This is the sort of
headline successful politicians do not want to see in their political resumes:
“Feds Subpoena Middletown Health Center s Records Relating to Officials
Including Wyman and Malloy's Budget Chief.”
Last December, a
grand jury subpoenaed documents – e-mails, paper communications and other
records – from a host of democratic officials and aides including Lt. Gov.
Nancy Wyman and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's budget cruncher, Ben Barnes,
the governor’s Secretary
Office of Policy and Management.
All the snooping is related to a political stinkpot that blew up as
former Speaker of the House Chris Donovan was running for the U.S. Congress in
Connecticut’s 5th District.
During the midst of a FBI investigation into campaign irregularities in
the course of which Mr. Donovan’s campaign director was arrested, Mr. Donovan,
the Democratic nominee for an open seat in the U.S. Congress, chose to leave
the campaign and surrender his position in the General Assembly. Speaker
Donovan was replaced by present Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey and,
stepping into his campaign shoes, Elizabeth Esty was elected to the Senate.
Of course, no one should conclude on the basis of an FBI investigation
that anyone indicted has therefore been found guilty. Here in the United
States, we still presume people charged with campaign irregularities are innocent
until proven guilty in a court of law, even though in Corrupticut the
presumption strains credulity. The presumption of innocence, by the way, is
useful mostly as an instruction by a judge to a jury; as such, it means that
jurors are to consider only evidence at trial in determining guilt. The rest of
us are free to speculate as we wish.
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