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| Matt Hart |
A reasonable person can read two letters Reagan recently wrote on the subject and conclude that the answer is no?
Why? Reagan's first letter, dated July 22, 2014 and addressed to Charla Doucet (chief administrator in the Alabama Attorney General's Office), portrays Hart as a blustery fellow but does not seem to claim that Hart is conducting his investigation in an unlawful manner.
Reagan's second letter is dated Sept. 22, 2014 and is addressed to AG Luther Strange. It was written after Reagan had been forced to testify before the grand jury and wound up invoking the Fifth Amendment privilege not to incriminate himself. It also was written after Acting AG Van Davis had accused Reagan of leaking grand-jury information and obstructing the investigation in other ways.
The second letter, in other words, was written after the water had begun to boil under Reagan's seat. And that meant Hart now was portrayed as a prosecutor who was acting outside the law, intentionally going after certain individuals rather than seeking to prosecute crimes. (This was a major theme, by the way, in the prosecution of former Governor Don Siegelman. Republicans, at that time, didn't seem concerned that prosecutors would go after someone for personal and political reasons having nothing to do with criminal acts.)
Consider the language about Hart in Reagan's first letter. Reagan says Hart had informed him that House Speaker Mike Hubbard was "going down, along with the Riley machine" (led by former GOP governor Bob Riley).
We have only Reagan's word that Hart made such a statement. But even if Reagan's claim is true, it likely doesn't point to wrongdoing on Hart's part. It could simply be Hart's honest assessment of what will happen based on evidence he has seen presented to the grand jury.
The language in Reagan's second letter is much different. Now Reagan quotes Hart as saying he was "going after countless elected public officials and business leaders." Now, Hart is out to "politically ruin public officials."
That strongly suggests Matt Hart is going after specific people, rather than prosecuting crimes. It suggests Hart is a rogue, the kind of prosecutor who should not be tolerated in our justice system.
I've expressed my own concerns about Matt Hart, based on his actions as a federal prosecutor. But I have even deeper concerns about the Riley machine, which I believe has corrupted Alabama's political landscape to the point that the state still tramples the First Amendment and incarcerates journalists--the only state to do so in 2013, putting it alongside countries like Iran, China, and Turkey. Who sought to have a journalist incarcerated? Why it was Birmingham lawyer Rob Riley, the former governor's son.
If it takes a guy like Matt Hart to bring the Rileys to justice . . . well, he has my support.
As for Sonny Reagan, he is a former legal adviser to Bob Riley--and that clearly makes him part of the family machine. His changing tune about Matt Hart raises serious questions about Reagan's credibility. It also suggests the Riley family is feeling heat, and Reagan is trying to deflect attention away from them.
The normal mechanism for posting comments doesn't seem to be working today. Hope it's just a temporary problem. I will cut and paste a couple of comments to this post in the space below.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous
ReplyDelete7:02 AM (8 hours ago)
to me
Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Sonny Reagan's efforts to get an independent inves...":
Government USA is really a global corporation that is run on a counterfeit system of money. Control of this criminally fraud system is by those that own the system of military dictatorship and police high tech control.
In an almost exclusively power pack-pact, USA Gov chooses exactly which crook and criminal gets to work for Global Gov, USA.
Oil Boom in the Dakotas. Oil wasn't being drilled in USA until the Middle East trouble began to accelerate, House of Saud being exposed and of course the oil control that Israel is in the real world, pretty much all about.
Gov USA chooses the Riley crooks and the Riley crooks choose their criminals to do the crooks' work.
Gambling money and Indians.
The Dakotas and Indians and drilling oil. And, unbelievable, but, drug addiction out of complete control.
USA Gov addicts society to drugs and controls the society with the prison system, Roger has first hand experience now about this dynamic. Control.
USA Gov controls the USA population by degrading the society and the Riley crooks run Alabama with the criminals that run the system of jails without due process law.
Fixing the deep root problem is definitely a task.
Basically the Gov Global systems, almost all, are cannibalistic in using the society/ies as though a luxury item to feed upon.
Rather than the society as the power of future generations to enjoy even greater faith in the earth's nature as omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent.
Faith as a mustard seed, symbolically perhaps experienced as a devotion of deep intimacy of self-love transformed from the self-loathing.
Do the Riley people and the people the Riley's choose to sit with grow, water, and feed and nurture daily with eternal commitment: the enlightenment?
That is, their oaths to the U.S. Constitution are the faith in which the people of Alabama can trust. And, the majority of the Alabama people trust the Riley people with their chosen people, by the actions witnessed, to the Indians, and the gambling, and the non-Indian gambling -- full money transparency.
Of course by the news media Gov USA, actions equal reality.
Five months in jail, wow, USA Gov Global can deliver to the foreign investors, the rub.
Robby Scott Hill
ReplyDelete9:15 AM (6 hours ago)
to me
Robby Scott Hill has left a new comment on your post "Sonny Reagan's efforts to get an independent inves...":
I can say one thing about Governor Robert Bentley & Attorney General Luther Strange. They are not looking forward & they are looking back. Barack Obama would be wise to ask his next Attorney General to follow their lead.
I have heard for months that ten people will be indicted. Maybe sonny will up it to 11.
ReplyDeleteBURLESQUE
ReplyDeleteThe don't pay attention to something very significant is going on, but what exactly, what precisely and that is what one must wonder about all this burlesque!
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable. H. L. Mencken"
Sad to see how obese our American people are. Genetically Modified Organism (GMO). This product from the Koch Brothers and all the deregulated industries because of the Bush Sr. days as Satan's spawn.
ReplyDeleteIntentional food poison to control all the people that don't know.
A Polymer is plastic after a fashion and therefore, not food.
GMO is plastic and not food, we must take notice before our people are all zombies.
Any processed food that doesn't say NO GMO is not worth paying for unless the goal is to be obese and very sick. Doctors get paid and so does, the story is, the UN. We are all in an insurance package due to the severe experimentation on US.
NO GMO!
I just have a simple question. The charge us that Reagan leaked GJ info to targets of the investigation. But if Hart and Reagan dislike each other where did Reagan receive the alleged information?
ReplyDeleteVia office chit-chat would be my guess, but I don't know for sure. What do others think?
ReplyDelete