The Scoop on
Harriet Miers
By Joshua Frank
10/04/05
"Counterpunch" -- -- So you thought that Harriet
Miers, George W. Bush’s new Supreme Court pick has no paper
trail. You were wrong. One of Miers only qualifications for the
high court -- as she hasn’t an ounce of judicial experience --
is that she was the head of Locke, Liddell & Sapp; a sleazy
corporate law firm based in Dallas, Texas.
According to the
InterNet Bankruptcy Library (IBL), Locke Liddell & Sapp paid
$22 million in a suit alleging it aided a client in defrauding
investors. The Dallas-based firm agreed in April of 2000 to settle
a suit stemming from its representation of Russell Erxleben, a
former University of Texas football star whose foreign currency
trading company, Austin Forex International, was a pyramid
get-rich Ponzi scheme.
Erxleben later pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy and
securities-fraud charges. "It's a very simple legal
proposition: a lawyer can't help people steal money," George,
of George & Donaldson told reporters at the time. George’s
firm had represented investors who lost close to $34 million in
Erxleben's company.
All this was going
on while Harriet Miers was co-managing partner of the law firm at
the time. Miers denied that settling the suit indicted that they
her firm was somehow complicated in Erxleben’s criminal
activities. “Obviously, we evaluated that this was the right
time to settle and to resolve this matter and that it was in the
best interest of the firm to do so," Miers said.
The Miers
scandalist past goes deeper than her ties to corporate crooks in
Texas. According to Newsweek, she’s also played a role in
maintaining Bush’s National Guard credibility. As Michael
Isikoff wrote in July of 2000:
“The Bushies'
concern began while he was running for a second term as
governor. A hard-nosed Dallas lawyer named Harriet Miers was
retained to investigate the issue; state records show Miers was
paid $19,000 by the Bush gubernatorial campaign. She and other
aides quickly identified a problem--rumors that Bush had help
from his father in getting into the National Guard back in 1968.
Ben Barnes, a prominent Texas Democrat and a former speaker of
the House in the state legislature, told friends he used his
influence to get George W a guard slot after receiving a request
from Houston oilman Sid Adger. Barnes said Adger told him he was
calling on behalf of the elder George Bush, then a Texas
congressman. Both Bushes deny seeking any help from Barnes or
Adger, who has since passed away. Concerned that Barnes might go
public with his allegations, the Bush campaign sent Don Evans, a
friend of W's, to hear Barnes's story. Barnes acknowledged that
he hadn't actually spoken directly to Bush Sr. and had no
documents to back up his story. As the Bush campaign saw it,
that [sic] let both Bushes off the hook. And the National Guard
question seemed under control.”
It gets better, if
not dirtier. At roughly the same time Miers was helping Bush dodge
National Guard questions; Bush had named her chair of the Texas
Lottery Commission, which had been scandal-plagued for years. The
chief issue before Miers and the commission was whether to retain
lottery operator Gtech, which had been implicated in a huge Texas
bribery scandal.
According to the
Philadelphia Daily News, Gtech's main lobbyist in Texas in the
mid-1990s was none other than Benjamin Barnes, who just happened
to have the low-down on how Bush got into the National Guard to
avoid going over to Vietnam.
Gtech fired Barnes,
in 1997. A short time after Barnes was fired, Gtech had its
lottery contract renewed even though two companies had bid-lower
than Gtech had.
Former Texas
lottery director Lawrence Littwin filed suit, as he thought the
whole charade smelled of scandal. Littwin's lawyers suggested in
court filings that Gtech was allowed to keep the lottery contract,
which Littwin wanted to open up to competitive bidding, in return
for Benjamin Barnes's silence about Bush's entry into the National
Guard.
Barnes and his
lawyers denounced Littwin’s theory as "favor-repaid"
theory in court pleadings as "preposterous ... fantastic
[and] fanciful." According to the Philadelphia Daily News,
Littwin was “fired after ordering a review of the campaign
finance reports of various Texas politicians for any links to
Gtech or other lottery contractors. But Littwin wasn't hired, or
fired, until months after Barnes had severed his relationship with
Gtech.”
Littwin later
settled with Gtech for a hefty $300,000.
And here we have
Republicans more upset about Bush’s Supreme Court choice than
Democrats. Well, they have a reason to be skeptical, if not upset.
As William Kristol recently noted that Bush’s pick “will
unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and
capitulation on the part of the president."
For once the old
windbag may be right.
Joshua
Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped
Reelect George W. Bush, just published by Common Courage Press.
Visit www.brickburner.org
to learn more.
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