If Mark Penn Violated Federal Wiretapping Laws, Will Clinton Dump Him?

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NEW YORK: Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist is being accused of illegal eavesdropping in a civil lawsuit that alleges he and his polling firm monitored the personal e-mails of a former associate who started a rival company.

Mitchell E. Markel, a former vice president at polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, claims in the suit that the firm began monitoring all messages sent from his personal Blackberry device nearly a month after he had resigned and become president of his new business. The suit claims that the founder of the firm, Mark Penn, who is Clinton's strategist and pollster, knew about and approved of the monitoring, which the suit says violates federal wiretapping laws.
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If true, I think this undercuts the campaign's message on such issues as warrantless wiretapping under the Patriot Act.

Edited to add: Thanks to Maddezmom, who pointed out how quickly and quietly this suit settled out of court: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/07/18/lawsuit_against_clinton_pollster_dropped/

- Dave

Go. Have fun. Hammer her ass on it.

BTW, why does it matter so much that this particular guy get fired? Did you only want him fired after you found out about these charges?

... carries both civil and criminal penalties.

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/ch119.html

- Dave

I mesan, we already know the man has deep ties to the Bushies.

One thing seems more liekly than I ever would havce thought, if Penn does get convicted (followed by probation or some other wrist-slap) CNNMSNBCFOX (with the possible exception of Olbermann) will go silent and dark about it.

If that happens, THEN we will know things are worse than they seem.

Hopefully I am wrong about this, but I keep hoping to be wrong about bad shit that ususally tunrs out to be correct.

If Penn was convicted, and things are above-board, Faux will lambaste and trumpet it in their customary fashion.

IF, on the other hand, Fox goes dark and silent as it does for unfavorable Bushie stories, then I am very worried.

... the court can - and courts often do - refer the matter to the US Attorney.

- Dave

all we have is a complaint, which can allege anything it wants

... is the standard for a case such as this. Doubt they're past discovery yet.

- Dave

- Dave

and that's not the case. :)

... on the case's status!

: )

- Dave

and I agree, it's very interesting how quick this was settled. But after reading all the the info, looks like the guy who sued was just as slimey. :)

... without a salamander's worth of oozy coating.

- Dave

The answer in both cases is NO.

... say he's become a liability to the campaign, then she'll drop him.

; )

- Dave

nm

I will vote for Sen. Clinton in the 2008 "election", if she is the Democratic nomineee.

My other points regarding this have alreday been made in other posts on this thread.

PS&B is claiming that the email was sent to accounts owned by them, in which case it wouldn't matter in the slightest what device Markel is using to check PS&B's email.


from that story, anyway, it seems like they're just fighting in court.

... will be the place to find the answers. On it.

http://pacer.psc.uscourts.gov/

- Dave

Have this one bookmarked too: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/home.htm

; )

- Dave

i learned the hard way not to use them lightly. lol.

... when you factor in the cost of time and travel, 8 cents a page is a bargain.

; )

- Dave

This has been another in the series Short Answers to Really Easy Questions.

I'd try a football helmet this time Dave! LOL

You just keep exposing the truth, and that is 'Hillary Hating' of the first order.

... like a pissed-off former business partner.

The skeletons in this closet should have every other campaign scrambling for the court filings.

- Dave

any ugly lawsuit where (i would assume) giant sums of money and lucrative buisness contracts are involved.

based on the article accompanying the OP, this is nothing more than legal cat-and-mouse between a former executive who struck out on his own and the company looking to protect its own interests.

the OP clearly has a bias against Mark Penn, which is fine (the 360 electoral vote claim is preposterous), but the editing of the article the OP cited needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt.

... is in the OP.

You're 100% right about allegations in civil lawsuits: they have to be proven, assuming that the case makes it to trial.

- Dave

... what inference do you draw from such a quick, quiet resolution?

The parties may have decided that it was in their mutual self-interest to settle out of public view, but that does not remove the question from the table for the public/Democratic primary voters.

- Dave

... what inference do you think Senator Clinton draws from the quick settlement?

- Dave

Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mark oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mark focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8834212485573890101&q=Mark+Penn&total=455&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0

And Hillary has clearly adopted their strategies as the winning startegy. From what I know of totalitarianism and propaganda, now having observed it up close for seven-plus years now, that means she is going to "win".

Then she faces off against the man the Bushies have selected to have the Imperial Throne between Bush Family members, Rudy 9/11ani, and she won't win.

GOD, I hope I am wrong about both things, or at least let Sen. Clinton assume the throne, giving us a brief rest from straight-up Bushie vampirism, even if she isn't going to do anything to stop it from happeneing again.

:shrug:

And you won't catch me clicking on any of your links to find out.

It sounds like more Corporate TV Pravda nonsense, so I refuse to partake and participate.

It's keith harmon snow and he knows quite a bit about Congo and blood diamonds

where the Corpro-Pundidiots were talking about Hillary's neckware or something. I involuntarily caught some of it from thread titles here at DU a couple weeks ago, and I mistakenly thought you were referring to whatever that was.

My apologies.

I'm tom_paine, and no revolutionary. I just want to get back to what the Toms and all the rest of the Founding Fathers left us with.

If the real Tom Paine was here, you can bet your ass he wouldn't be sitting around typing into a computer, as we all are.

To work for Burson??

Then he cashed in his chips for big money after Bill Clinton left office.

Penn likely did a great job for Hillary, which left her with firing Penn for taking the money as her only option. Almost everybody in Washington cashes out. I guess people there are used to it and Hillary didn't want to fire Penn over it.

... into the discussion.

- Dave

http://www.burson-marsteller.com/About_Us/Global_Leadership/Lists/GlobalLeadership/DispForm.aspx?ID=1&nodeName=Global%20Leadership&SubTitle=Mark%20J.%20Penn

Mark has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Mark working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

The techniques applied to these political and corporate battles were honed from early major corporate experiences with AT&T, Texaco and others. In "The Guru of Small Things" the New York Times explains how he has combined innovative techniques of micro-targeting, issue-based messaging and visual message testing to win major corporate, marketing and political battles.

Today, Mark serves as strategic consultant to several Fortune 500 companies and CEOs on a wide range of image, branding and corporate reputation issues. His client relationships include Ford Motor Company, Merck, Verizon, BP, McDonald's and Microsoft. He has been a key adviser to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer since 1998, helping Microsoft affect a complete corporate turnaround from anti-trust scandal to Most Trusted Company (Wall Street Journal).

Suit against Clinton pollster dropped
By Sara Kugler, Associated Press Writer | July 18, 2007

NEW YORK --A lawsuit accusing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief strategist of illegally intercepting e-mails has been withdrawn and the legal battle between him and former associates has been resolved, the parties said Wednesday.

Penn, Schoen & Berland said former vice president Mitchell E. Markel dropped his suit against the firm and its founder, Mark Penn, who is strategist and pollster to the Democratic presidential candidate. A separate suit that the firm had filed a week earlier against Markel and Michael J. Berland, another associate who once polled for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, was also dismissed and a settlement was reached.

Markel had claimed in his e-mail wiretapping suit that the firm was illegally monitoring messages sent from his personal Blackberry after he left and started a rival company. Penn, Schoen & Berland did not dispute that e-mails were intercepted but said it owned the e-mails because they were still routed through the company's account.

more:http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/07/18/lawsuit_against_clinton_pollster_dropped/

:spray:


oh man, CGA, that's just funny.

... and one of the shortest dockets in history.

Either the allegations were patently outrageous, or the suit would've been a slam dunk - that's the inference I draw from such a quick, quiet resolution.

- Dave

What's up with that?

?? What's going on here?

When you hear that a large corporation has settled out of court within weeks of a lawsuit being filed, what inference do you draw?

- Dave

not knowing the case was settled, that's the inference I draw.

The fact that you are not backing away from your mistake speaks volumes about your integrity IMHO.


edit: oops, bad typo! oh, and O/P has been updated - that's a start...

... my not knowing - when I drafted the original, unedited OP - that the case settled so quickly.

Taking Mr. Penn's attorneys' denial in that article at face value, I assumed that the case was going to be vigorously defended. It wasn't. Instead, as maddezmom pointed out, it settled within a matter of days.

That's the beauty of posting a question and actually reading the answers you receive. You learn something. I candidly admit that I learned that the case settled.

I also took the step of editing the OP, to ensure that new readers didn't have to wade through to find that new data.

Now, if you answer the question I posed to you about the inference you draw from the quick settlement, I might learn something new.

- Dave

... to the candidate to force Penn to address this.

- Dave

Like the hot freak-show potato that he is.

... was on Family Guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_and_Peter%27s_Bogus_Journey

The actual quote describes how those who've lost yet another job to NAFTA must feel every time they hear it supported: http://www.classictvquotes.com/quotes/shows/family-guy/episodes/bill-and-peters-bogus-journey/

- Dave