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Ross G Douthat Follows in Footsteps of William Kristol
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Private Carlyle Group Captures Public Spotlight
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Release of New Torture Memos Puts Jay Bybee on Hot Seat
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Brill and Partners Want to Help Online Publishings Bottom Line
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Bushs Homeland Security Team Hangs Out Shingles
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Glitterati may testify at trial of Brooke Astor’s son
The witness list for the trial of socialite Brooke Astor’s son might have been ripped from the Social Register.
David Rockefeller, Barbara Walters and Henry and Nancy Kissinger are among the prominent figures who may be called to testify at the trial of Anthony D. Marshall.
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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)So may Annette de la Renta, the wife of designer Oscar de la Renta, and former United Nations boss Kofi Annan and his wife, Nane.
Others on the list given to potential jurors Tuesday include Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, New York Public Library chief Paul LeClerc, novelist Louis Auchincloss and Philippe de Montebello, former head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Brooke Astor“That is the circle that Brooke Astor traveled in,” Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann told the panel which will decide whether Marshall is guilty of stealing millions from his mother before her death two years ago at age 105.
Seidemann said he wanted to make sure they would not be too star struck to focus on their deliberations.
Kissinger, 85, Walters, 77, Rockefeller, 93, and De la Renta, 69, were close friends of Astor, New York’s leading philanthropist and unofficial first lady. They are expected to be asked about her mental state during her final years, how her son treated her and what they know about what he planned to do with her money when she died.
Marshall, 84, is charged with fraud, conspiracy and grand larceny and faces 25 years behind bars if convicted at his trial, which could last three months.
Prosecutors allege he stole more than $60 million from his mother, who was stricken with Alzheimer’s disease in her final years.
They argue she wanted to leave her money to the institutions to which she had devoted her life, including the Met and the public library, but that Marshall conned her into changing her will to enrich himself and his wife.Co-defendant Francis Morrissey, a lawyer Marshall hired, is charged with conspiracy and forgery for allegedly faking Astor’s signature on the updated will.
The two men say they are innocent, and will argue Astor was lucid at the time the will was changed.
It is the lesser known names on the witness list – among them, Astor’s former butler, nurses, chauffeur and gardeners – who are expected to provide some of the most damning testimony, according to the New York Daily News.
One nurse, Pearline Noble, kept a diary in which she used code names to describe people in Astor’s life – including “Miss Piggy” for Marshall’s wife, Charlene, prosecutors said.
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This post is tagged with: Annette de la Renta, Anthony Marshall, Barbara Walters, Brooke Astor, Crime, David Rockefeller, Graydon Carter, Henry Kissinger, Kofi Annan, Paul LeClerc, Philippe de MontebelloRead related stories: Crime · Recent Stories
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Brill and partners want to help online publishing’s bottom lineApril 19, 2009 at 7:27am
Joined by two other media heavyweights, the man who created Court TV has launched a venture that could bring much-needed revenues to the embattled newspaper and magazine industry.
Muckety Mover Susan Boyle Has a Dream
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Rockefeller Kissinger Among Those Who May Testify at Trial of Brooke Astors Son
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Citigroup, Goldman Sachs recruit lawmakers’ ex-aides
Lavishing lawmakers with six-figure campaign donations is not the only way banks and investment houses influence the legislative process.
They also hire the top aides of those lawmakers, who can trade on relationships with their old bosses to pick up the phone and, say, arrange an impromptu session with Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, or Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
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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)In the past year, top bailout recipients, including Goldman Sachs Group and Citigroup, have dispatched dozens of former congressional staffers and ex-government officials to lobby their former bosses on the financial rescue package, Mother Jones reports.
Besides one-time aides to Democratic and Republican leaders, the magazine found that many of the lobbyists hired by financial institutions are ex-employees of congressional committees on banking, finance, and commerce, former Treasury officials and in one case, a top aide to Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff.
Goldman Sachs, which has more than 30 ex-government officials working as registered lobbyists on staff, also tapped one-time House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) to represent its interests on issues related to the Treasury Department’s Troubled Assets Relief Program.
Other insiders lobbying for Goldman Sachs include Faryar Shirzad, a former top economic aide to President George W. Bush and also Republican counsel to the Senate Finance Committee; as well as former SEC commissioner Richard Y. Roberts, now a principal at lobby firm RR&G LLC.
Citigroup, which spent nearly $8 million on lobbying in 2008, is particularly adept at recruiting government insiders.
Leading its huge in-house staff is Nicholas E. Calio, senior vice president of global government affairs, who worked for both George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush as assistant to the president for legislative affairs assistant.
James “Jimmy” Ryan, former senior counsel to Majority Leader Reid, is another heavy hitter on the Democratic side. Ryan accompanied CEO Vikram Pandit to a recent meeting with Reid – although the senator’s spokesman Jim Manley discounted the notion that Pandit received any special treatment.
Another star on the Democratic side is Robert Getzoff, a vice president for federal government affairs who until 2007 served as senior counsel to then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel.
“To the best of our knowledge there has not been direct contact between Getzoff and Rahm in several months,” an Emanuel aide told Mother Jones.
Other in-house lobbyists include Robert Schellhas, a chief of staff to former Rep. Rob Portman, a Republican from Ohio, and Michael P. Andrews, formerly of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
Besides its own staff, the banking giant has also hired more than a half-dozen lobbying firms, who themselves depend on hiring veterans of the legislative and executive branches.
Robert Cogorno, a Citigroup lobbyist who works for Elmendorf Strategies, is a former Gephardt aide and one-time floor director for Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the No. 2 House Democrat.
(Cogorno also lobbies for Goldman Sachs, as does his boss, Steven Elmendorf, Gephardt’s former chief of staff.) A Hoyer spokeswoman told Mother Jones that Cogorno has not lobbied the House majority leader on banking matters.
Also on Citigroup’s lobbying team is DC attorney Robert Barnett, a former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).
Another new addition to Citigroup’s forces is DC Navigators, which registered in January to lobby for the bank on TARP issues. Handling the account is Cesar Conda, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s domestic policy chief.
Under current lobbying rules, lobbyists are only required to disclose if they lobby the House, the Senate, or the executive branch, and, in general terms, which bills or issue areas they lobbied on. They don’t have to identify the legislators or aides they contacted, or what they discussed with lawmakers.
The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007 strengthens some limitations on aides-turned-lobbyists, but former congressional staffers still need only wait a year before returning to the Hill to lobby their former bosses and colleagues.
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This post is tagged with: Cesar Conda, Chris Dodd, Faryar Shirzad, Goldman Sachs Group, Harry Reid, Jimmy Ryan, Lobbying, Michael P. Andrews, Nicholas E. Calio, Rahm Emanuel, Recent Stories, Richard Gephardt, Richard Y. Roberts, Robert Barnett, Robert Cogorno, Robert Getzoff, Robert Schellhas, Vikram PanditRead related stories: Lobbying · Recent Stories1 Comments
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America must curb its obvious threat that allows politicians and now their staffs to rope off the areas that permit them to be first at the till of taxpayers taken hostages.
Like the preferred beneficiaries of the United States Taxpayer Trust fund rather than elected representatives, it is what caused the first American revolution, and there is no reason to suspect that humanity is not capable of creating the conditions that necessitate another.
Term limits and lobbying limits may be the only cure for this egotistical affliction.
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Bush’s homeland security team hangs out shinglesApril 17, 2009 at 7:44am
Nearly every top member of the Bush Administration’s homeland security team has gone through the revolving door and re-emerged as a private consultant, where they can be expected to make big bucks off their expertise and contacts.
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