Updated Biography of Cliff Groh with Yet More Disclosures

Anchorage--

As time marches on, facts about my life change and I also learn more facts about the past.   So here is another updated biography with updated disclosures:

Updated Biography of Cliff Groh with Yet More Disclosures

Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has been a lawyer for more than 20 years. He is now a writer and attorney in Anchorage. Formerly a prosecutor, Groh has represented some criminal defendants in his private law practice. His law practice focuses on the writing of appeals and motions and the revision of legal documents.


Groh has been doing research for a book on the Alaska public corruption scandals uncovered by the current federal investigations and the resulting trials. To that end, he has observed most of the trials of former state legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring in Anchorage and all of the trial of then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens in Washington, D.C. He has taught two classes on Alaska public corruption through the Opportunities for Lifelong Education (OLE) program, and has also presented another lecture through that program. He maintains a blog on the Alaska public corruption scandals at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com on the Internet.

Groh was interviewed for an hour about Alaska public corruption on C-SPAN by the network's founder Brian Lamb, and he has also given a Polaris lecture on the subject at the University of Alaska Anchorage for the Forty-Ninth State Fellows program.    Groh is a columnist for the Alaska Bar Rag, the official publication of the Last Frontier's lawyers, and most of his offerings in that periodical have addressed the cases arising out of the "POLAR PEN" federal probe into Alaska public corruption.   

Groh's writings on Ted Stevens and the federal prosecution of him have appeared in various outlets, including the Anchorage Daily News, the Anchorage Press, and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner website.   He has also been interviewed live regarding "POLAR PEN" cases on the Alaska Public Radio Network, Anchorage's TV Channel 4, and KOAN-AM and FM.   His comments on these matters have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times and the Reuters news service and on Anchorage's TV Channels 11 and 2.   

Groh served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue from 1987 through 1990. In that capacity, he served essentially as the State of Alaska's tax lobbyist in the successful effort in 1989 to revise the state's oil taxes in a way that increased revenues from the giant Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields. The legislation adopted in 1989 created a regime for oil taxes that lasted until the Alaska Legislature adopted the Petroleum Profits Tax in 2006.

Groh was also the principal legislative staff member working on Permanent Fund Dividend legislation in 1982. That legislation produced the per capita Permanent Fund Dividend Alaska has today. Groh has co-authored two chapters for an academic book on Permanent Fund Dividends to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Groh worked as an Assistant District Attorney in Anchorage and in rural Alaska communities such as St. Paul, Unalaska, and Sand Point. He has handled approximately 30 jury trials as a prosecutor. He has also served as in-house and outside counsel for municipal governments in Alaska. He served as a delegate to the Conference of Alaskans in 2004.

When Groh was first out of college in the late 1970s, he worked as a reporter with a statewide newspaper called the Alaska Advocate. He has also published historical articles on topics ranging from the Permanent Fund Dividend to the history of journalistic coverage of the capital move campaigns.

Groh is a graduate of Harvard College, where his senior honors thesis was on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). His law degree is from the University of California at Berkeley (then called Boalt Hall, now known as Berkeley Law).

Disclosures of Potentially Relevant Interests and Relationships


Groh’s work in government has included service in both partisan and non-partisan positions. Groh has worked for Democrats while serving in partisan positions in the Alaska State Legislature and the Alaska Department of Revenue. He is a registered Democrat who was a delegate to the 1988 Alaska Democratic Convention.


Groh socialized with Bruce Weyhrauch during periods in the 1980s and early 1990s when both lived in Juneau, and Groh had some social contacts with Weyhrauch afterwards. While serving as City and Borough Attorney for the City and Borough of Sitka, Groh arranged in 2002 or 2003 for Weyhrauch to act as counsel for the City and Borough in a case where Groh had a conflict of interest. Weyhrauch and Groh have never discussed the criminal case against Weyhrauch while those legal proceedings were pending, and have discussed only the case's effects on him since the case was adjudicated.


Groh knew Ted Stevens all of Groh's life, and Groh's father—who passed away in 1998—was a close friend and political ally of Ted Stevens. Groh lived in a dormitory in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1975 with interns of Stevens' Senate office while researching a college senior honors thesis on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.   Ted Stevens apparently made the arrangements for Groh to live in that dormitory, and his office may have paid for the room rental.  Groh sometimes used space in Ted Stevens' Senate office during the summer of 1975 while researching his thesis, and Groh both interviewed and had some social contacts with Stevens that summer.


Groh’s mother was a close friend of Ted Stevens’ first wife Ann Stevens, who died in an airplane crash in 1978. Ted Stevens and his Senate staff worked to arrange for additional medical care for both of Groh’s parents when they were stricken with cancer in the 1990s.

At various points over the years, Groh met and spoke with Jim Clark, Bill Weimar, and Pete Kott about various matters. Groh also exchanged e-mail messages with Vic Kohring about fiscal policy. Groh interviewed Don Young in the 1970s, and as a child he may have played with Ben Stevens.


In the 1980s, Groh’s father served as VECO’s lawyer in some legal matters.   In one such matter, Groh's father defended the corporation against an enforcement action brought by the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) regarding VECO’s campaign contributions. One or both of Groh’s parents also had some business dealings with Bill Allen in the 1980s. In an apparent attempt to interest Bill Allen in buying real estate, Groh’s father reportedly took Allen to a subdivision in rural Alaska owned by a corporation controlled by Groh’s father. Neither Allen nor VECO purchased any property at the subdivision. Given the limited number of sleeping spaces available in the area at the time, however, that visit by Bill Allen probably means that Groh has slept in a bed that Bill Allen once slept in.

Groh's son was selected in 2012 as one of nine summer interns for U.S. Sen. Mark Begich (D.-Alaska).   Groh made no efforts in his son's obtaining of the position.   


Groh's law practice has included work for a law firm representing a municipal government in administrative proceedings and litigation over the property tax on the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). The opponents in those legal matters consist mostly of the major oil producers on Alaska's North Slope, who are the majority owners of TAPS.

Groh has also worked and/or socialized with a number of the Anchorage lawyers who have worked on matters associated with the federal government's “POLAR PEN” probe into public corruption in Alaska. Some of those attorneys are or have been prosecutors on those matters, and some of those attorneys have served as defense counsel on those matters.

New Judge, New Trial Dates Coming Up, but Still No Guarantee of Trials for Kott and Kohring

Anchorage--

I'm engaged in pressing personal business that will limit my blogging for a few more days. Today's news is that the move of U.S. District Judge John Sedwick to senior status (semi-retirement) later this year has resulted in the transfer of the cases of former State Reps. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River) and Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) to Judge Ralph Beistline.

None of the recent developments have shaken my belief that neither of those former lawmakers will be retried on the federal corruption charges which put them in prison before discovery problems produced the reversals of their convictions.

I'm been lax lately on the posting. To compensate, here's a copy of my column in this month's edition of the Alaska Bar Rag, the quarterly publication for the Last Frontier's lawyers:

What Does the Federal Probe into Public Corruption Mean for Alaska?

by Cliff Groh

(First of several installments)

Born in the Territory of Alaska in 1954, I grew up in a skinny Anchorage media environment in which there was no live TV until the first moon walk occurred when I was 15.

Reading newspapers and magazines as a boy in the 1960s, I noticed occasional stories of public corruption—of police on the take, government officials who accepted bribes—in states like Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Illinois. I really didn’t see that in Alaska, so I asked my father about it. He was a former President of the Alaska Bar Association who had served as both a prosecutor and criminal defense attorney; he had also been on the City Council, the Borough Assembly, and the School Board.

My father said “Well, son, there’s not enough money to steal.”

Back in the mid-1960s, Alaska was a young state with a thin economy. Although people on the Last Frontier felt poor, there was still some of that aura of idealism and optimism that remained from the excitement of achieving statehood in the late 1950s.

The announcement in 1968 of the discovery of a super-giant oilfield at Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope brought billions and billions of dollars to Alaska, both to the private economy in paychecks and to the state government’s coffers in taxes and royalties on oil development.

The long-running federal investigation into Alaska public corruption has underscored some of the changes seen in the 49th State, and that probe has also caused some. Most of the cases produced by the federal investigation involved alleged efforts to influence public officials regarding the state’s taxes on oil development.

This probe electrified Alaskans. Think back to the wild days between the late summer of 2006 and the fall of 2008. In those 27 months, 11 people got charged with federal felonies. Those 11 included:

Ø legendary U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska);
Ø five state legislators (some of whom had left office)—State Sen. John Cowdery (R.-Anchorage) and State Reps. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage), Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River and a former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives), and Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla);
Ø Jim Clark, the chief of staff to former Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski;
Ø Bill Allen, a political kingmaker who was the long-time CEO of the multinational oil-services giant VECO, a billion-dollar company;
Ø Bill Weimar, the multimillionaire former head of the private corrections corporation Allvest;
Ø Rick Smith, a VECO vice president who served as Allen’s chief political lieutenant; and
Ø Bill Bobrick, a prominent lobbyist working on municipal issues in the Municipality of Anchorage.

At the end of 2008, 10 of those 11 people had pleaded guilty or heard juries deliver guilty verdicts on all or almost all counts they faced. FBI surveillance tapes—many made at the VECO-rented Suite 604 in Juneau’s Baranof Hotel—greatly aided the prosecutors in their cases at trial. Alaskans were mesmerized by iconic images of Allen telling Kott “I own your ass” and Allen handing cash to Kohring, and many citizens were stunned by how little it seemed to take to get some public officials to sell their offices.

Long accustomed to serving either as a sugar daddy or a political punching bag on the Last Frontier, between late 2006 and late 2008 the feds seemed to be on a roll straightening out a mess in Alaska.

Back in 2008, those 11 defendants seemed very likely to increase by a lot. Multiple sources told Alaska journalist Bill McAllister that 26 people would be indicted in the federal investigation into public corruption in the state. Speculation on potential additional defendants centered on U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska) (identified in media reports as being under investigation for alleged campaign fund-raising violations, among other things) and former State Senate President Ben Stevens (R.-Anchorage) (whom federal prosecutors got Bill Allen and Rick Smith to say that they had bribed).

Code-named “POLAR PEN” (apparently for its origins in an examination into corruption regarding private prisons), this federal investigation has had big effects, both for people and for policy.

Eight defendants ultimately went to prison, and one served a sentence of home confinement. The executions of the search warrants on the offices of six state legislators beginning in August of 2006 helped fuel the gubernatorial campaign of insurgent Republican candidate Sarah Palin, already running on a platform of “I’m not one of the good old boys.” The oil tax legislation in 2006 that sent some lawmakers to prison was amended the next year to increase taxes substantially on the oil companies after the first indictments frightened some legislators into avoiding even the appearance of being in the pocket of the petroleum industry.

And after almost 40 years in the U.S. Senate, Ted Stevens got defeated for re-election in November of 2008 eight days after a jury returned guilty verdicts on seven felony counts of failing to disclose gifts on U.S. Senate forms. At the Senator’s insistence, the trial started only 55 days after the indictment instead of eight months or so later as would normally have occurred in this kind of case. Given the small margin in the voting, it’s clear that Stevens would have been re-elected if the trial had either not started or still been in progress on election day.

But now—about eight years after the investigation started—it’s all different. The POLAR PEN probe has fizzled out in ways that are both surprising and disappointing.

The case against Ted Stevens collapsed in the wake of revelations of prosecutors’ substantial failures to share evidence with the defense; the seven guilty verdicts got overturned, and Attorney General Eric Holder elected not to seek a retrial. The meltdown of the Ted Stevens case led to the federal government finding discovery failures in the cases against former Reps. Kott and Kohring, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed their convictions. (Although as of this writing the federal government could retry Kott and Kohring, I predict that this will never happen. Note that this forecast comes from the same analyst who confidently predicted that Ted Stevens would never testify in his own defense.)

Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that substantially narrowed the scope of the honest-services fraud statute—a law that provided a favorite arrow in the quiver of federal prosecutors—the Department of Justice dismissed the federal felony charges against Weyhrauch and let him plead guilty to a unique state misdemeanor that resulted in no jail time. (Weyhrauch’s lawyers have also gotten permission from the U.S. District Court to forward to the Alaska Bar Association evidence that they allege shows “serious misconduct by government prosecutors appearing before the grand jury,” including the suborning of perjury.) Clark was also allowed to withdraw his guilty plea in the wake of that Supreme Court decision.

The prosecutors charged a 12th defendant in 2009—former State Rep. Beverly Masek (R.-Willow)—who pleaded guilty and served a prison sentence, but she is clearly the last defendant in the POLAR PEN probe.

It is the probers who are now on the griddle. The federal government is conducting two probes of the conduct of the prosecutors and investigators who worked on the federal government’s investigation of Alaska public corruption. The Justice Department’s internal watchdog unit—the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR)—is holding one of the two satellite probes; the other investigation is a highly unusual criminal probe run by a special counsel selected by the trial judge in the Ted Stevens case. Fingerpointing among various prosecutors over the discovery and handling of allegations against Bill Allen involving sexual abuse of minors appears to have contributed to the delays in wrapping up the two probes, which have each gone on for more than two years.

A story that seemed to start out with white hats and black hats has picked up a lot of shades of gray. The arc of some Alaskans’ feelings went from the bumper stickers of “We don’t give a damn how they do it Outside” to “Thanks FBI for cleaning up Alaska”—now it’s more like “How could the feds foul this up?”

This is the first in a series of columns to examine the causes, effects, and significance of the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption. It will rely on my extensive experience in Alaska, which brings both knowledge of how the state works and a number of other associations that might be seen as conflicts of interest when writing about this subject. (The full list of disclosures can be found at my blog at http://alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/2011/05/even-more-updated-biography-with-still.html on the Internet.) There are some lessons here and some elemental human stories, and this series of columns will have some of both.


Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has worked as a prosecutor and represented some criminal defendants in his private practice. He maintains a blog on the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com on the Internet. He is a lawyer and writer in Anchorage whose law practice focuses on the writing and revision of briefs and motions.

Even More Updated Biography, with Still More Disclosures

Anchorage--

In preparing for publication in another forum of some of my writings on public corruption, I have tweaked my bio and expanded my disclosures of various interests and relationships with various defendants, suspects, and lawyers involved in the investigations and trials covered by this blog.

Biography of Cliff Groh

Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has been a lawyer for more than 20 years. He is now a writer and attorney in Anchorage. Formerly a prosecutor, Groh has represented some criminal defendants in his private law practice. His law practice focuses on the writing of appeals and motions and the revision of legal documents.

Groh has been doing research for a book on the Alaska public corruption scandals uncovered by the current federal investigations and the resulting trials. To that end, he has observed most of the trials of former state legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring in Anchorage and all of the trial of then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens in Washington, D.C. He has taught two classes on Alaska public corruption through the Opportunities for Lifelong Education (OLE) program. He maintains a blog on the Alaska public corruption scandals at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com on the Internet. He was interviewed for an hour about Alaska public corruption on C-SPAN by the network's founder Brian Lamb, and he has also given a Polaris lecture on the subject at the University of Alaska Anchorage for the Forty-Ninth State Fellows program.

Groh served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue from 1987 through 1990. In that capacity, he served essentially as the State of Alaska's tax lobbyist in the successful effort in 1989 to revise the state's oil taxes in a way that increased revenues from the giant Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields. The legislation adopted in 1989 created a regime for oil taxes that lasted until the Alaska Legislature adopted the Petroleum Profits Tax in 2006.

Groh was also the principal legislative staff member working on Permanent Fund Dividend legislation in 1982. That legislation produced the per capita Permanent Fund Dividend Alaska has today. Groh has co-authored two chapters for an academic book on Permanent Fund Dividends to be published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Groh worked as an Assistant District Attorney in Anchorage and in rural Alaska communities such as St. Paul, Unalaska, and Sand Point. He has handled approximately 30 jury trials as a prosecutor. He has also served as in-house and outside counsel for municipal governments in Alaska. He served as a delegate to the Conference of Alaskans in 2004.

When Groh was first out of college in the late 1970s, he worked as a reporter with a statewide newspaper called the Alaska Advocate. He has also published historical articles on topics ranging from the Permanent Fund Dividend to the history of journalistic coverage of the capital move campaigns.

Groh is a graduate of Harvard College, where his senior honors thesis was on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). His law degree is from the University of California at Berkeley (then called Boalt Hall, now known as Berkeley Law).

Disclosures of Potentially Relevant Interests and Relationships

Groh’s work in government has included service in both partisan and non-partisan positions. Groh has worked for Democrats while serving in partisan positions in the Alaska State Legislature and the Alaska Department of Revenue. He is a registered Democrat who was a delegate to the 1988 Alaska Democratic Convention.

Groh socialized with Bruce Weyhrauch during periods in the 1980s and early 1990s when both lived in Juneau, and Groh had some social contacts with Weyhrauch afterwards. While serving as City and Borough Attorney for the City and Borough of Sitka, Groh arranged in 2002 or 2003 for Weyhrauch to act as counsel for the City and Borough in a case where Groh had a conflict of interest. Weyhrauch and Groh have never discussed the criminal case against Weyhrauch.

Groh knew Ted Stevens all of Groh's life, and Groh's father—who passed away in 1998—was a close friend and political ally of Ted Stevens. Groh lived in a dormitory in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1975 with interns of Stevens' Senate office while researching a college senior honors thesis on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and Ted Stevens apparently made the arrangements for Groh to live in that dormitory. Groh sometimes used space in Ted Stevens' Senate office during the summer of 1975 while researching his thesis, and Groh both interviewed and had some social contacts with Stevens that summer.

Groh’s mother was a close friend of Ted Stevens’ first wife Ann Stevens, who died in an airplane crash in 1978. Ted Stevens and his Senate staff worked to arrange for additional medical care for both of Groh’s parents when they were stricken with cancer in the 1990s.

At various points over the years, Groh met and spoke with Jim Clark, Bill Weimar, and Pete Kott about various matters. Groh also exchanged e-mail messages with Vic Kohring about fiscal policy. Groh interviewed Don Young in the 1970s, and as a child he may have played with Ben Stevens.

In the 1980s, Groh’s father served as VECO’s lawyer in defending the corporation against an enforcement action brought by the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) regarding VECO’s campaign contributions. One or both of Groh’s parents also had some business dealings with Bill Allen in the 1980s. In an apparent attempt to interest Bill Allen in buying real estate, Groh’s father reportedly took Allen to a subdivision in rural Alaska owned by a corporation controlled by Groh’s father. Neither Allen nor VECO purchased any property at the subdivision. Given the limited number of sleeping spaces available in the area at the time, however, that visit by Bill Allen probably means that Groh has slept in a bed that Bill Allen once slept in.

Groh's law practice has included work for a law firm representing a municipal government in administrative proceedings and litigation over the property tax on the Trans Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). The opponents in those legal matters consist mostly of the major oil producers on Alaska's North Slope, who are the majority owners of TAPS.

Groh has also worked and/or socialized with a number of the Anchorage lawyers who have worked on matters associated with the federal government's “POLAR PEN” probe into public corruption in Alaska. Some of those attorneys are or have been prosecutors on those matters, and some of those attorneys have served as defense counsel on those matters.

The Bare Record of the Federal Probe into Alaska Public Corruption

Anchorage--


With the substantial misinformation on this topic floating around the Internet, it seems useful to lay out the record on the federal investigation into public corruption in Alaska. Twelve people have been charged--nine for crimes associated with the defunct multinational oilfield-services corporation VECO, and three for crimes associated with efforts regarding private corrections facilities.


Of the nine people charged with crimes associated with VECO, six people stand convicted today while three other cases ran off the rails. The convictions against one of those six--ex-State Rep. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River)--looks shaky on appeal, however, and the conviction of another of the six--ex-State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau)--was for a unique state misdemeanor instead of the four felony charges that the federal government originally laid against him.


Of the three people charged with crimes associated with private prisons, all three cases resulted in federal felony convictions that will stay in place.


Here's a graphic showing the current status of the cases, in this blog's characteristically unflashy style:



Individual / Role / Crimes charged / Sentence of custody after resolution of case / Legal status as of 19 March 2011



Ted Stevens / U.S. Sen. / Deliberate failure to report on Senate disclosure forms gifts and/or liabilities, primarily associated with VECO and/or its long-time CEO Bill Allen / Never sentenced after jury verdicts of guilty set aside following revelations of prosecutorial misconduct / Free until death in August of 2010


Pete Kott / State Rep. / Crimes associated with corruption regarding Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) oil tax legislation in 2006 / Six years after jury verdicts of guilty / Free while courts sort out allegations of prosecutorial misconduct (case currently in Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)


Vic Kohring / State Rep. / Crimes associated with corruption regarding Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) oil tax legislation in 2006 / 3.5 years after jury verdicts of guilty / Convictions overturned by Ninth Circuit based on prosecutors' failures to turn over evidence to the defense; no decision announced by Department of Justice on re-trial


Tom Anderson / State Rep. / Crimes associated with corruption regarding private prisons / Five years after jury verdicts of guilty / Released from prison to halfway house in February of 2011

Beverly Masek / State Rep. / Conspiracy to take bribes from Bill Allen and a relative regarding oil tax legislation / Six months in prison after guilty plea / Out of prison


Bruce Weyhrauch / State Rep. / Crimes associated with corruption regarding Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) oil tax legislation in 2006 / Three-month suspended sentence following guilty plea to state misdemeanor of knowingly dealing with unregistered lobbyists in return for dismissal of felony charges / Free on probation


John Cowdery / State Sen. / Conspiracy with Bill Allen to bribe another legislator regarding PPT oil tax legislation / Six months of home confinement pursuant to guilty plea / Free after end of sentence


Jim Clark / Chief of Staff to Governor Frank Murkowski / Conspiracy to commit honest services fraud by taking illegal campaign contribution from VECO for Frank Murkowski’s gubernatorial re-election campaign / Allowed to withdraw guilty plea to charge after U.S. Supreme Court cut back on scope of statute making honest services fraud a crime / Free


Bill Allen / Chairman (former CEO) of VECO and Power Broker / Crimes associated with corruption regarding Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) oil tax legislation in 2006 as well as tax violations / Three years after guilty pleas / In prison


Rick Smith / Vice President of VECO and Political Lieutenant of Bill Allen / Crimes associated with corruption regarding Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) oil tax legislation in 2006 as well as tax violations / 21 months after guilty pleas / In prison


Bill Weimar / Power Broker and Private Corrections Magnate / Conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and structuring transactions regarding campaign contribution to legislative candidate whom Weimar believed would support Weimar's efforts regarding private prisons / Six months in prison and six months of home confinement after guilty pleas / Discharged from this sentence, but now charged with felony child sexual abuse in Florida



Bill Bobrick / Lobbyist / Conspiracy to commit extortion, bribery, and money laundering in conjunction with efforts regarding private corrections facilities / Five months in prison and five months in home confinement after guilty pleas / Free after serving sentence

Jim Clark Walks, But Has to Keep Cooperating with the Feds

Anchorage—

Citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s narrowing of the application of a critical statute, the federal government has agreed to dismiss the case against Jim Clark, even though the ex-Chief of Staff to former Gov. Frank Murkowski had pleaded guilty back in March of 2008.

The problem for the feds is that the law that Clark pleaded guilty to violating was the honest services fraud statute, which the Supreme Court performed radical surgery on last June. The part that Clark admitted that he ran afoul of while Chief of Staff had been cut off, so as the law stands now the indictment did not charge him with an actual crime.

Although a federal judge must approve this agreement to throw out the charge against Clark, it seems highly likely that this will be a mere formality.

The feds made a big point in their filing today that they are holding Clark to his plea bargain, which requires him to cooperate with the government in the investigation and prosecution of others in return for the government not charging Clark with other crimes.

The only “other” out there now would appear to be ex-State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), who is charged with bribery, extortion, and conspiracy. Weyhrauch’s case is back in District Court in Anchorage after having traveled up to the Supreme Court (where he was one of the winning defendants in the decision last June cutting back the scope of the honest services fraud statute) and down again.

Weyhrauch’s case is also the only one left unadjudicated in the seven-year-old federal investigation into Alaska public corruption that the feds call “POLAR PEN.” Of the 12 people charged in the probe, only three are in prison now: former VECO CEO Bill Allen; former VECO VP Rick Smith; and former State Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage).

Disclosure: Bruce Weyhrauch is the defendant in the cases arising from the federal probe into Alaska public corruption that I know the best personally. I worked with Bruce Weyhrauch when we both served on the staff of the Alaska Legislature in the early 1980s and have socialized with him some since then. I have seen him less since I moved away from Juneau in the early 1990s, and he has never discussed this case with me.

Court Puts Jim Clark's Sentencing on Indefinite Hold

Anchorage--

U.S. District Judge John W. Sedwick issued an order today that is short enough to quote in full:

JWS ORDER as to James Clark; In light of the motion to dismiss at docket [37], as well as the fact that the Weyhrauch trial will not be concluded in the near future, the imposition of sentence set for October 15, 2010, is hereby VACATED. Sentencing will be reset only if, after considering the United States' response the motion to dismiss, the court denies that motion. cc: USM, USPO (RMC, COURT STAFF) (Entered: 09/20/2010)

Clark is the former Chief of Staff to ex-Gov. Frank Murkowski. The reference to "Weyhrauch" is to former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), whose case is the only one arising out of the federal government's POLAR PEN investigation into Alaska public corruption that remains unadjudicated.

Jim Clark Asks to Have His Charge Dismissed

Anchorage--



Jim Clark's attorney has asked the court to throw out the case against him on the grounds that the Supreme Court's decision earlier this year cutting back on the scope of the honest-services fraud statute means that the former Chief of Staff to Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski no longer faces a valid criminal charge. As Mark Regan and I have discussed, the delays the prosecution has allowed before Clark's sentencing has given Clark the time to make this request. Clark's sentencing is currently set for October 10, and this motion all but guarantees that the sentencing will be again delayed. Clark's request also raises the chances that the sentencing will never occur.



I promise there's more to come. My blogging has been slow lately in part because of the "Cost-Effective Justice" forum set for Saturday, and when that's done I'll be able to focus on producing more posts for you.

Going to Ellamar, Leaving Behind a Glimpse of Future Attractions

Anchorage—

I’m off to Prince William Sound again for a few days. When I get back next week, look for more discussion of the effects last week’s Supreme Court rulings on the honest services fraud statute will have on federal prosecutions alleging public corruption in Alaska and elsewhere. (Preview: Those effects are highly negative, and that might well be good news for Jim Clark as well as Bruce Weyhrauch.)

Have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

Bruce Weyhrauch Gets Good News as the Honest Services Fraud Statute Gets Cut Back

Anchorage--

Mark Regan writes:

The Supreme Court has called into question the federal “honest services fraud” charges against Bruce Weyhrauch. Weyhrauch has been charged under a federal mail fraud statute, 18 U.S.C. secs. 1341 and 1346, with depriving Alaska citizens of the intangible right to his honest services. As with Pete Kott and Vic Kohring, the charges against Bruce Weyhrauch came out of the 2006 legislative session, when Bill Allen and VECO orchestrated legislative resistance to higher oil taxes. The Court has remanded Weyhrauch's case to the Ninth Circuit for further consideration in light of its decision in Skilling v. U.S., which held that the honest services fraud statute covered only bribes and kickbacks, not undisclosed self-dealing.

A reason it was difficult to make charges such as bribery and extortion stick against Bruce Weyhrauch was that the facts of his case differed significantly from the facts of Pete Kott’s and Vic Kohring’s cases. They got money, allegedly in return for voting VECO’s way on oil tax issues, and the exchange of money for votes looks like bribery and extortion. Weyhrauch did not get any money. He allegedly got the promise that VECO would talk with him about giving him some legal work at a date after the legislative session. He might have disclosed that he was negotiating with VECO about employment at the same time he was voting on various bills, but he didn’t disclose this. Just before trial, Judge John Sedwick ruled that Weyhrauch’s failure to disclose his ongoing discussions with VECO could not by itself be grounds for convicting him of honest services fraud. So, given that ruling and the facts of Weyhrauch’s case, the Federal Government decided to appeal Judge Sedwick’s ruling instead of going to trial.

Judge Sedwick didn't rule that the honest services fraud statute was unconstitutional. He ruled that it couldn’t be used to convict a public official of performing official acts while failing to disclose a conflict of interest, unless the public official’s failing to disclose that conflict of interest was illegal under state law -- which Bruce Weyhrauch’s failure-to-disclose wasn’t. The Ninth Circuit reversed this ruling about the honest services fraud statute, and the Supreme Court then granted Weyhrauch’s petition for certiorari.

Weyhrauch’s case was one of three honest services fraud cases pending before the Supreme Court. The other two involved a media financier, Conrad Black, who had allegedly gotten extra compensation from his company, and an Enron executive, Jeffrey Skilling, who had allegedly made false statements while trying to talk up the company’s share price. The issue principally raised in the Black case was whether the Government had to prove that Black’s conduct caused economic harm to the company. The issues principally raised in the Skilling case were whether the statements in question had to have led to economic gain for the person making the statements, and whether the honest services fraud statute is unconstitutionally vague.

The Supreme Court’s main discussion of the honest services fraud statute appears in its Skilling decision. Justice Ginsburg's conclusion for six members of the Court (herself, Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Stevens, Breyer, Alito, and Sotomayor) is that the statute is not unconstitutionally vague, but only when it's limited to its "core" cases -- bribes and kickbacks. The opinion rejects the idea that the statute ought to be read to cover undisclosed self-dealing. Justice Scalia, for himself and Justices Thomas and Kennedy, would have struck down the honest services fraud statute as unconstitutionally vague in all its possible applications.

The honest services fraud statute is a Congressional response to a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision, McNally v. U.S. In the McNally case, a Kentucky public official (and his co-conspirators) had failed to disclose their financial interest in a company that had gotten a share of state insurance commissions. The company they owned had gotten a share of those commissions because the official and his associates had required a second company, which actually provided the insurance to the state, to turn a share of the commissions over to the company they owned. There was no allegation that the Kentucky state government itself had lost any money in the deal. The Supreme Court decided in the McNally case that the federal mail/wire fraud statute did not cover depriving state citizens of their intangible rights to honest and impartial government, so the official’s and cohorts’ convictions were reversed.

Congress responded to the McNally decision by amending the mail/wire fraud statutes to say that “the term ‘scheme or artifice to defraud’ includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.“

The Supreme Court has now said in the Skilling decision that the amended statute properly covers the conduct at issue in the McNally case (a classic kickback) but not undisclosed self-dealing, which is what it says Skilling himself was accused of. It has noted that Black's honest services fraud case did not involve any bribes or kickbacks, and sent that case back to the Seventh Circuit for further consideration. And, finally, it has sent Bruce Weyhrauch's case back to the Ninth Circuit for further consideration. At oral argument, there was some discussion of whether Weyhrauch could properly be tried on a bribery/extortion/quid pro quo theory, and one would expect that question to be the focus of the Ninth Circuit's inquiry. Trying him for undisclosed self-dealing would appear to be contrary to the Skilling decision.

Last December, Cliff pointed out that only six of the 12 people charged in the Alaska public corruption cases were charged with honest services fraud, and that Pete Kott was acquitted of that charge, while Bill Allen, Rick Smith, Jim Clark, and Bill Weimar all pled guilty to that charge, or to a conspiracy charge. So the only person getting immediate benefit from today’s decision is Bruce Weyhrauch.

--Mark Regan

Addendum from Mark Regan--

The oral argument in the Weyhrauch case can be found at http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_argument/argument%20transcripts/08-1196.pdf on the Internet. The points in the transcript where there are questions about whether the Government could prove a case under something other than a nondisclosure theory, for example, under what Bruce Weyhrauch's attorney called "a traditional, simple allegation of bribery," are at pages 8-11, 26, 29-33, 38-39, 53-57, 58-59, and 61.

--Mark Regan

Updated Biography, Plus Even More Disclosures

Anchorage--


In preparing for my Polaris Lecture at the University of Alaska Anchorage tonight, I have tweaked my bio and expanded my disclosures of various interests and relationships with various defendants, suspects, and lawyers involved in the investigations and trials covered by this blog. You can read all that below, and you can come see me talk tonight at 7:30 p.m. at UAA’s nifty new ConocoPhillips Integrated Sciences Building (the one with the planetarium) in Room 120.

Biography of Cliff Groh

Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has been a lawyer for more than 20 years. He is now a writer and attorney in Anchorage. Formerly a prosecutor, Groh has represented some criminal defendants in his private law practice.

Groh has been doing research for a book on the Alaska public corruption scandals uncovered by the current federal investigations and the resulting trials. To that end, he has observed most of the trials of former state legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring in Anchorage and all of the trial of then-U.S. Senator Ted Stevens in Washington, D.C. He has taught two classes on Alaska public corruption through the Opportunities for Lifelong Education (OLE) program. He maintains a blog on the Alaska public corruption scandals at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com on the Internet.

Groh served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue from 1987 through 1990. In that capacity, he served essentially as the State of Alaska's tax lobbyist in the successful effort in 1989 to revise the state's oil taxes in a way that increased revenues from the giant Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields. The legislation adopted in 1989 created a regime for oil taxes that lasted until the Alaska Legislature adopted the Petroleum Profits Tax in 2006.

Groh was also the principal legislative staff member working on Permanent Fund Dividend legislation in 1982. That legislation produced the per capita Permanent Fund Dividend Alaska has today.

Groh worked as an Assistant District Attorney in Anchorage and in rural Alaska communities such as St. Paul, Unalaska, and Sand Point. He has handled approximately 30 jury trials as a prosecutor. He has also served as in-house and outside counsel for municipal governments in Alaska. He served as a delegate to the Conference of Alaskans in 2004.

When Groh was first out of college in the late 1970s, he worked as a reporter with a statewide newspaper called the Alaska Advocate. He has also published historical articles on topics ranging from the Permanent Fund Dividend to the history of journalistic coverage of the capital move campaigns.

Groh is a graduate of Harvard College, where his senior honors thesis was on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA). His law degree is from the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall).

Disclosures of Potentially Relevant
Interests and Relationships

Groh’s work in government has included service in both partisan and non-partisan positions. Groh has worked for Democrats while serving in partisan positions in the Alaska State Legislature and the Alaska Department of Revenue. He is a registered Democrat who was a delegate to the 1988 Alaska Democratic Convention.

Groh socialized with Bruce Weyhrauch during periods in the 1980s and early 1990s when both lived in Juneau, and Groh had some social contacts with Weyhrauch afterwards. While serving as City and Borough Attorney for the City and Borough of Sitka, Groh arranged in 2002 or 2003 for Weyhrauch to act as counsel for the City and Borough in a case where Groh had a conflict of interest.

Groh has known Ted Stevens all of Groh's life, and Groh's father—who passed away in 1998—was a close friend and political ally of Ted Stevens. Groh lived in a dormitory in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1975 with interns of Stevens' Senate office while researching a college senior honors thesis on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and Ted Stevens apparently made the arrangements for Groh to live in that dormitory. Groh sometimes used space in Ted Stevens' Senate office during the summer of 1975 while researching his thesis, and Groh both interviewed and had some social contacts with Stevens that summer.

Groh’s mother was a close friend of Ted Stevens’ first wife Ann Stevens, who died in an airplane crash in 1978. Ted Stevens and his Senate staff worked to arrange for additional medical care for both of Groh’s parents when they were stricken with cancer in the 1990s.

At various points over the years, Groh met and spoke with Jim Clark, Bill Weimar, and Pete Kott about various matters. Groh also exchanged e-mail messages with Vic Kohring about fiscal policy. Groh has interviewed Don Young in the 1970s, and as a child he may have played with Ben Stevens.

In the 1980s, Groh’s father served as VECO’s lawyer in defending the corporation against an enforcement action brought by the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) regarding VECO’s campaign contributions. One or both of Groh’s parents also had some business dealings with Bill Allen in the 1980s. In an apparent attempt to interest Bill Allen in buying real estate, Groh’s father reportedly took Allen to a subdivision in rural Alaska owned by a corporation controlled by Groh’s father. Neither Allen nor VECO purchased any property at the subdivision. Given the limited number of sleeping spaces available in the area at the time, however, that visit by Bill Allen probably means that Groh has slept in a bed that Bill Allen once slept in.

Groh has also worked and/or socialized with a number of the Anchorage lawyers who have worked on matters associated with the “POLAR PEN” probe into public corruption in Alaska. Some of those attorneys are or have been prosecutors on those matters, and some of those attorneys have served as defense counsel on those matters.

Feds Used "Honest Services Fraud" Statute in Half of the "POLAR PEN" Cases

Washington—


Readers have asked what effect an elimination or trimming back of the “honest services fraud” statute at issue in Bruce Weyhrauch’s appeal on which the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument last week would have on the prosecutions in the Alaska investigation into public corruption.

Twelve people have been charged criminally in this investigation. Of those 12, six have been charged under the statute being challenged. In addition to former State Rep. Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), those six are: former State Rep. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River), who was acquitted of that charge at trial; Jim Clark, former Chief of Staff to Gov. Frank Murkowski; Bill Weimar, former private prisons magnate; former VECO CEO Bill Allen; and former VECO Vice President Rick Smith. By the same token, former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, former State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla), former State Rep. Beverly Masek (R.-Willow), former State Sen. John Cowdery (R.-Anchorage), former State Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage), and former lobbyist Bill Bobrick never faced an honest services fraud charge.

Of those six, only Weyhrauch has neither pleaded guilty or been tried already. The jury convicted Kott of other crimes while acquitting him of the charge of honest services fraud; whatever else happens while U.S. District Judge John Sedwick sorts out the allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the trial, the acquittal means that Kott can’t be retried on that count. Allen and Smith pleaded guilty to multiple counts along with a single count each of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud as well as other crimes, and for a variety of reasons are unlikely to appeal based on a favorable U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Weimar has served the prison portion of his sentence, and also seems an unlikely candidate to try to rely on such a ruling. Clark has pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and depending on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the statute he might have a defense.


The uncertainty over the legal standing of the honest services fraud statute might also be affecting the Alaska corruption investigation by causing the Department of Justice to hold off on adding to the number of defendants. A reader has pointed out that this uncertainty may have helped block the prosecution against former State Sen. Jerry Ward (R.-Anchorage), whose unsuccessful 2004 legislative campaign has been identified in media accounts as the recipient of illegal campaign contributions from Weimar. The questions hanging over the future of the honest services fraud statute may also contribute to the reluctance of the feds to prosecute former State Senate President Ben Stevens (R.-Anchorage) and U.S. Rep. Don Young.

Beverly Masek Goes to Prison

Anchorage--

Former State Rep. Beverly Masek (R.-Willow) has started serving her six-month prison term.

The Anchorage Daily News reported this morning that the ex-legislator went this week into a minimum-security federal prison camp for women in the California desert.

Masek joins ex-State Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage) as the only persons in prison as a result of the long-running federal investigation into Alaska public corruption.

The roundup of the other 10 defendants charged in that investigation is as follows:

Former State Reps. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River) and Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) began serving multi-year prison terms, but both were released earlier this year and remain free while a judge sorts out allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in their trials.

A pre-trial appeal sidetracked the case of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument next month in that appeal. Depending on the Supreme Court's decision and the Department of Justice's evaluation of that decision, Weyhrauch could be tried in Anchorage next September.

Bill Allen and Rick Smith, former executives of the now-defunct oil-services company VECO, have not yet been assigned spaces in prison and so have not yet begun serving time, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Jim Clark, former Chief of Staff to Gov. Frank Murkowski, has pleaded guilty and his sentencing has been delayed to next fall.

Former municipal lobbyist Bill Bobrick and former private prisons magnate and powerbroker Bill Weimar have served the prison portions of their sentences.

Former State Sen. John Cowdery (R.-Anchorage) escaped a prison sentence due to the sentencing judge's concerns for his poor health.

The guilty verdicts rendered by a jury against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska) were set aside due to prosecutorial misconduct.

Judge Sedwick Announces that He Thinks that the Federal Probe into Alaska Public Corruption Will Produce No New Defendants

Anchorage--

Mark Regan has done an excellent job in a series of posts regarding the recent flurry of filings in the Bill Allen and Rick Smith cases, and I thank him again (while hoping that he’ll keep going).

I want to underscore one point that Mark touched on briefly. Bill Allen asked for a four-month delay in his sentencing based in part on the theory that he needs to stay out of prison to testify against other people to be charged in the federal investigation into public corruption investigation in Alaska. In rejecting this request, U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick announced that he thinks it is highly unlikely that the federal investigation will produce any new defendants beyond those already charged.

“[G]iven the passage of time and the obstacles created by the questionable conduct of the lawyers and the investigators who previously represented the interests of the United States, the only person whose future prosecution is anything more than sheer speculation is former legislator Bruce Weyhrauch,” Judge Sedwick wrote. He added that “Seeking a chance to cooperate in the prosecution of other potential corruption defendants is entirely speculative at this juncture.” (Emphasis added.)

The “other potential corruption defendants” most discussed are of course former State Senate President Ben Stevens (R.-Anchorage) and U.S. Rep. Don Young (R.-Alaska). One odd feature of Bill Allen's sentencing hearing is that the government will try to get Judge Sedwick to sentence Allen in part for his activities with Ben Stevens and Don Young while the government has never charged Ben Stevens and Don Young for any crimes relating to Allen (or anybody else).

Some have speculated that the feds have thrown in the towel on indicting additional people in the “POLAR PEN” probe, but don't want to admit it while they figure out who else--like Bill Allen--to blame for ending the investigation. One piece of evidence apparently cutting against this proposition is the extension of more than one year Judge Sedwick gave in August on the sentencing of Jim Clark, the former Chief of Staff to ex-Gov. Frank Murkowski. I have previously speculated on this blog that this delay in Clark’s sentencing meant that the feds wanted to milk Clark for more dirt on Ben Stevens and Frank Murkowski. If the folding up the tents theory is correct, however, the real reasons to hold off on sentencing Clark might have been to keep him out to testify against former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (the reason suggested in the order) or to wait until after Allen was sentenced to establish a benchmark in sentencing Clark.

The feds generally do not announce either that (a) we aren't going to indict Mr. X or (b) this investigation is over, although they have occasionally said some version of (a) or (b) if specifically asked. The sentencing hearings for Bill Allen and Rick Smith on Wednesday morning may include more clues on the future of the federal government's “POLAR PEN” probe.

A More Complete Set of Disclosures About Your Blogger

Anchorage--

In getting ready for my class on the topic covered by this blog, I prepared an extended biography of me that also includes various disclosures that might be relevant in considering my work on Alaska public corruption. This blog has featured some of this information before, but this is the most complete set of disclosures I have compiled. It strikes me that readers of this blog might find this information interesting as well, so here it is:

Extended Biography of Cliff Groh
(Complete with Disclosures of Interests and
Relationships Potentially Relevant to this Course)

Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has been a lawyer for more than 20 years. He is now a writer and attorney in Anchorage. Formerly a prosecutor, Groh has represented some criminal defendants in his private law practice.

Groh has been doing research for a book on the Alaska public corruption scandals uncovered by the current federal investigations and the resulting trials. To that end, he has observed most of the trials of Pete Kott and Vic Kohring in Anchorage and all of the trial of Ted Stevens in Washington, D.C. He maintains a blog on the Alaska public corruption scandals at www.alaskacorruption.blogspot.com on the Internet.

Groh served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue from 1987 through 1990. In that capacity, he served essentially as the State of Alaska's chief tax lobbyist in the successful effort in 1989 to revise the state's oil taxes in a way that increased revenues from the giant Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk fields. The legislation adopted in 1989 changed the Economic Limit Factor (ELF) of the state’s oil production (severance) tax, and that legislation created a regime for oil taxes that lasted until the Alaska Legislature adopted the Petroleum Profits Tax in 2006.

Groh was also the principal legislative staff member working on Permanent Fund Dividend legislation in 1982. That legislation produced the per capita Permanent Fund Dividend Alaska has today.

Groh has worked for Democrats while serving in these partisan positions in the Alaska State Legislature and the Alaska Department of Revenue. He is a registered Democrat who was a delegate to the 1988 Alaska Democratic Convention.

Groh has also served in government in non-partisan positions. His service includes work as an Assistant District Attorney in Anchorage and in rural Alaska communities such as St. Paul, Unalaska, and Sand Point. He has handled approximately 30 jury trials as a prosecutor. He has also served as in-house and outside counsel for municipal governments in Alaska.

When Groh was first out of college in the late 1970s, he worked as a reporter with a statewide newspaper called the Alaska Advocate. He has also published historical articles on topics ranging from the Permanent Fund Dividend to the history of journalistic coverage of the capital move.

Groh socialized with Bruce Weyhrauch during periods in the 1980s and early 1990s when both lived in Juneau, and Groh had some social contacts with Weyhrauch afterwards. While serving as City and Borough Attorney for the City and Borough of Sitka, Groh arranged in 2002 or 2003 for Weyhrauch to act as counsel for the City and Borough in a case where Groh had a conflict of interest.

Groh has known Ted Stevens all of Groh's life, and Groh's father—who passed away in 1998—was a close friend and political ally of Ted Stevens. Groh lived in a dormitory in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1975 with interns of Stevens' Senate office while researching a college senior honors thesis on the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and Ted Stevens apparently made the arrangements for Groh to live in that dormitory. Groh sometimes used space in Ted Stevens' Senate office during the summer of 1975 while researching his thesis, and Groh had some social contacts with Stevens that summer.

Groh’s mother was a close friend of Ted Stevens’ first wife Ann Stevens, who died in an airplane crash in 1978. Ted Stevens and his Senate staff worked to arrange for additional medical care for both of Groh’s parents when they were stricken with cancer in the 1990s.

At various points over the years, Groh met and spoke with Jim Clark, Bill Weimar, and Pete Kott about various matters.

In the 1980s, Groh’s father served as VECO’s lawyer in defending the corporation against an enforcement action brought by the Alaska Public Offices Commission (APOC) regarding VECO’s campaign contributions. One or both of Groh’s parents also had some business dealings with Bill Allen in the 1980s.

Groh has also worked and/or socialized with a number of the Anchorage lawyers who have worked on matters associated with the “POLAR PEN” probe into public corruption in Alaska. Some of those attorneys are or have been prosecutors on those matters, and some of those attorneys have served as defense counsel on those matters.

Updated to narrow the period of any business dealings of my parents with Bill Allen to include only the 1980s.

Jim Clark Looks Likely to Be Free for Another Year

Anchorage--


Here is some news and some rank speculation concerning the closed hearing this morning about the timing of the sentencing of Jim Clark, former Chief of Staff to former Gov. Frank Murkowski.


The news is short enough to print in full. Judge John Sedwick issued an order reading "The sentencing in this case is CONTINUED until October 15, 2010 at 8:30 a.m. ...If the case of U.S. v. Weyhrauch...is resolved at the trial court level prior to September of 2010, the court will move Mr. Clark's sentencing to an earlier date."


Now for the rank speculation.


This order makes it look like the government said today that it was going to call Clark as a witness against former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau), whose case has been sidetracked on a pre-trial appeal that will be considered by the U.S. Supreme Court during its 2009-2010 term.


I find it difficult to believe that Judge Sedwick let the government keep Jim Clark free for another 14 months just so he could be ready to testify against Weyhrauch, particularly given that the judge had already explicitly said that Clark could be brought out of prison for purposes of testifying if that was the only reason not to put him in. It's possible that Clark's attorney pointed to some unusual medical problems as a reason to keep Clark out of prison now, but the specific--and particular--sentencing date as well as the reference to Weyhrauch's case militate against that as being the reason behind today's order.


It strikes me as likely that the prosecutors also said that they needed to milk Clark for more information on what happened regarding corruption involving the development and consideration of oil tax legislation in 2005 and 2006 and that in today's 19-minute closed hearing they gave Judge Sedwick enough to accept that argument as a reason to keep Clark out of prison for another 14 months beyond the 17 months he's already been out. Note that October of 2010 is also five years--the general federal statute of limitations--past the start of the time when most criminal activity appeared to have occurred regarding the Petroleum Profits Tax (PPT) legislation. As to who the targets of that continued debriefing of Clark would be, the obvious guesses would be former State Senate President Ben Stevens (R.-Anchorage) and Frank Murkowski. (Neither of the latter two have been charged, Ben Stevens has repeatedly denied any wrongoing, and Frank Murkowski's well-known hands-off approach to his job might serve as a good defense to any criminal charge.)


The bottom line is that Jim Clark looks likely to be free to enjoy the whole Alaska winter--as well as next summer--while former VECO executives and admitted bribers Bill Allen and Rick Smith appear headed for prison this fall.


(Hat tip to the astute reader who flagged this order and asked me good questions about it.)

Update: I cleaned up the spacing and added the job title for Ben Stevens.

Jim Clark and the State of Play

Anchorage—


District Court Judge John Sedwick has ordered the prosecution to appear at a closed hearing tomorrow morning and persuade him not to make Jim Clark—former Chief of Staff to ex-Governor Frank Murkowski—to start serving his sentence. Clark pleaded guilty more than 17 months ago to a single count of conspiracy to commit honest services fraud, and he has been kept out of prison since then because he is cooperating with the federal investigation into public corruption on the Last Frontier.

But Judge Sedwick seems to be getting tired of the delays in Clark going off to prison, just as the judge recently showed even more impatience with the slowness in sentencing former VECO executives and admitted bribers Bill Allen and Rick Smith, who have been cooperating just short of three years now. As the judge’s order says, he needs to figure out “how best to accommodate the tension between defendant Clark’s assistance in on-going investigations and possible up-coming trials with the need to bring the case against Mr. Clark to a conclusion.”

One of the considerations in this closed-door talk-turkey discussion tomorrow morning is just how much those investigations are actually going on and likely to produce more defendants and thus potentially more trials. One of the factors in that decision on future prosecutions, in turn, is the possibility that the Attorney General or other higher-ups in the Department of Justice will conclude that the best way to use the major failures demonstrated in some of the POLAR PEN prosecutions on the Last Frontier is to make them a teachable moment for federal prosecutors by closing up shop on the probe.


That teachable moment brought by ending the investigation would be the message that federal prosecutors who make glaring mistakes in providing evidence to the defense—a process lawyers call “discovery”—will not only face severe career consequences but also see their work go up in ashes. (Note that the six prosecutors currently under investigation about their work on the Ted Stevens trial have already faced some repercussions. All six have had to spend time with expensive defense attorneys whose bills will almost certainly only be partially paid by the federal government, but two of those prosecutors have been sent to the Justice Department’s version of Siberia. Joe Palazzolo of www.mainjustice.com reported in June that Nicholas Marsh and Edward Sullivan have been transferred from their plum assignments at the Public Integrity Section to the Office of International Affairs, where they are presumably advising the State Department on treaties and coordinating international extraditions while staying far away from the courtroom.)

There have been some big screw-ups by government lawyers uncovered in the case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens. It also looks bad for the way the cases against ex-State Reps. Pete Kott and Vic Kohring were handled that the feds have agreed to let those two convicted former state legislators go free while new teams of prosecutors review the way discovery was done before those trials.


But commenter Howard Weaver is correct: It is beyond odd to the point of exquisite irony that some people—so far all Republican office-holders—who did seamy things are escaping punishment because a Republican-run (and apparently highly
politicized) Department of Justice blundered terribly.


Speaking of odd, two other points stand out:

1. It is passing strange that former State Rep. Tom Anderson is the only person sitting in prison tonight due to this investigation. While the evidence at trial showed his guilt, he is hardly the most culpable person uncovered by this probe.


2. It would be even weirder if the federal government got Bill Allen and Rick Smith to plead guilty to bribing former State Senate President Ben Stevens and then never charged Ben Stevens with any crime.

Bruce Weyhrauch Will Get His Day in the U.S. Supreme Court

Anchorage—

The prosecution has suffered another setback in the federal investigation of Alaska public corruption, as the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the pre-trial appeal of the one defendant whose guilt has not been adjudicated.

The Supreme Court has announced that it has taken the case of ex-State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau) to decide whether the prosecution needed to prove that he violated a duty of disclosure under state law in order to convict him of the federal crime of honest services fraud through the mail.

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Weyhrauch was seeking paid work as a lawyer from the oil-services titan VECO at the same time he was heavily involved in legislation fixing tax rates on the major oil producers in Alaska, who were VECO’s most important clients. The Department of Justice’s position is that Weyhrauch’s failure in 2006 to disclose his letter to VECO asking for work as an attorney while working with VECO on a bill on which VECO was lobbying hard deprived the public of Weyhrauch’s honest services as a legislator. Weyhrauch, by contrast, asserts that his failure to disclose is only a crime if state law required him to disclose and that state law imposed no such obligation.

The issue to be decided in the U.S. Supreme Court only relates to one count of a four-count indictment brought against the former legislator in May of 2007. The prosecution obviously considered the question important enough, however, to appeal the trial judge's ruling against the government on that issue just before the trial was set to begin. That interlocutory appeal kept Weyhrauch's trial from starting, and has sidetracked the case for almost two years.

Due to the government’s decision to make the pre-trial appeal, Weyhrauch’s case is the only one arising from the investigation in which there has been neither a trial nor a plea agreement. The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to hear this appeal likely adds at least another six months before Weyhrauch’s case is finished.

The case has wound its way through the federal appellate system during the last 22 months. After District Court Judge John Sedwick ruled for the defense on the disclosure issue, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the trial judge's ruling, and the defense appealed the Ninth Circuit's decision to the Supreme Court.

It was a significant feat for Weyhrauch’s lawyers to even get the Supreme Court to take the case. The U.S. Supreme Court only takes a tiny fraction of the cases that are appealed to it. A big factor in the defense’s favor is that federal circuit courts of appeal around the country have decided this issue in different ways, and alleging such an “inter-circuit conflict” is one of the best ways to get a case in front of the highest court in the land.

This is a good place to note that I fished and picked up trash with Bruce Weyhrauch in the late 1980s. As suggested by other disclosures I have made on this blog, before the investigation started I had contacts of various significance over the years with various defendants in these cases. I watched a movie with Ted Stevens in the mid-1960s and watched more films and played poker with him in the mid-1970s, discussed politics with Pete Kott in the late 1990s, exchanged e-mails about Alaska fiscal policy with Vic Kohring in the late 1990s, interviewed Bill Weimar in the early 1970s, and talked about the practice of law and legal matters with Jim Clark in the late 1980s and late 1990s. In terms of lawyers involved in these cases, I sat around a cabin in the mid-1990s with Doug Pope, who has represented Bruce Weyhrauch and Bill Bobrick. During various periods in the late 1980s and early 1990s I worked at the Anchorage District Attorney's Office with Acting U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler as well as with Paul Stockler (attorney for Tom Anderson) and Kevin Fitzgerald (attorney for John Cowdery).

Hat tip: Erika Bolstad, Anchorage Daily News.