison town of Rawalpindi on June 10 to demand the immediate reinstatement of the sacked judges.

In Zardari’s scheme of things, the PPP and the PML-N too will join the march – to convert it into one against Musharraf to demand he resign.

“The big question, however, remains how the military establishment would cope with the massive public pressure when the two mainstream political parties would be marching on Rawalpindi side-by-side with the excited lawyers and civil society organisations”, The News quoted its sources as saying.

That story also mentions “a special aircraft … stationed at the Chaklala airbase in … Rawalpindi to fly Musharraf and his family out to a ‘friendly country.’”

But the unkindest cut comes from a really unexpected quarter: A.Q. Khan.

The Pakistani scientist blamed for running a rogue network that sold nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya has recanted his confession, telling ABC News the Pakistani government and President Perez Musharraf forced him to be a “scapegoat” for the “national interest.”

“I don’t stand by that,” Dr. A.Q. Khan told ABC News in a 35-minute phone interview from his home in Islamabad, where he has been detained since “confessing” that he ran the nuclear network on his own, without the knowledge of the Pakistani government. …

“People were asking a lot of questions, so I said, ‘OK. Let me give an answer,’” Khan told ABC News early Friday, Pakistan time.

As to his widely publicized confession, Khan said he was told by Musharraf that it would get the United States “off our backs” and that he was promised he would be quickly pardoned. “Those people who were supposed to know knew it,” Khan said about his activities.

If true, it would mean Pakistan lied to the U.S. and the international community about its role in providing nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya. …

Meanwhile back at the White House, GWB placed a 25-minute phone call to Musharraf, as supportive as ever . . .

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Oh golly, no telling how many colors how many faces at the defendants’ table turned during yesterday’s testimony at the Kentucky phen-fen trial. There on the witness stand sat Melbourne Mills, Jr.’s former legal assistant Rebecca Phipps, telling all — or at the very least, way too much.

Though William Gallion told her “to get rid of the documents” showing clients’ payments of settlement money, instead she put them under lock and key, she testified.

Phipps, who was spared prosecution in exchange for her testimony, also said Mills “laughed” when she told him about a plan Gallion came up with to pay the lawyers based on the maximum each client could have received, rather than the much smaller amounts they were actually paid.

“He was very pleased,” she said.

But Mills was furious, Phipps said, when he found out in January 2002 that the settlement had been for $50 million more than the $150 million that Gallion had told him.

“He was upset, and I was scared,” she said.

According to Phipps, Mills was drinking “around the clock” in May 2001 when the case settled (later, he’d be hospitalized for alcoholism, and this week for a cardiac flareup — though he made court yesterday). At a party about a week after he frightened her, Phipps said, Mills called Gallion “a liar and a thief” and told him to leave.

Testifying on direct examination yesterday morning, Phipps said that one of the defendant lawyers told her to settle cases with clients “for as low as possible” and that those with the most minor injuries, who could have gotten up to $95,000 each, instead were offered $15,000. …

Phipps’ testimony, portions of which emerged previously in a lawsuit filed against the lawyers by their former clients, further undercut the defendants’ claims that they paid out the additional money when various “contingent liabilities” failed to arise. …

Questioned by defense counsel, Phipps yesterday denied that she ever told any of the clients that they could go to jail if they disclosed the terms of the settlement, as some of the plaintiffs previously testified.

She also acknowledged that even the lower amounts that the clients were paid were far more than they would have received under a national class-action settlement.

But even that little bright spot for the defendants faded when former client Katherine Hutchison followed Phipps to the stand, and a defense lawyer blundered by suggesting that, as a plaintiff in the pending lawsuit against these guys, Hutchison is being greedy by seeking more than the $38,000 they gave her.

“We should have received more money to begin with,” Hutchison said. “Some people no longer with us today might still be here, if they had gotten the money they should have, when they should have.”

Yowch.

Okay, experienced white-collar crim-defenders among us, when the prosecution shows up with a set of witnesses as damning as these, what play do you have? What can you try? Or do you sometimes just have to sit there and, rather than make matters worse (à la that last fool), watch your client go green at the gills?

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Saturdays don’t usually generate much political news, but thanks to a certain meeting happening in Washington, D.C., today will. The Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee will finally decide what to do about seating the Florida and Michigan delegations to the party convention in August.

In the Washington Post, Dan Balz reviews how the committee ended up with this assignment, while during WaPo’s online “Politics Hour,” Paul Kane states the bottom line:

I’ve spent the past several months talking to as many super-delegates as any reporter in America, I’d guess, since I cover on a day-to-day basis about 280 of them here on Capitol Hill.

I hate saying this, because all the Clinton people are going to flip out and say, You’re biased, you’re biased, you’re biased. So go ahead and flip out if you want, but the simple basic truth is that the super-delegates stopped paying attention to the Clinton-Obama race about a couple days after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries.

They’ve stopped paying attention to the primary, and instead they’re focused on an Obama-McCain matchup in November. That’s the basic, simple, definitive reality that has happened in this race. The “undecided” super-delegates at this moment are not going to “decide” any time soon, because to them the race is over, they’re just waiting for Clinton to drop out.

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The folks at Slabbed found an American Bar Association Journal article about Perdigao from the time of his indictment.  It is very much from the Adams and Reese perspective, and is reminiscent of those newspaper stories about murderers where they interview a neighbor:  “He was so quiet and kept to himself. It just never would have occurred to us.”  There’s a certain defensiveness to that, one would think, when a partner gets nabbed for billing fraud.  And lucky for the partners, Perdigao didn’t spend much money.  He had no life, and there it all was in the bank accounts, waiting to be returned.

What the article does provide is a little sketching in of details, giving some notion what he’s like but from an Adams and Reese perspective.  All this raises two really odd things to me:  What was he doing stealing all that money, if he really wasn’t using it for anything?  The article has comments from a national expert on lawyers taking client money, who notes how unusual it is that the money is intact, and that the amount is unusually high.  And (as has been noted elsewhere) how the heck did he keep this quiet so long?  It’s not like he was running his paws through the petty cash.  Here’s some choice nuggets from the article:

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“This” being an unofficial, non-state organization — in fact, a political PAC — displaying the official state seal on one of its fliers.

If this is legal, Mississippi law is weirder than I ever dreamed.

(h/t Sailor)

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Having apparently studied up on the playbook Germany was using in WWII (no, this is not the time to invoke Godwin’s Law), Perdigao decided it was time to open another front in the war. So on May 27th, he filed a complaint against his former law firm, Adams and Reese, asserting that it was being operated as a racketeering enterprise.

There are aspects of this complaint that completely mystify me. For instance, there are lots and lots of allegations (key word) of really outrageous criminal behavior in which Mr. Perdigao participated to varying degrees, with apparently varying degrees of enthusiasm. But it is hard to see exactly how he was a victim of this activity, even if true. He seems more a participant to me, even in his own account. And given that the complaint is signed and sworn to by Perdigao, its allegations of his participation are going to be troublesome for him if his criminal case should ever come to trial.

Rendered in simplest terms, think of it as something like this: Say you have an armed robbery, in which the participants were the-guy-with-the-gun, the-guy-who-carried-the-loot, and the-guy-who-drove-the-getaway-car. Here we have, say, the getaway driver suing all the other participants, saying, ‘You made me lead a life of crime!’

An unusual theory of liability, I think.  But it makes for an interesting story…

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