Top Edwards Aid Joe Trippi: ""Too many in office have fallen under the spell of campaign money ..."

"...at any cost," a public criticism of Edward's rival Hillary Clinton's campaign for hosting a fundraiser targeting companies and lobbyists.


But... we've grown accustomed to "buts" when it comes to the Edwards campaign specifically.

Though his former law firm came under indictment more than a year ago and he himself appeared likely to face criminal charges, prominent trial lawyer William S. Lerach slipped past the vetting of John Edwards' presidential campaign and was permitted to raise large amounts of money for the Democrat's 2008 bid.

Lerach, his family and members of his new law Lerach Coughlin law firm accounted for nearly $78,000 in donations to Edwards' campaign in the first half of this year, making the trial lawyer one of the North Carolina Democrat's leading "bundlers" of contributions.

In the midst of that fundraising, Lerach negotiated behind the scenes for a plea deal that was consummated on Tuesday and will send him to federal prison for at least 12 months on a conspiracy charge involving his past legal work as partner in the Milberg Weiss law firm.

Through it all, Edwards stood by his fellow trial lawyer and even took an action this spring that was helpful to his longtime financial supporter in a government matter.

In May, Edwards used the bully pulpit of his presidential campaign to publicly pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission not to oppose Lerach's new law firm in a Supreme Court case over whether Lerach's lawsuits could proceed against banks on behalf of investors who lost millions in the collapse of energy giant Enron.

"The question for all Americans is whether their government will be on the side of those big banks or regular families," Edwards said in a statement released by his presidential campaign that was trumpeted on the Web site of Lerach's law firm.

All of this transpired while Edwards campaigned against what he calls a "corroded and corrupt" Washington system in which politicians raise money from special interests who then seek their help on government matters. To make his point, Edwards campaign is refusing any donations from lobbyists registered in Washington.

Trippi's attack made no mention of Lerach, the Edwards' bundler, or the fact that Lerach had just reached a plea deal in a scheme prosecutors alleged involved kickback payments to plaintiffs in class action lawsuits he and his former law firm brought.

Lerach and his former law partner Melvyn I. Weiss were notified in the summer of 2005 that they had become targets in that lengthy criminal investigation, meaning they were likely to be indicted, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Court papers say that they employed the scheme for more than two decades in 150 cases that brought their firm more than $200 million in fees.

Milberg Weiss, the New York based law firm where Lerach served as a partner until a bitter parting in 2004, was indicted on conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering charges in May 2006. Lerach and Weiss were not charged at that time but they were notified by federal prosecutors in Los Angeles that they continued to be the targets of their investigation. The firm is fighting the charges. Weiss himself has not been charged with a crime and maintains his innocence.

Political donations by Lerach and his partners, as well as a former expert witness named John Torkelson, came under investigators' scrutiny but the government has not filed criminal charges alleging they broke election laws.

Edwards campaign said it donated Lerach's personal donations to charity yesterday after his guilty plea, but isn't returning the money he raised from others.

Edwards already has faced question about another trial lawyer who raised money from him. Attorney Geoffrey Feiger was indicted on federal charges he conspired to route more than $125,000 in illegal contributions to Edwards' 2004 White House bid .Feiger, a trial lawyer who became famous for representing Dr. Jack Kevorkian during his assisted suicide controversy, has pleaded not guilty. Edwards' campaign said it knew nothing about the alleged scheme and cooperated with the Justice Department. But the campaign has declined to refund the donations in question, choosing instead to wait for the outcome of Feiger's trial to avoid influencing jurors.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/09/19/lawyer_in_plea_deal_was_edward.html?hpid=topnews

John just fell into a pit created by his own "moralizing".

Wonder if Elizabeth can get him out of this one?

in a suit against the banks related to Enron. Edwards did not make a mistake in supporting litigation against the banks regardless of whether a lawyer involved in the lawsuit plead guilty of unrelated crimes or whether that lawyer gave Edwards money.

What makes them so goddamned arrogant to think nobody's going to notice? Keep blathering on about corruption this and corruption that - LOOK over there!!

They can't defend Clinton, so they attack Edwards on something a donor did that has nothing to do with Edwards. Nice 6 degrees of John Edwards piece.

this wasn't as obvious as it is a self-inflicted injury..

"Edwards already has faced question about another trial lawyer who raised money from him. Attorney Geoffrey Feiger was indicted on federal charges he conspired to route more than $125,000 in illegal contributions to Edwards' 2004 White House bid .Feiger, a trial lawyer who became famous for representing Dr. Jack Kevorkian during his assisted suicide controversy, has pleaded not guilty. Edwards' campaign said it knew nothing about the alleged scheme and cooperated with the Justice Department. But the campaign has declined to refund the donations in question, choosing instead to wait for the outcome of Feiger's trial to avoid influencing jurors."

The moral to the story is an old one.."People who live in glass houses..." should just shut the hell UP!

Edwards will give money back in case of illegality.

Nothing glass there. The criticisms of Clinton are not about one incident involving someone else. They are about what she chooses to do consistently and without doubt of its correctness. Taking money from lobbyists and this fund raiser are her choice by her and she continuously defends her choice.

Hsu isn't a lawyer. Hsu was wanted on an outstanding warrant... So, wheres the similarity with money laundering, lawfirms, personal friends of John Edwards?

Only on lobbyists and the fund raiser by homeland security beneficiaries.

I googled Clinton attacks Edwards...look at what I found:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Clinton+attacks+Edwards&btnG=Google+Search

Look over there.

... Fieger has filed a motion seeking dismissal of the indictment as a “political and vindictive prosecution.” The Justice Department responds: “ridiculous, ludicrous, absurd.”

Time was when such charges leveled at the Justice Department would not withstand the light of day. Times have changed. Today almost no one in the legal community questions the fact that the Gonzales Justice Department has been engaged in selective, politically vindictive prosecutions. The only disagreements now are over which cases safely fit into that category.

The evidence for the broader conclusion is overwhelming. Seven Democrats for every Republican. Close coordination with local Republican party officials. Playing the prosecutions to the press. Timing them, like this one, to overlap with critical elections.

No where is it more obvious than in the prosecution of Governor Siegelman in Alabama, which Fieger cites and details in his brief. (Read the Fieger brief here. In an alarming move, the judge ordered the brief stricken because it was printed in the wrong font, so thanks to the Free Press for publishing it.) No doubt Fieger will put it to good use in making his case—if the court allows it ... http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/09/hbc-90001104

No matter the candidate. It's a back door, unregulated way to funnel money. Every candidate is vulnerable to these kinds of charges.

Lerach this, David Hsu that...

Vote Obama!

This same situation could easily turn up on Obama.

to pick any one of the top three while dissing the remaining two is just plan absurd when all three equally suck.

Lerach to Plead Guilty

Famed class action attorney William Lerach is set to plead guilty in Los Angeles to one count of conspiracy related to payments to representative plaintiffs in cases filed by his former firm, Milberg Weiss. The long-running investigation of the firm has picked up steam in the past few months as former name partner David Bershad entered a guilty plea that outlined how he maintained a cash fund drawn from contributions from other Milberg Weiss partners that was used to make secret payments to the plaintiffs. In late August, Lerach announced his retirement from his new firm, Lerach Coughlin, in which he acknowledged "my mistakes" and said that the investigation would end soon, which apparently it will for him (see earlier post here). According to a Bloomberg article (here), the plea agreement does not include a cooperation provision, which likely means Lerach will not be called on to testify against the firm or another former named partner who remain under indictment. The agreement calls for a prison sentence of one to two years and an $8 million fine. A key question now is whether prosecutors will bring a case against Melvyn Weiss, who along with Lerach has been the recent focus of the federal investigation. (ph)

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/

In his plea agreement, Mr. Lerach acknowledges making secret payments to Dr. Steven G. Cooperman, and acknowledges that others received payments from other partners of Milberg Weiss. These individuals were generally promised 10 percent of the attorneys’ fees received by Milberg Weiss. The payments were kept secret from the courts overseeing the class actions, and the named plaintiffs who received the kickbacks made false statements under oath concerning the payments.

Dr. Cooperman, a former eye doctor in Beverly Hills, Calif., pleaded guilty in July to accepting $6.1 million in secret kickbacks for serving as a lead plaintiff in securities lawsuits filed by Milberg Weiss, a New York investor class-action law firm. His sentencing is set for June 30, 2008.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/business/18lerach.html?ex=1347768000&en=80e2237c95bb6473&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Judge for yourself as to how wrong it is to keep money from him. What Lerach did was wrong and against the law. It is a matter of attorney's ethics. I may be wrong, but I don't find and accusations of misrepresenting evidence other than regarding payments to individuals who were plaintiffs in his many, many stockholders' lawsuits.

You must view this with the understanding that the right-wing conservatives have sought to undermine consumers' rights by intimidating lawyers who fight on behalf of consumers. I am not associated with any of Lerach's cases or his law firm, so I have no personal interst in this. I do not know much about the charges against him beyond what you are reading.

His "crimes" do not compare, however, to those of Ken Lay or many, many of the donors to Republican campaigns. Based on my general knowledge about the legal milieu, I know that Lerach and his firm were extremely successful in many lawsuits against corrupt big businesses. I think it is a stretch to criticize Edwards for supporting a lawsuit against Enron just because it was brought by Lerach even if Lerach was a donor to Edwards. I think many of us might also have supported the lawsuit if we knew more about it.

Here is a discussion of a lawsuit against Enron from the plaintiffs' point of view:

# As a result of the massive fraud at Enron, shareholders lost tens of billions of dollars. Many Enron executives, Enron’s accounting firm and certain bank officials were indicted.

# Andrew Fastow, Enron’s now-imprisoned former finance chief, testified that many of the banks’ transactions were contrived, deceptive deals done solely to create the false appearance of profits and cash flow.

# Internal Enron documents and testimony of bank employees detailed how the banks engineered sham transactions to keep billions of dollars of debt off Enron’s balance sheet and create the illusion of increasing earnings and operating cash flow. For example:

http://www.enronfraud.com/

The University of California today (June 11) joined dozens of state Attorneys General, many of the nation’s largest pension funds, leading academic experts, consumer groups and professional organizations to file friends-of-the-court briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of investor protections.

“The evidence clearly proves that these financial institutions were active, knowing and crucial participants in the Enron fraud – they were not innocent bystanders,” said Charles Robinson, the University’s general counsel. “For victims of one of the most egregious corporate frauds in history, we are simply asking for our day in court.”

The Supreme Court, in either the Enron case or the case of Stoneridge Investment Partners, LLC v. Scientific-Atlanta, Inc. (No. 06-43), will soon determine whether secondary actors that knowingly commit fraud can be held liable for their actions. The briefs addressing this question – a concept known as “scheme liability” – were filed today in support of the plaintiffs in the Stoneridge case.

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/2007/jun11.html

from other indicted and convicted businesses?

This is nonsense. I've never seen such a worthless post or Washington Post article.

You have got to be kidding me. He is mister Haircut and Houses. He is mister Reid at a boxing match. He is mister Reid tipping a door man. This guy has a rap sheet a mile long!

http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/people/johnsolomon

... that is critical of Clinton, "Tell me the things in the piece that are b.s."

even when he goes after republicans. Same for Nedra Pickler.

He has done it repeatedly to the point to where the washpost's own ombudsman said his piece against Edwards was a "Gotcha" piece without the "Gotcha".



http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/22/92114/1964

He does that in this article by incriminating Edwards for something a bundler did. It is just another case of his insinuating that Edwards did something wrong with no evidence for anything wrong. Look at my other posts to see what I am talking about here.

HE WENT AFTER REID AND OTHER DEMS FOR THE ABRAMOFF SCANDAL!!!! The point of his pieces aren't to be right, they are to try to trick people into thinking a scandal exists, especially if it is a Democrat like Reid or Edwards.

The only difference: Edwards knows how to give a speech.