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Thursday, July 17, 2003
Wow, they're right. Payback is a bitch.
There is just so much here in the todays William Pryor saga, that I don't know where to start. Here's some highlights:
The Senate took time Thursday from fighting over prewar Iraq intelligence to renew battling on another front: President Bush’s nominees to the federal judiciary. Did Bush appeals court nominee William Pryor, Jr. lie to the Senate Judiciary Committee last month about his fund-raising activities as a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association? Or were Senate Democrats using documents allegedly stolen by a disgruntled employee to set a trap for Pryor and smear him?
[snip]
At Pryor’s hearing last month, he said that in his role as a member of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), he had not raised money from Alabama-based companies, from tobacco companies or from firms under investigation by his office.
Documents leaked to the committee, apparently by a former employee of RAGA’s fund-raising consultant, indicate that Pryor was assigned to call executives at Boeing, BP/Amoco and several other firms and ask for contributions.
Among those firms were three tobacco companies: RJ Reynolds, Brown & Williamson Tobacco, and Phillip Morris.
It was not clear from the documents whether Pryor had made the calls he was assigned to make.
Quin Hillyer, a columnist for the Mobile (Ala.) Press Register newspaper, wrote Wednesday that committee Democrats had obtained the documents from a former secretary of Claire Austin, a RAGA fund-raising consultant. That secretary, Kelly Foradori, came under attack at Thursday’s hearing.
[snip...]
“The documents appear to have been stolen by a disgruntled employee of the fund-raiser hired by the Republican Attorneys General Association,” charged Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
Cornyn urged Hatch to launch an investigation of “who on possibly the Senate staff inspired this disgruntled employee to steal private documents.”
Cornyn also said “there was nothing illegal, improper or untoward” in RAGA’s fund-raising. “What I’m concerned about is a smear against this good man, this nominee, and others.”
Among those “others” was Cornyn himself, since he, as Texas attorney general, also took part in RAGA fund-raising efforts in 1999 and 2000.
[snip...]
Pryor’s chief supporter, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala, told reporters, “There is not going to be single thing in his answers that are going to contradicted by these records, and we’ve looked at them.... If he had been able to have the documents in front of him, to perhaps refresh his recollection, he would have been more specific. His general answers, as I read them, are consistent and honest.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. said the issue was Pryor’s seeking funds for RAGA from companies who might at some point be the target of investigations by his office.
“What is reported is a conflict of interest,” Feinstein said. “Either it either existed, or it didn’t exist. But we do need the time to see if it did.”
Hmmmmmm. Some one gets put under oath and asked questions. They lie, thereby perjuring themselves.
Yeah. I've never heard of that happening before. Nevermind the fact that Pryor saw nothing wrong in dialing for dollars from companies involved in class action suits that he was a part of. Conflict of interest? Hey, I'm no lawyer, but, as they say, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
It's not as if Pryor didn't have a chance to clear the air on this matter previously. From the phlegmatic William F Buckley:
Feingold: Will you provide to the committee a comprehensive list of RAGA's contributors and the amounts and dates of their contribution?
Pryor: I don't have such a list, Senator.
Feingold: Who does?
Pryor: The Republican National Committee.
Feingold: Will you urge them to provide that list?
Pryor: If you need that kind of list, then you really need to seek it from them.
Feingold: You oppose a disclosure of this information?
Pryor: I'm not saying that I oppose it or I favor it.
Feingold: I'm taking this as a refusal to urge the release of this information.
In street talk, this would read: You want that? Well, stir ass and get it. Don't use me as your research assistant.
Hey Bill, guess what? They got the list. Stir that.
How and why did the money get from RAGA to the RNC?:
Pryor, though elected as a Republican, says he has tried to avoid partisanship. He has sometimes drawn fire from fellow party members when his office issued advisory opinions favorable to Democratic officeholders, most notably former Gov. Don Siegelman.
Perhaps his most visibly partisan action was helping create the Republican Attorneys General Association, a fund-raising arm of the Republican National Committee. The group raised money for Republican attorneys general campaigns around the country, accepting money from many of the corporations against whom some states had filed lawsuits.
The RAGA money was shifted into RNC accounts and reported on the party's disclosure forms, leading Pryor and other members to defend the fund-raising process as open.
The RNC reporting forms, though, did not indicate which donations were passed on through the attorneys general group.
What does the Alliance for Justice have to say about Pryor and RAGA?:
As demonstrated in our report, Pryor’s extreme ideology and partisanship has led him to engage in a number of ethically questionable activities. Both at his hearing and in his answers to Senator Feingold’s written questions, Pryor displayed evasiveness and outright disdain for legitimate concerns about his involvement in the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA).13Pryor’s refusal to provide straightforward answers to these questions, and to Senator Kennedy’s questions regarding allegations that Pryor leaked confidential state attorneys’ general memoranda to the tobacco industry,14raise serious concerns about whether he possesses the necessary integrity and temperament required of a federal appellate judge. Pryor was widely criticized for his involvement in RAGA, an organization he helped found and for which he served as Treasurer. Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican, refused to join RAGA, and suggested in an interview that the practices of the organization raised a potential conflict of interest for state attorneys general: “Most states don't allow corporate contributions to office-holders, but here we have corporations making direct contributions. There's no question that it creates at least the appearance of a conflict when some of these same corporations are the ones that might be in need of an investigation or prosecution.”15Woods also questioned, “whether Mr. Pryor ha[d] the ability to be non-partisan.”16Woods described Pryor as “probably the most doctrinaire and the most partisan of any attorney general [he had] dealt with in eight years, so people would be wise to question whether or not [Pryor is] the right person to be non-partisan on the bench.”17At least thirteen prominent newspapers from all across the country, including, among others, the Washington Post, the New York Times,18the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, and the L.A. Times, have come out in opposition to Pryor’s nomination.19Pryor is one of the most extreme right-wing ideologues ever nominated to the federal judiciary.
Pryor is a sanctimonious evil prig and, if there is an ounce of justice left in the Senate, he'll be brought up on perjury charges. Maybe a few days handcuffed to a post in the Alabama sun will refresh his memory.
Oh. And I saved the best for last:
Republicans lashed out at the Democrats for springing a last-minute surprise on Pryor.
“You tried to set a trap for him, and the guy never had a chance to explain himself,” said an irate Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., glaring across at the Democrats in the Senate committee room. “You should have laid your cards on the table and talked to him in a decent manner, and that’s what I hate about this committee and the way you all are playing this game!”
"I hate you I hate you I hate you!" and the stamping of little feet as bursts into tears and runs from the room.
Pardon the expression, but what a puss.
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