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Very quietly – much too quietly – Attorney General George Jepsen has closed “513 of the 699 whistleblower cases he inherited from his predecessor, former Attorney general Richard Blumenthal, according to a story circulated by The Associated Press (AP) and published in the Washington Post.
During his campaign for Attorney General, Mr. Jepsen was
pressed by Republican candidate for attorney general Martha Dean to quickly
dispose of cases handled by Mr. Blumenthal during his 20 year tenure. Mrs. Dean ran for Attorney General twice, once against the popular Mr. Blumenthal in
2002 and again in 2010.
In the course of the Jepsen-Dean debates, Mr.
Jepsen seemed particularly sensitive to delays in resolving such cases, and
Mrs. Dean was insistent that, should she be selected as attorney general, she
would immediately institute a review of Mr. Blumenthal’s crippling backlog and
questionable cases that never should have been prosecuted, tendering apologies to
those of Mr. Blumenthal’s litigation victims who were left for years to hang on
hooks in the Attorney General’s own private torture chambers. A good many of Mr. Blumenthal’s suits against
persons and companies were left unresolved after more than four years of
litigation.
In virtually all his prosecutions, Mr. Blumenthal sent out
press releases to most, if not all, Connecticut media outlets. The recipient of
one of Mr. Blumenthal’s press releases dutifully would advertise the
prosecution, occasionally printing the releases almost verbatim, as well as
subsequent releases relating to the case at most stages of a long and tortuous
litigation process. National outlets were also inundated with media releases
that, we now discover, were unnecessarily destructive to 513 of Mr.
Blumenthal’s targets.
Unfortunately, not as many news outlets as have printed
press releases relating to the cases closed by Mr. Jepsen will print follow up stories
concerning the vindication of the victims of Mr. Blumenthal’s unnecessary
prosecutions.
Mr. Jepsen, who told the AP in an interview that many of the
probes he dismissed “lacked merit,” is to be congratulated for having acted so expeditiously
in his review. The number of cases dismissed in which “something meaningfully
wrong is going on,” Mr. Jepsen told the AP, was small.
Matt O’Connor of SEBAC, a coalition of state employee unions,
remarked that he could not recall “such a large number of whistleblower cases
being closed. But because allegations of fraud or shoddy work by government
agencies and contractors are protected from public release, he said there’s no
way to know why Jepsen acted.”
Jepsen said he terminated several probes of companies and
organizations, according to the AP report, “because he and the companies
settled the dispute ‘or it may be that there’s not very much there.’”
Mr. Jepsen warned that public officials should tread
carefully in those cases in which the regulation of business and job creation
was at stake and invited a comparison between himself and Mr. Blumenthal. He
said of himself, “I’m a pretty low-key person. I like to see all sides of an
issue before I jump in. My background academically and professionally and
politically is non-confrontational. We do plenty of litigation here but I just
generally view litigation ought to be as a last resort.”
Jepsen noted that he “has been a political ally of
Blumenthal’s for decades, even working as an intern for Blumenthal in 1979, and
that any contrast between the two is ‘really more my own style and background’
than it is about policy differences,” according to the AP report.
Mr. Blumenthal responded to the implied charges of
incompetence in the AP story with a mixture of injured innocence and chutzpah.
Refusing to comment decision made by his successor, Mr. Blumenthal
said he kept cases open even though they were not active because, according to
the AP story, “important information could always develop later. He said he
had no knowledge of which cases were closed and declined to comment on
differences between his and Jepsen’s approaches to the job.”
Mr. Blumenthal -- who used his accomplishments as attorney
general as a springboard to higher office as a Democratic U.S. Senator – told the
AP, “I would say very emphatically my record speaks for itself, for my
aggressive and proactive approach to law enforcement to protect business
people, consumers, all the people of Connecticut.”
The AP, the recipient of thousands of Blumenthal press releases over
the years, noted in its story that Mr. Jepsen’s approach “is a marked contrast
to Blumenthal, who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year after 20 years as
attorney general. Blumenthal sued numerous companies over allegations of
consumer rip-offs, illegal dumping and violations of workers’ rights in the
name of agencies such as the Department of Consumer Protection and Department
of Energy and Environmental Protection.”
At some point – one hopes against hope – Mr. Jepsen will
post on the Attorney General’s website a list of the 315 cases Mr. Blumenthal improperly
prosecuted as attorney general by case name and docket number so that
journalists in the state may review then in the light of Mr. Jepsen’s review
and dismissals.
In connection with one case settled after much litigation,
Connecticut Commentary noted that Mr. Blumenthal had been much in the habit of hanging
his victims on litigation hooks for long periods of time, during which they
became progressively poorer as their reputation were battered by Mr. Blumenthal’s
artfully worded press releases. Those who relied on Mr. Blumenthal’s many
releases, one likes to think, have some obligation in restoring the reputation and
public standing of those who – in 513 of the 699 whistleblower cases Mr.
Blumenthal litigated – were innocent as charged. A legislative review of the cases dismissed by Mr. Jepsen, with a view to establishing a less personalized method of prosecuting cases in the attorney general's office, would not be out of order.
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