http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/24/justice-for-sale-how-big-tobacco-teamed-up-with-the-gop-to-crush-democrats-in-the-south/
Justice for Sale: How Big Tobacco and the GOP teamed up to crush
Democrats in the South
By Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane | Uncategorized | Tuesday, 24
June 2008
Almost immediately after his appointment as US Attorney for the
Southern District of Mississippi in late 2001, Dunnica Lampton began
to investigate key Mississippi Democrats.
Trial lawyer and major Democratic campaign contributor Paul Minor
(photo at right) quickly became a target of such an investigation.
Minor, one of the largest Democratic donors in the South and the
largest in Mississippi, would quickly find himself in the midst of a
political firing line.
On July 25, 2003, three months before the Mississippi gubernatorial
election, in a case that would stun the legal community, Mississippi
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., Paul Minor, former chancery
court judge Wes Teel and former circuit court judge John Whitfield
were indicted on charges of bribery, relating to loan guarantees that
Minor had made to the three judges to help defray campaign costs.
There was no state law prohibiting Minor’s contributions, and his
trial resulted in an acquittal on some charges and a deadlocked jury
on others. However, this trial was immediately followed by the
unsealing of fresh charges.
During the second trial, presiding Judge Henry Wingate excluded
evidence showing that Minor had a long-established pattern of offering
loans or loan guarantees to his friends in the legal community, thus
creating the appearance that Minor had helped the three judges in
hopes of receiving something in return.
Although prosecutors were unable to prove that Minor had bribed the
judges in exchange for favors from the bench, the second trial
resulted in a conviction. The jury determined that a quid pro quo had
taken place between Minor and two of the judges, Teel and Whitfield,
in large part because Judge Wingate had instructed them it was not
necessary for the prosecution to prove bribery.
Even though no quid pro quo was proven and there was no state law
prohibiting lawyers from making loan guarantees to judges, Minor was
sentenced to serve an 11-year prison term and pay over $4 million in
fines and restitution.
In a startling similarity to the case of former Alabama Governor Don
Siegelman — who was also targeted by a Bush-appointed US Attorney —
Minor has been denied appeal bond. Both Siegelman and Minor, despite
being convicted of white-collar, non-violent crimes, were shackled and
manacled, and moved to out-of-state prisons. (See Part I of this
series)
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has since released Siegelman as he
appeals his case.
In Part V of Raw Story Investigates’ ongoing probe of political
prosecutions by Bush appointed US Attorneys, Mississippi State Supreme
Court Justice Oliver Diaz, who himself was indicted and acquitted
twice in the Paul Minor case, asserted that this new style of Bush
justice meant defendants were presumed guilty from the start.
“An individual was singled out for examination from the federal
government, and prosecutors then attempted to make his conduct fit
into some criminal statute,” Diaz said. “This is not how our system of
justice is supposed to operate.”
The beginning: Big Tobacco
The tortuous trail to Paul Minor’s jailing begins in the 1990s, with
the set of history-making cases brought against the tobacco industry
by states seeking to recover smoking-related health costs. Minor was
among those representing the plaintiffs. He joined numerous other
trial lawyers and state attorneys general, including Mississippi
Attorney General Mike Moore.
The tobacco industry settled without going to trial, making a $246
billion dollar payout to the states — the largest civil settlement in
history. Among those forced to pay were the four biggest tobacco
companies: R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, Brown & Williamson Tobacco
Corp., Lorillard Tobacco Company, and Philip Morris USA.
Trial lawyers like Minor earned millions from the deal. Many became
generous contributors to Democratic candidates and campaigns,
especially in the South. Minor was one of the largest contributors to
Southern Democrats and the largest in the state of Mississippi.
Republicans, meanwhile, who had previously enjoyed generous donations
from the tobacco industry, were left with little for their campaign
coffers.
In 1999 alone, Mississippi trial lawyers donated as much to Democratic
gubernatorial candidate Ronnie Musgrove as did the Democratic National
Committee. Musgrove received $379,500 from trial attorneys, of which
Minor donated $112,000.
Minor and his law firm donated hundreds of thousands to Democratic
candidates between 2001 and 2004, including, according to the New York
Times, $129,000 to then-presidential contender, John Edwards.
The tobacco settlement, however, had serious repercussions for the
integrity of US elections, especially in the South.
As re****ted in Part IV of Raw Story Investigates’ series, Mississippi
attorneys have described the behind-the-scenes political fight sparked
by the tobacco ruling as nothing short of “war.” Attorneys interviewed
for this series of articles have depicted the “gloves off” stance
taken by the Republicans against the Democrats in the South as a
domestic war between cor****ations on one side and lawyers representing
plaintiffs on the other.
During the early years of the Bush administration, some inside the
Republican National Committee allegedly saw Minor as an obstacle to
the Southern strategy that was then being planned.
As one Mississippi attorney explained, “In war, you first cut off the
supply lines of the enemy troops.” Minor was the “supply” target
because of his large donations to Democratic candidates. Judge Oliver
Diaz was the “obstacle” to cor****ate interests seeking to reduce
plaintiff cases and keep tribal casinos deregulated.
Rove, Tort Reform, and Big Tobacco
Karl Rove, the former Bush Administration White House Deputy Chief of
Staff, is alleged by Republican attorney turned whistle-blower Dana
Jill Simpson to have played a major role in the prosecution of Don
Siegelman in Alabama. Simpson is not alone in her allegations. Many
lawyers, politicians, and even active members of the Alabama RNC have
made similar allegations during the course of our investigation.
As one Alabama Republican close to the state Republican Party told us,
Rove “would never discuss anything on the phone. He would tell you to
meet him at some corner and then you get there and sure enough he is
standing in the middle of the intersection waving at you.”
Many of those interviewed over the course of Raw Story Investigates’
Permanent Republican Majority series have said that Rove was meeting
key Alabama operatives during some of those rendezvous. Rove has also
been accused of played a role in the prosecution of Justice Diaz, Paul
Minor and others in Mississippi.
The House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed Rove to testify about his
alleged role in the prosecutions. Through his lawyer, Robert Luskin,
Rove has repeatedly stated that he wants to testify privately to the
House Judiciary Committee, that he will not testify under oath, and
that he wants there to be no transcript of his testimony. Rove has
been evasive when asked publicly if he was involved in the Siegelman
prosecution.
But as Raw Story’s series has shown, Rove’s role in the US Attorney
scandal is one that he has played for many years — acting as a broker
on deals which were rewarded by cor****ate donations to Republican
coffers.
“Rove is a lobbyist,” said one Wa****ngton source close to the
investigation of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who wishes to remain
anonymous. “He never stopped being a lobbyist.”
Rove met frequently in 2002-03 with Abramoff, other lobbyists, and
Alabama campaign operatives — specifically with members of Bob Riley’s
gubernatorial campaign. Riley was Don Siegelman’s Republican opponent,
and Riley’s campaign advisor, Bill Canary, was Karl Rove’s long-time
business associate. Moreover, Bill Canary’s wife, Leura, was appointed
by George W. Bush as US Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama,
and it is her office that prosecuted Siegelman.
Ten years before the tobacco settlement, in 1988, Rove had already
discovered the advantages of appealing to both voters and cor****ate
donors by painting trial lawyers who had won generous settlements in
cases of cor****ate negligence or medical malpractice as greedy
corruptors of the judicial process. With Rove’s encouragement, the
“tort reform” movement, aimed at limiting damage settlements,
developed rapidly through the 1990s, pulling in cor****ate
contributions and twice helping Rove elect George W. Bush as governor
of Texas.
Rove also served a consultant for tobacco giant Philip Morris, which
invested heavily in Texas judicial races, helping to secure Republican
dominance in that state’s courts by the end of the decade. An internal
Philip Morris do***ent from 1995 indicates just how involved big
tobacco was in creating the “Tort Reform Project” — although there is
no evidence tying Rove directly to that strategy.
Rove even did his best to head off Texas’s participation in the state
lawsuits against the tobacco industry. “From 1991 through 1996, while
guiding the ascent of Bush to the Texas governor****p and during his
early years in that office, Rove worked as a $3,000-a-month consultant
to Philip Morris,” Salon’s Sidney Blumenthal wrote last year. “In
1996, when Texas Attorney General Dan Morales filed a suit against
tobacco companies seeking compensation for state Medicaid funds spent
on workers who fell ill because of smoking, Rove conducted a dirty
trick against him — a push poll spreading smears about him.”
In 1994, Rove brought his “tort reform” strategy to Alabama, where he
worked with GOP operative and lobbyist Bill Canary to elect Republican
judges. There he also had his first run-ins with then-Lieutenant
Governor Don Siegelman. Alabama’s Republican Attorney General, William
Pryor — whose 1998 re-election campaign was managed by Rove — was one
of the few state attorneys general who attempted to keep their states
out of the tobacco lawsuits and was as a result sharply criticized by
Siegelman.
It was Pryor who in early 1999 began the investigations of
newly-elected Governor Siegelman which eventually led to his
conviction on bribery charges. Canary’s wife, Leura, would federalize
the investigation almost immediately after she was appointed to the US
Attorney’s office.
Pryor also co-founded the Republican Attorneys General Association,
which received money from firms like Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds
to help elect pro-cor****ate candidates. The association received a
warm welcome in Texas from Rove.
As a result of the tobacco lawsuits, some Republican politicians and
tobacco industry lobbyists — such as now-Mississippi Governor Haley
Barbour — appear to have become implacable foes of the trial lawyers
who had frustrated them and their clients. Barbour returned to
lobbying in 1997, after a four-year stint heading the Republican
National Committee, and became one of the main lobbyists for Phillip
Morris, which spent nearly $16 million that year in lobbying fees.
Although Barbour’s firm failed to disclose many of their financial
records from that time, the lobbying fees that were re****ted by the
firm in 1997 show that Barbour Griffith & Rogers received $1.7 million
from all four major tobacco companies.
In 1997, Barbour even attempted to sneak a $50 billion tax break for
the tobacco companies into a balanced-budget agreement, with the help
of Newt Gingrich and Mississippi’s Trent Lott, a plan which was only
thwarted at the last moment.
The US Attorney scandal: Purchasing the law and cutting off Democratic
campaign funding
The US Attorney scandal as it unfolded in the South might best be
understood as a two-part strategy that simultaneously served both the
cor****ate sponsors of Southern Republicans and the politicians to whom
they contributed. One aspect of this two-pronged strategy can be seen
as a bribery scandal, in which cor****ate interests received government
favors as a corollary to campaign donations.
In Alabama, the cor****ate client was the gambling industry. Its
lobbyist was the now-convicted felon Jack Abramoff, who brokered deals
and funneled money to Republican congressional coffers. Although the
money came in from neighboring Mississippi, the issue for Abramoff’s
gambling clients was a proposed state lottery that Alabama Governor
Don Siegelman was promoting. The gambling industry flooded Republican
coffers in exchange for other types of favors, such as the loosening
of gambling industry oversight.
In Mississippi, the cor****ate client was big tobacco — and their chief
lobbyist now sits in the Mississippi governor’s chair.
The second aspect of the strategy is the politicization of US law
enforcement by the Bush administration, specifically the Department of
Justice. The US Attorney scandal is less about the US Attorneys who
were fired than about those who remained and are alleged to have used
federal law enforcement resources to intimidate Democratic campaign
donors.
The demonizing of Democratic candidates instigated by the federal
government helped both the Riley campaign in Alabama and the Barbour
campaign in Mississippi. Until these prosecutions, both states were
led by Democratic governors.
In addition, by targeting Paul Minor, Barbour and his backers ensured
a glacial freeze in contributions to Democratic candidates, since
other Democratic trial lawyers were afraid of being targeted by the US
Attorney’s office as well.
Barbour won the 2003 Mississippi governor’s race by a narrow margin,
defeating Democratic in***bent Ronnie Musgrove and becoming only the
second Republican governor of Mississippi since the post-Civil War
Reconstruction.
However, the forces that led to Barbour’s victory were already on the
move more than a year earlier, well before Barbour announced his
candidacy.
On Nov. 21, 2002 , UPI re****ted that the Republican Party was making a
special effort to target Musgrove in the 2003 election and that Haley
Barbour was widely expected to be the challenger. “Barbour would be a
powerful opponent,” wrote UPI. “He has a national network of potential
contributors and a close relation****p with the GOP’s No. 1 campaign
asset, President George W. Bush.”
That summer, the Mississippi state legislature had begun holding
hearings on whether to enact tort reform, the strategy promoted by the
tobacco industry to limit settlements to plaintiffs which had been so
effectively used by Rove to defeat Democratic judges in both Texas and
Alabama and pass pro-cor****ate legislation.
A few months later, Mississippi newspapers began to print leaked
allegations that the FBI had launched an investigation of Paul Minor —
a leading opponent of tort reform — on suspicion of having bribed
several judges. David Baria, president of the Mississippi Trial
Lawyers Association, described the timing as “very interesting,”
according to an article by the Associated Press in October 2002.
According to the same article, Bush-appointed Mississippi US Attorney
Dunnica Lampton, who was leading the investigation, himself had deep
ties to Republican politicians who were in favor of the tort reform
plan sup****ted by the tobacco industry.
Lampton also had serious conflicts of interest, among the most
egregious of which was that at the time of his investigation, Minor
was in the process of filing a lawsuit on behalf of plaintiffs against
Ergon Inc., a company run by members of the Lampton family.
After stories about the investigation of Minor appeared in the
newspapers, Haley Barbour, the tobacco lobbyist who formally announced
his candidacy for governor of Mississippi on Feb. 17, 2003, began
using these press accounts as a talking point against his Democratic
opponent, in***bent Governor Ronnie Musgrove.
In the fall of 2002, additional allegations had begun to appear that
Musgrove had also been taking bribes from Paul Minor. The allegations
were leaked by anonymous sources from within the investigation by the
FBI and US Attorney’s office.
In November, for example, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger re****ted that
Musgrove was “under scrutiny” for campaign contributions he had
received, including $27,125 that came from Paul Minor a month before
Musgrove appointed an associate of Minor’s in the Mississippi Trial
Lawyers Association to the Mississippi Court of Appeals.
Barbour used both the rumored FBI investigation into Musgrove — which
never materialized — and Minor’s donations to the Musgrove campaign as
a tool to bludgeon his political opponents.
In the 2003 election, the Department of Justice had provided Barbour
with all of the ammunition he needed to defeat Musgrove, whom he
painted as corrupt, using the federal investigation as proof of these
claims.
Minor’s conviction has also provided the GOP with a political weapon
that can be used over and over. The Republican Senatorial Committee,
for example, is still using the Minor conviction as a political tool
against Musgrove, who is now running for Mississippi Senator Trent
Lott’s seat in the US Senate.
In early 2004, Haley Barbour took office as governor of Mississippi.
Almost immediately thereafter, he called a special session of the
legislature to ban class action lawsuits and cap damages in almost all
tort cases. In 2006, Barbour won a lengthy court battle to completely
withdraw funding from an anti-smoking program which had been highly
successful in reducing smoking among middle school and high school
students.
Big tobacco had finally accomplished its goals through the use of the
political machine.
Family tragedy
Paul Minor has been in prison for nearly two years, since the judge
ruled in Sept. 2006 that he had violated the terms of his bond by
drinking excessively and not abiding by terms of his house arrest.
During that time, his wife Sylvia’s breast cancer has spread to her
brain and spine. According to family and friends, Mrs. Minor has now
had all of her medications stopped except for pain management drugs,
indicating that she is in the last stages of her illness.
Minor had started drinking as a result of the two prosecutions and the
mounting costs of his legal defense, although he admits it’s been a
life-long battle. During the second trial, Minor’s wife Sylvia
developed breast cancer. The stress of the personal tragedy and the
trials, say those close to Minor, caused him to drink. Wingate ruled
that Minor’s drinking was a violation of his bond.
Mrs. Minor’s health has since deteriorated severely. Bill Minor, Paul
Minor’s father, who is a well-respected former correspondent for the
New Orleans Times-Picayune and a political columnist for the
Clarion-Ledger, says that his daughter-in-law has taken a bad turn.
Joseph Morris Doss, Bishop of the Episcopal Church and the Minor
family’s pastor and friend, confirmed that Mrs. Minor was no longer
being administered medications other than those for pain management.
“She is not doing well,” the bishop said last week. “The cancer has
spread from her breasts, to her brain, to her spine, and a mass on the
outside of her lung. She is no longer receiving medication for any of
the cancer, only for pain and discomfort.”
Minor is currently attempting to obtain furlough to visit his wife.
Attorneys close to Minor’s case fear that the furlough request will
not be granted due to the political scandal surrounding Minor’s two
trials and his subsequent imprisonment.
Larisa Alexandrovna is the Managing Editor of Investigative News for
Raw Story and regularly re****ts on intelligence and national security
matters. She has been covering the US Attorney Scandal for over six
months. Her essay on the Siegelman case appears in a newly published
anthology, Loser Taker All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of
Democracy, 2000-2008, edited by New York University professor Mark
Crispin Miller, which features a collection of essays from prominent
journalists, activists, and scholars. Contact her at
larisa@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Kane is the Research Director for Raw Story Investigates.
#
"I want justice...There's an old poster out West, as I recall, that
said, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive,'"
- G.W. Bush, 9/17/01, UPI
"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care.
It's not that im****tant. It's not our priority."
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02
Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.
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