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Holder to drop case against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens
The slate will be wiped clean for former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens.
In the eyes of the law, at least, the man who narrowly lost re-election last fall after he was convicted of failing to report more than $250,000 worth of gifts from a contractor seeking political favors, will be considered innocent.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The decision to ask the judge to void the conviction was made by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, after a new prosecution team discovered a previously undocumented interview with the star witness, William Allen, which sharply contradicted his most dramatic testimony in the four-week trial. The information had never been turned over to the defense, the Justice Department said in its motion to void the conviction.
“After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial,” Holder said in a statement this morning. “In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial.”
The government is seeking dismissal of the charges “with prejudice,” meaning that they cannot be filed again.
The case against Stevens had been plagued by allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. Following his October conviction, an FBI special agent in Anchorage alleged that the lead female agent had had an “inappropriate relationship” with Allen, the chairman of defunct oil-field services company, Veco Corp., who was also the star witness against Stevens. The whistleblower also contended that prosecutors had withheld important information from the defense.
In February, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan held four prosecutors in contempt, including DOJ Public Integrity Section Chief William Welch, for failing to produce documents relating to the agent’s claims.
At that point, the government appointed a new team, led by Paul O’Brien, chief of the Narcotics an Dangerous Drugs Section, whose group substantiated several of the allegations.
Stevens, who is 85, said in a prepared statement that he felt vindicated, but complained it had come too late to save his political career.
“I am grateful that the new team of responsible prosecutors at the Department of Justice has acknowledged that I did not receive a fair trial and has dismissed all the charges against me,” he said.
But he added: “It is unfortunate that an election was affected by proceedings now recognized as unfair. It was my great honor to serve the State of Alaska in the United States Senate for 40 years.”
Stevens lost his re-election bid to the former Anchorage mayor, Democrat Mark Begich a little more than a week after his conviction. Since then, his lawyers have filed several motions to dismiss the original indictment or to have a judge grant him a new trial.
While the attorney general’s decision doesn’t exactly exonerate Stevens, it shifts the focus to government misconduct.
“When you think of Ted Stevens, there will always be a little asterisk,” Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress at the Brookings Institution told NPR. “But this gives you a little pause to think that, in the end, there were allegations that the government couldn’t get it together to prove.”
Others noted the irony of a Democratic attorney general effectively voiding the conviction of a longtime Republican lawmaker.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a fierce critic of the Bush Justice Department and a former U.S. attorney, noted that if Republicans wanted to complain that the Justice Department had wrongly cost them a Senate seat, they should recall that it was Bush’s Justice Department which brought the case.
Holder’s decision comes as a big blow to the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, which is responsible for conducting investigations into corrupt lawmakers. Stevens’ conviction was the unit’s biggest win in more than decade. Now that conviction will be tossed out, and prosecutors and FBI agents involved in the case are being investigated themselves.
Holder, himself a former prosecutor and judge, noted that the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility was conducting a review of the first etam’s conduct, raising the possibility that the prosecutors themselves could now face ethics charges.
Judge Sullivan ordered a hearing for April 7 on the government’s motion.
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This post is tagged with: , Crime, Emmet Sullivan, Eric Holder, Paul O’Brien, Recent Stories, Ted Stevens, U.S. Department of Justice, William WelchRead related stories: Crime · Recent Stories
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We are all Keynesians now – but especially Paul KrugmanApril 3, 2009 at 11:20am
Economist Paul Krugman, who describes John Maynard Keynes as his “economic idol,” may be the right man at the right time. But supporters of Barack Obama certainly hope not.
Edward Montgomery is the new go-to guy for recovery
A Harley-riding economist has taken what may be the toughest job on President Obama’s auto task force – helping to rebuild the communities that will likely be devastated by the industry’s downsizing.
Obama likened the mission of Edward B. Montgomery, the new Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, to someone who helps towns recover after a hurricane or other natural disaster.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The former deputy labor secretary, who traveled to Michigan today to meet with Gov. Jennifer Granholm, has the broad mission of working with the cities hardest hit by the restructurings and possible bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler.
Edward MontgomeryThe challenge is huge. Since the economic downturn began, the auto industry has shed more than 400,000 jobs at automakers, suppliers and dealers, Obama said. And more cuts are inevitable.
Obama said that Montgomery would help “create new manufacturing jobs and new businesses where they’re needed most – in your communities. And he will also lead an effort to identify new initiatives we may need to help support your communities going forward.”
As a labor economist, Montgomery’s focus has been on people, rather than on systems. According to his profile on the Website of the University of Maryland, where he is dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences:
Dr. Montgomery has published numerous papers and articles on local economic development, youth unemployment, cross national comparisons of labor market performance, savings and pension policy, Medicaid and Social Security, labor unions and workplace smoking regulations.
“He’s not the sort of economist who views these as abstract problems,” Robert Schwab, associate dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, told the Washington Post. “This is a field that’s important because it plays such a key role in everyone’s life – not just an interesting abstraction. That permeates all of Ed’s research.”
With unemployment in Michigan already at 12 percent and rising, “to pull this off you’d need a lot of skills,” Schwab said. “You’d best be able to listen, you’d best be able to make hard choices.”
Schwab believes that Montgomery has those skills. “He’s a real problem solver, terrific at bringing people together who are at loggerheads, and working to get a solution.”
But others were less impressed by Montgomery’s credentials.
“I’m sure they didn’t mean this announcement to sound as condescending as it does: that the federal government is going to send an academic to help us poor provincials devise approaches” for recovery, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told the Wall Street Journal.
Daniels, a Republican, said Indiana already “has a very clearly articulated economic strategy.”
An administration official said the intention was simply “to have a high-level advocate who can really push and coordinate people to assure that things are being used as aggressively as possible.”
Montgomery, who drives a 2000 Lincoln Town Car, received a doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1982. He began his career as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and worked for the Labor Department during the Clinton administration, rising to second in command before returning to academia at Maryland. Months after joining the department, he took part in negotiations that helped end the 10-day Teamsters strike.
He became dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the university’s largest college, in 2003. After Obama’s election, he headed his Labor Department transition team, and joined the Treasury Department’s auto task force last month.
Because of Montgomery’s ties to the Obama administration and his broad mandate as director of recovery, some are already speculating that he will be a de facto car czar.
Charles Craver, a labor relations expert at George Washington University, told the Baltimore Sun that he expects Montgomery to wield considerable influence.
“I have the sense he’s going to have to oversee the restructuring of the companies,” Craver said.
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We are all Keynesians now – but especially Paul KrugmanApril 3, 2009 at 11:20am
Economist Paul Krugman, who describes John Maynard Keynes as his “economic idol,” may be the right man at the right time. But supporters of Barack Obama certainly hope not.
Muck Tracker Blixseth Files for Bankruptcy
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Gm Ceo Wagoner Forced Out by Obama Administration
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Airline is Cheap If Mean Spirited
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Alfonse Damato is Paid Lobbyist for World Trade Center Memorial Fund
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Airline is cheap, if mean-spirited
For better or for worse, B. Ben Baldanza may be the airline executive of the future.
A profile in Sunday’s New York Times makes clear that Baldanza, the CEO of Spirit Airlines, does not believe that the customer is always right.
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It offers low, low fares ($9 if you’re really lucky) supplemented by a wide variety of additional fees ($20 for a good seat, $100 for a third bag).
According to the Times, the airline takes the word “non-refundable” very literally.
Perhaps because of this and other practices and policies, Spirit leads U.S. carriers in complaints by an astonishing margin.
Spirit, which had more than 5 million passengers in 2008, had 14.3 complaints per 100,000 passengers. US Airways had the second highest number of complaints, 2 per 100,000.
While he doesn’t point to his company’s high numbers with pride, Baldanza doesn’t seem to see them as necessarily negative.
“We know that frustrations about Spirit exist,” he told the Times. “To some extent, it’s about a mismatch of expectations. For years, in this industry, if you whined, we gave you something. You yell, we waive a fee. That’s created a general expectation that airlines will break their own policies – and we don’t.”
Baldanza’s hard-line stance toward customer complaints spun throughout the Internet in 2007 after he-mailed a colleague about a passenger complaint.
By accident, Baldanza hit “reply all” when sending the e-mail and it went on to the disgruntled passenger, as well as to the intended recipient.
In the e-mail, Baldanza wrote: “Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown before with us anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
Saving a penny is the key to Spirit’s marketing massage, as is stressed in its low-budget television spots, advertisements that have what the Times calls, “the production values of hostage videos.”
One offering shows a snarky young man in bed and on the phone. “Dude, there is no way your mom is cheating on your dad,” he says to the caller.
An older woman then snuggles into the frame – it’s the cheating mom of course.
“You think that’s low?” a narrator asks. “Spirit Airlines fares are even lower.
Baldanza, 47, a native of Rome, N.Y., and a graduate of Syracuse University and Princeton University, came to Spirit as president and chief operating officer in January 2005.
Before that he had been senior vice president of marketing and planning for US Airways.
Previous to that, he had been managing director and chief operating officer of Grupo Taca, an airline based in El Salvador, Central America.
Baldanza is also a self-described “boardgame geek” who reviews games for several online sites.
His wife, Marcia A. Baldanza, also a boardgame enthusiast, is an educator who is currently serving as the lead restructuring administrator for Palm Beach County schools.
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Alfonse D’Amato is paid lobbyist for 9/11 Memorial FundMarch 31, 2009 at 4:23pm
The former New York senator and Republican kingmaker is working as a paid lobbyist for the World Trade Center Memorial Fund to help the group win approval for a commemorative coin.
Ruth Madoff Got 2m From Husbands Uk Office Before His Arrest
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Celebrated Texas Attorney Dick Deguerin to Defend Stanford
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Is the Noose Tightening Around Peter Madoff
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Math Whiz James Simons Scores Top Spot in Alphas Ranking
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Second Ivy League Law School Dean Tapped by Obama
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Is the noose tightening around Peter Madoff?
Peter B. Madoff, the younger brother and business partner of convicted felon Bernard Madoff, is under increasing scrutiny from investigators, as well as victims of the $65 billion investor fraud.
The latest indication of the younger Madoff’s possible exposure comes from the report of one investor, who said that he withdrew a small sum entrusted to Bernard Madoff in July 1985, and received a $10,000 check drawn on the older Madoff’s bank account – but signed by Peter Madoff.
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The timing could prove crucial. In his guilty plea, Bernard Madoff stated that he had begun the fraud in the early 1990s “to the best of my recollection.” Authorities, however, date the scheme to the early 1980s, although they have not publicly revealed any evidence.
John R. Wing, a lawyer for Peter Madoff, 63, has said his client, who was the firm’s senior managing partner and chief compliance officer, had no knowledge of the fraud and has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
But yesterday, a New York State Supreme Court Justice Stephen A. Bucaria, sitting in Nassau County, imposed a temporary asset freeze on Peter Madoff’s accounts at the request of a law student from Dix Hills, NY. The law student, Andrew Ross Samuels, had been the beneficiary of a college trust fund, which was entirely lost to Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The freeze prohibits Peter Madoff from moving money from any bank, brokerage firm or other financial institution or from selling or borrowing against his physical assets. It also requires him to disclose the location of any assets he has “secreted” so far, and directs any financial institution to take “reasonable precautions” to ensure that he complies with the order.
Steven R. Schlesinger, a lawyer for Samuels, said that his client was the beneficiary of a $478,000 fund set up in 1997 by Samuel’s grandfather, Martin J. Joel Jr. and Peter Madoff as the trustees.
When Joel died in 2003, Peter Madoff became the sole trustee, and the entire fund was invested with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, according to Schlesinger.
Besides investing the trust fund in what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, Peter Madoff also did not notify Samuels that he could have terminated the trust in 2007, when he turned 21, the complaint says.
The lawsuit is at least the second brought against Peter Madoff since his brother’s arrest.
Last month, two children of N.J. Senator Frank Lautenberg filed an action against the younger Madoff, saying that as the firm’s senior managing partner and chief compliance officer, he either failed to spot “obvious, material red flags” of fraud, or covered them up.
The Lautenbergs, who had invested a family philanthropy as well as individual savings with Madoff’s firm, say they lost $7 million as a result of the scheme.
Peter Madoff joined his brother’s firm in 1970 after completing law school, and together they helped pioneer the computer-driven trading methods that culminated in the development of the electronic trading network known as the Nasdaq market.
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This post is tagged with: Andrew Ross Samuels, Bernard Madoff, Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, Frank Lautenberg, Madoff, Peter Madoff, Recent Stories, Stephen SchlesingerRead related stories: Madoff · Recent Stories1 Comments
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The common thread amongst Madoff, Standford and Charles Ponzi is (i) they all offered returns to investors that was higher than the competition’s and was seemingly too good to be true, (ii) they had outsized reputations for business acument and (iii) they “looked the part”. Corporate swindlers succeed within Corporate America because they have what is known as “executive presence” and they prey on corporations’ penchant for looking only at the surface of things. If a group of innercity kids can figure this out then I know adults can. To learn more go to http://www.newyorkshockexchange.com/content/view/85/37/
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Ruth Madoff got $2M from husband’s UK officeMarch 27, 2009 at 2:05pm
British investigators said Friday that Ruth Madoff got a $2 million payment from the London division of her husband’s securities firm just weeks before he was arrested for securities fraud.
Befuddled by the Financial Crisis Ask Simon Johnson
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Muck Tracker Newt Gingrich to Convert to Catholicism Saturday
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Edelman Ranks Again As Largest Independent Pr Firm
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