Alabama Ethics Commission, led by Republican racist Frank "Butch" Ellis of Shelby County, gives AG Steve Marshall a free pass on unlawful campaign donation

Steve Marshall and "Luv Guv" Robert Bentley

The Alabama Ethics Commission yesterday voted to give Attorney General Steve Marshall a free pass for accepting more than $700,000 in unlawful campaign contributions from the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA). In what should be a surprise to no one, the vote largely was engineered by Frank C. "Butch" Ellis, a commissioner from Shelby County, which widely is considered the most Republican, crooked, and racist county in Alabama.

From a report at al.com:

The Alabama Ethics Commission voted 3-2 today that there was insufficient evidence that Attorney General Steve Marshall violated the state campaign finance law.

Former Attorney General Troy King had filed the complaint and was at today’s meeting but left before the vote was taken.

King had alleged that Marshall’s campaign contributions from the Republican Attorneys General Association violated the state campaign finance law. Marshall has said the contributions were legal. King filed the complaint in July, while he and Marshall were engaged in a runoff campaign for the Republican nomination for attorney general. Marshall won the runoff and went on to win the general election over Joe Siegelman.

USA Today brought national attention to the RAGA donation in an article published on Nov. 5, the day before the midterm elections. How outrageous is the Alabama Ethics Commission's conduct in the Marshall matter. As we showed in a Dec. 5 post, it did not just start getting nutty with yesterday's vote:

Marshall, appointed AG in February 2017 before scandal-plagued governor Robert Bentley left office, defeated Democrat Joseph Siegelman in the November midterms despite national reports that he had accepted $735,000 from the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which officials from both parties said violated Alabama law.

The Alabama Ethics Commission failed to resolve the issue before the Nov. 6 election, so complaints are pending, both with the ethics commission and the Montgomery County district attorney's office. Before the election, Siegelman noted that Marshall could be forced from office if the ethics commission applied state law properly.

Was there serious doubt the donation violated Alabama ethics law? Consider these words from Bill Britt, publisher of Alabama Political Reporter (APR), written on Oct. 11 about Marshall's cozy relationship with 3M, a major polluter in Alabama:

RAGA is not registered with the state and commingles its funds with other political action committees, masking the donors contrary to Alabama law. Ethics Commission Executive Director Tom Albritton knows Marshall’s contributions were unlawful, so does Secretary of State John Merrill, but no one is willing to act. Even Marshall himself is on the record saying the type of contributions he received from RAGA are illegal and banning such contributions was, “the only legal protection standing between Alabama voters and the reality or appearance of quid pro quo corruption.”

Troy King

 Perhaps the larger question for the Commission and the Alabama Republican Party is should a candidate who willingly takes illegal campaign contributions be allowed to remain on the ballot? . . .

The right remedy in the Marshall situation lies with the Alabama Republican Party, which is responsible for pursuing such violations and taking appropriate action, but the so-called party of law and order has taken a pass on the Marshall fiasco, choosing to remain silent.

So, even Republicans know the RAGA donations are unlawful, but Marshall is a favorite of the Mike Hubbard-Robert Bentley-Bob Riley wing of the party -- as evidenced by his recent firing of special-prosecutions chief Matt Hart. Does anyone expect that crowd to take ethics violations seriously?

APR reported yesterday that Troy King received notice of the hearing less than 24 hours in advance, and he was the primary complainant. That was a sign the fix was in.

Butch Ellis proved to be the fixer, a role with which he is quite familiar from his years of turning Shelby County into a racist, ethical sewer. How racist? Butch Ellis played a central role in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Butch Ellis' father, Handy Ellis, joined with notorious Birmingham Safety Commissioner Bull Connor to lead a walkout of Alabama delegates at the 1948 Democratic Convention. The issue of contention? Civil rights, primarily for black Americans:

Butch Ellis’s father was Handy Ellis, a former lieutenant governor and the chairman of the Alabama delegation at the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

With Birmingham Commissioner of Safety Bull Connor, Ellis led the Dixiecrat walkout of the convention after declaring that Alabama delegates were instructed “never to cast their vote for any candidate associated with a civil rights program such as adopted by this convention.”

Bottom line: Butch Ellis is the son of a prominent Dixiecrat, meaning he has been a thinly veiled white supremacist for much of his life. At yesterday's Ethics Commission meeting, Ellis stood up for the white elites who want a do-nothing AG like Steve Marshall, so they can keep Alabama as one of the most corrupt states in the nation. From al.com:

The commission heard a number of other cases behind closed doors today. After the commission reopened the meeting, Commissioner Butch Ellis made a motion that there was insufficient evidence that Marshall violated the state campaign finance law. Commissioner Beverlye Brady offered a substitute motion saying there were “ample facts” to show that Marshall had violated the law.

Butch Ellis

Brady’s motion was rejected on a 3-2 vote. Brady and Commissioner Charles Price voted for it. Voting no were Ellis, Commissioner John Plunk and Commission Chairman Jerry Fielding. The commission then voted to approve the Ellis motion on insufficient evidence on an identical 3-2 vote. That closed the case.

The Ethics Commission determines whether there is probable cause that the law was broken. Had Brady’s vote prevailed, the case would have been referred to a district attorney.

Brady and Fielding declined to comment on the case after the meeting ended.

Brady and Fielding probably could not comment because they were trying not to puke.

As noted above, complaints regarding the RAGA donation remain with Montgomery County District Attorney Daryl Bailey. Attorneys Julian McPhillips and Melissa Isaak apparently filed the complaint with Bailey's office because they expected a sham ruling from the Alabama Ethics Commission.

If that was the case, McPhillips and Isaak certainly proved to be on target. Is there any chance Daryl Bailey will be different, that he actually has respect for the rule of law? I'm not holding my breath.

Lawyer Who Filed Shelby County v. Holder Lawsuit Has Family Ties to Dixiecrats And Bull Connor

Bull Connor's fire hoses

The Alabama lawyer who filed the original complaint in a case that last week overturned a key section of the Voting Rights Act has family ties to the Dixiecrat movement that opposed racial integration in the mid 1900s. The lawyer also has roundabout ties to notorious Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety Bull Connor, who is known for ordering fire hoses and police dogs turned on black demonstrators in 1963.

Frank C. "Butch" Ellis has been a municipal lawyer in central Alabama for more than 40 years, and in 2010, he joined with Bert Rein of Washington, D.C., to launch Shelby County v. Holder. The case concluded last week with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, that found Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. (Key documents from throughout the case can be found here, at the Web site for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.)

Roberts' opinion outraged many observers on the left, who consider the Voting Rights Act to be the primary legacy of Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Some went so far as to suggest Roberts and his supporters in a 5-4 ruling engaged in criminal acts when overturning Section 4.

Here is how public-interest litigator Rob Hager expressed his contempt for "The Roberts 5" at the nationofchange.org:

Yet another ruling from the legislative workshop of the Roberts 5, has now surgically overturned the landmark Voting Rights Act that redeemed the national disgrace of the criminally depraved Jim Crow era. Their surgical strike in Shelby County effectively overturns the most significant legal outcome of the Civil War; violates separation of powers; invents a new rule of “state equality” for applying federal legislation that nowhere remotely suggested in the Constitution, that was rejected by the leading precedent, and is inherently preposterous; reverses numerous precedents; decides the case of parties that were not in court instead of focusing on the case before it -- as the Constitution, Article III, requires; and rejects the very idea of applying a known objective rule to adduced facts as defines the judicial process.

Hager makes a number of powerful arguments. But for now, we will focus on the man who gave birth to Shelby County v. Holder.

Butch Ellis is with the Wallace Ellis Fowler & Head law firm, which is right across the street from the Shelby County Courthouse in Columbiana. That courthouse is home to much of the corruption I've reported on this blog, including the unlawful sale of the full ownership rights to a house that my wife and I have owned for almost 25 years. Circuit Judge Hub Harrington presided over that fiasco, but no one is more embedded in Shelby County's corrupt culture than Butch Ellis. (We even have video that captures the sleaze in living color at a post titled "Showdown in Shelby County, Part II." This is Butch Ellis' kingdom, caught on tape.)

Ellis has contended in numerous published reports that Shelby County is a changed place, that black voter turnout is high and the county is solidly integrated. But a look at Ellis' personal history should raise eyebrows. That's because it has roots in an ugly effort to support segregation and throttle civil rights for black Americans.

Frank "Butch" Ellis

In a February 2013 piece at the Washington Spectator ("The Supreme Court v. Black Voters in Alabama"), journalist Lou Dubose spotlighted Ernest Montgomery, a black city councilman from Calera, Alabama, who retained his spot on the council only because of Justice Department intervention in 2009, via the Voting Rights Act. 

Roughly one year later, Butch Ellis filed the federal lawsuit that became Shelby County v. Holder. And Montgomery tells Dubose that Ellis' son, County Commissioner Corley Ellis, never told him the lawsuit was coming. Writes Dubose:

In 2010, Shelby County filed suit in federal court, describing Section 5 as a federal intrusion into state issues. It is this lawsuit that will be heard by the Supreme Court at the end of this month. Montgomery learned about the County Commission’s decision to sue the Justice Department when he read it in the Birmingham News. 

“As well as I know [County Commissioner] Corley Ellis—we have a friendship, not a close friendship but a friendship—I never got a heads up,” Montgomery said.

Maybe that has something to do with the Ellis family's background. Dubose explains:

Corley Ellis is the Shelby County Commissioner who neglected to inform Ernest Montgomery that the county had filed suit against the Justice Department. The Shelby County lawyer who filed the suit is Corley Ellis’s father, Butch Ellis. Butch Ellis’s father was Handy Ellis, a former lieutenant governor and the chairman of the Alabama delegation at the 1948 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. 

With Birmingham Commissioner of Safety Bull Connor, Ellis led the Dixiecrat walkout of the convention after declaring that Alabama delegates were instructed “never to cast their vote for any candidate associated with a civil rights program such as adopted by this convention.”

Bottom line? The lawyer who filed Shelby County v. Holder is the son of a Dixiecrat, the party that nominated Strom Thurmond for president at its 1948 convention--held at Birmingham's Boutwell Auditorium. And the lawyer's father was closely aligned with Bull Connor, the public official who ordered fire hoses turned on peaceful black demonstrators in 1963.

Perhaps we all should pay attention to the following words from Lou Dubose:

Faulkner’s—“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”—has been quoted so many times that it has become an exhausted cliché. 

Except in places where the New South seems incapable of escaping the Old South. 

In such places, those lines are as fresh as this morning’s news.