Here is a chicken or
the egg question: In political corruption cases, should the targeting of
suspects for prosecution precede or follow the investigation?
Most of us would
agree that the targeting of conspirators and co-conspirators in political corruption
trials should follow an investigation, because it is the investigation itself
that determines culpability.
“First the verdict,
then the trial,” says the Queen of Hearts in the topsy-turvy world of Lewis Carroll’s
“Through the Looking Glass.” The
world confronted by Alice in Wonderland is
supposed to be inverted, the way images are seen in a mirror. But in the real
world, we want verdicts to follow trials and targeting in political corruption
trials to follow complete and exhaustive investigations.
At some point in the
corruption investigation of John Rowland, prosecutors decided to target Mr. Rowland
as conspirator number one. Other apparently less important conspirators in the
case were Brian Foley, the owner of Apple Rehab, and his wife Lisa Wilson Foley,
then running in a Republican Party primary for the US House in Connecticut’s 5th
District. At the time the investigation was opened, none of the principals
involved were active politicians: Mr. Rowland, a former governor rebounding from
an earlier corruption conviction, was a radio talk show host; Lisa Wilson Foley
was an aspiring politician who previously had never held political office; and
her husband, Brian Foley, was the founder of a lucrative business.
Once the targeting
had occurred, prosecutors “turned” Brian Foley, who then became the chief
witness at trial against Mr. Rowland. Before his great awakening, both Mr.
Foley and his wife had insisted a) that Mr. Rowland had been paid $35,000 for
services rendered to Apple Rehab, and b) that Mr. Rowland was tutoring Ms.
Foley without pay during her unsuccessful run in the 5th District
Republican primary. Andrew Roraback won the Republican primary and went on to
lose in the general election to Elizabeth Esty, who captured the US House seat
in the general election.
What was it that occasioned Mr. Foley’s conversion? Defense attorney Norm Pattis in a recent column suggested that prosecutors made Mr. Foley an offer he could not refuse. A
plea to lesser charges as a reward for co-operation with the prosecution is one
of the many tools available to prosecutors not found in the usual defense
attorney tool box.
We may never know what
undisclosed arrangements were made between Mr. Foley and prosecutors. We do
know that prosecutorial privilege did permit aggressive prosecutors to offer Mr. Foley a
deal in which he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge for which he was
sentenced to a fine he could well afford and three months in a half-way house.
Considering the
rhetoric deployed by prosecutors in their summation arguments, Mr. Foley got
off, as criminals sometimes say, with a “slap on the wrist,” if not a slap on
the back.
“In the Rowland
case,” Mr. Pattis wrote, “Brian Foley got a slap on the wrist, a brief period
of home confinement, for conspiring to break campaign finance laws, a crime,
the prosecution intoned at Rowland’s trial, that undermined the integrity of
the republic.”
One of the “underminers,”
investigative reporter Jon Lender reminds us,
was Apple Rehab lawyer, Christian Shelton, who drafted the notorious contract
between Mr. Rowland and Mr. Foley, the linchpin of the prosecution’s case against
Mr. Rowland.
In an e-mail to Mr.
Foley, Mr. Shelton -- unindicted co-conspirator “Attorney 1” in the prosecution’s indictment of Mr. Rowland
– wrote “I would recommend that due to [Rowland's] background and the
compliance issue that…the contract be between my Law Office and [Rowland] — that
way there is no connections."
The indictment
itself suggests that Mr. Foley and Apple Rehab’s attorney played a leading role
in the deception for which Mr. Rowland was vigorously prosecuted. And the
e-mail correspondence between Mr. Foley and Mr. Shelton strongly suggests that prosecutors
may have suffered a numerology dysfunction. Mr. Foley, rather than Mr. Rowland,
may have been conducting the deception orchestra. Mrs. Foley spoiled the tune somewhat
when she suggested, continually during her defense, that Mr. Foley’s deception
was so complete it fooled even her. She thought
– and said repeatedly in negotiations with prosecutors – that Mr. Foley was
paying Mr. Rowland for legitimate consulting work he had performed for Apple
Rehab.
Mr. Lender now wants
to know when the statewide Bar Counsel and the Chief Disciplinary Counsel
intend to sanction Mr. Shelton.
He will find that in
Wonderland, where reality is inversely mirrored, political targeting is occasionally
more important than investigations.
Comments
Later in October 2011, according to the indictment, Attorney 1 emailed Foley again to say that "since the contract is with my firm, I am not concerned it will ever be discovered."
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Right; the perceived need for concealment was by the candidate's camp.
I thought our mania for campaign finance control came out of the Watergate fiasco in which money aimed at the candidate or his party was hidden and misused. Here the money going from the candidate to the consultant was hidden, not because the consultant was doing anything particularly controversial, let alone illegal, but because the candidate's camp was ashamed of him.
Whether he committed a crime, the attorney in this matter demonstrated his unprincipled pragmatic dishonesty. That in itself probably doesn't differentiate his from the ethics of many of our licensed attorneys at law. I would say that if I were in the market for a good, in the sense of effective, advocate for my shady interests I'd look for someone more skilled than Christian B. Shelton, Esquire. If I could, I'd ask Bill Klinton or his hideous wife to recommend a good operator in the Nutmeg jurisdiction.
That's exactly right.
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Actually, it being a case brought against the hapless Governor by the Federales despiadados, Rowland could use help from the Klintons regardless of jurisdiction. We doubt Rowland's slightly outre political orientation would prevent the open minded of Klinton Consultants, Inc., from doing their best to achieve social justice for a nominal fee.
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As the Clinton administration came to a close in early 2001, it was discovered that Hugh Rodham received around $400,000 for legal services regarding gaining the Presidential pardon of fraudulent businessman Glenn Braswell and the sentence commutation of drug trafficker Carlos Vignali.[7]
In March 2001, it was revealed that Tony Rodham had helped gain a March 2000 presidential pardon for Edgar Allen Gregory, Jr. and his wife, Vonna Jo, a Tennessee couple in the carnival business who had been convicted of bank fraud.[13] The pardon was granted over the objections of the U.S. Justice Department.[13