That thought arises after reading a fascinating, and truly frightening, post from Scott Horton, of Harper's. Horton's sources tell him that the Bushies developed a scheme in late 2001 and early 2002 to target certain trial lawyers who were the sources of funds for Democratic candidates. This plan was hatched with the thought that two trial lawyers, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, were Bush's most likely challengers in 2004.
The scheme involved raids of law offices, seizing financial records and looking for anything that could be used in criminal prosecutions. The goal? To dry up major sources of funds for Democratic candidates.
According to Horton's sources, at least five such raids are known to have occurred, perhaps the most prominent in Michigan and Los Angeles.
One must wonder if Mississippi attorney Paul Minor was one of the first targets of this plan. Minor and two former Mississippi judges have been convicted on various corruption charges and sentenced to combined sentences of more than 25 years.
In recent days here at Legal Schnauzer, we have focused on the Minor case, pointing out what appear to be serious irregularities in the handling of the case. We will continue our analysis of the case very soon.
Our interest in the Minor case was driven by its connections to the Don Siegelman prosecution in Alabama, the larger DOJ scandal, and my own case involving clear judicial corruption by Republican judges in Alabama (which has gone ignored by the Bushies).
Thanks to Scott Horton, we now know that all of this may have been driven by a scheme that is more insidious than anything I could have imagined.
The idea seems to be this: If you can't beat someone in the arena of ideas, if you can't beat them based on the law and the facts, try to ruin them financially. Now that I think of it, my Legal Schnauzer case seems like a mini-example of just that philosophy.
You might recall this earlier post where I referred to the judges in my case as "financial terrorists." They repeatedly made unlawful rulings--denying motions for summary judgments that, by law, had to be granted--causing my case to drag on and my legal bills to mount. The plan, I think, was that my wife and I would eventually crack and allow them to achieve whatever goal they were after. And as I've noted several times, I suspect the scheme in my case had to do with protecting Briarwood Presbyterian Church, a large suburban Birmingham congregation that is extremely conservative and wealthy--a big backer of GOP causes.
We'll turn our attention to Briarwood down the road. But our more immediate interest is the case of Mississippi attorney Paul Minor, who was a major source of funds for Democratic candidates? Was he a target of "financial terrorists," some who were far more powerful and ruthless than the ones who came after me?
We return to that subject shortly.
3 comments:
"If you can't beat someone in the arena of ideas, if you can't beat them based on the law and the facts, try to ruin them financially."
Well Schnauser, if you violate the law and the fact is you tried to cover it up, like Minor and Whitfield did, then you might face financial ruin. But not so in Minor's case. He is still collecting $2.5M each year, even thought his is in prison. And that is just from tobacco. Minor and Whitfield were ruthless criminals. I know, I was one of their victims. The Democrats looked the other way while this bribery was going on, and in some way actually benefitted.
So if you are going to claim political prosecution, perhaps you might like to explain why a (D) DOJ refused to prosecute, naming Minor as a major contributor.
How were you a victim? Not trying to be contrary, just interested in what happened.
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