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.

Bill Weimar Dodges a Big Bullet: Florida Prosecutor Drops Sex Abuse Charge

Homer, Alaska—


I’m late to this party, but I hope that being on my honeymoon provides some excuse. Around the time I was enjoying watermelon champagne soup with my bride in this delightful seaside town, the Anchorage Daily News was reporting that Florida authorities have dropped a charge of child sexual battery against Bill Weimar, a former Alaska corrections magnate convicted of felonies in the federal probe into public corruption on the Last Frontier.


I used to evaluate child sexual cases for a living when I was an assistant district attorney for the State of Alaska. These are difficult cases that pose unusual challenges, and Lisa Demer’s article makes it look like the Florida prosecutors went all-out to make the charge stick against Weimar before dismissing it.


With my special knowledge of child sexual abuse prosecutions, I am not here to say that the Florida authorities blundered. Let’s review the pros and cons of the prosecution’s case as set out in the coverage provided by the Anchorage Daily News and uncovered by my own reporting.


The prosecution had a six-year-old girl’s statements to her mother and an investigator that she had performed fellatio on Weimar at his request. This crime allegedly occurred when the child’s mother left the girl in Weimar’s care while the mother went to the airport.


The Florida authorities also had the fact that Weimar went to Cuba and then Mexico after being questioned by investigators about the allegations but before he was charged, a trip that prosecutors would want to characterize as flight reflecting consciousness of guilt.


And the government might also have had the advantage of exploiting Weimar’s shady background. It’s not just Weimar’s status as a convicted felon that the prosecutors might have been able to get in front of a jury. The ex-tycoon and powerbroker had a reputation among his long-time associates for committing various crimes he has never been charged with. I hasten to point out that Weimar was never before suspected of child sexual abuse, even among the most disappointed of his former friends. But there was some possibility that the jury might conclude that the defendant was a bad man who needed to be punished for something.


“Bill Weimar is a horse rustler. I’ve seen him rustle horses all over the state,” an Alaskan who spent a lot with Weimar for years told me when the news of the child abuse case arose. “Now he’s charged with horse rustling again. I don’t know if he rustled this horse, but if they hang him for it they’ll be hanging a horse rustler.”


So those were the things that the prosecution had going for it, but they didn’t seem to be enough for the Florida authorities. The recognition that the case was lacking seemed to prompt the government to push hard to make it stronger. The Florida authorities trolled for other victims of Weimar by placing notices in Alaska and Seattle, where the multimillionaire also lived. The prosecution also arranged for a surreptitiously recorded telephone call of Weimar, but the law school graduate made no admissions of guilt.


There was no medical or physical evidence to corroborate the child’s allegations, according to a prosecution memo explaining the case’s dismissal reported by the Anchorage Daily News. Particularly in the age of jurors who regularly watch TV shows like CSI, the prosecution’s argument that fellatio will often not leave traces might not been enough.


But the potential problems for the prosecution at trial didn’t end there. The prosecution also faced a defense argument that Weimar’s jaunt across the Caribbean on his yacht was the moving up of a previously planned vacation, not the desperate flight of a fugitive conscious of his guilt.


And my reporting has shown that the prosecution might have also had to deal with a defense attack that the little girl was manipulated by a parent who could be portrayed as having a pre-existing bias against Weimar.


The reactions of various people showed the feelings often surrounding child abuse cases and underscored the differences between them and other kinds of crimes. The child’s father told the Anchorage Daily News that he was disappointed the prosecution had dropped the case but relieved that his daughter didn’t have to testify in court.


"Based on a single statement by a child, a man can be arrested on his vacation in Mexico, with helicopters, gunships, dogs, blacked-out Suburbans and machine guns,” Weimar’s lawyer told Alaska’s largest newspaper. "Thrown into a jail in Mexico, transported to the border, handed over to the U.S. marshals, brought to a jail in Texas, thrown into a holding cell for a week or two without being able to contact his lawyer or know what's going on, and then transported in a van across the country that took almost 2 1/2 weeks going from county to county."


Although Weimar’s attorney complained that his client lost his reputation and “a small fortune,” the former Alaska powerhouse is very relieved today and knows that he is a very lucky man. If Weimar had been convicted of the crime he was charged with, he probably would have died in prison.


(This blog post was particularly improved by suggestions from a fine editor named Theresa Philbrick, who now doubles as my wife. And unless something really big happens, you’ll have to wait until next week for my analyses of the current state of play in the cases of Vic Kohring and Pete Kott, including their motions to move their trials out of Anchorage.)

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.

Bill Weimar Profile in Anchorage Daily News Details His Early Life

Anchorage-- Michael Carey has an excellent piece on Bill Weimar, the one-time Democratic Party strategist, influence peddler, and corrections kingpin who became a convicted felon as a result of the "POLAR PEN" federal probe into Alaska public corruption. Weimar appeared to be the investigation's first target. Michael Carey's article appears to be the first of a series on the man, and you can find it here. (Hat tip to Mark Regan.)

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

Bill Weimar Extradited to Florida

Anchorage--

Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News continues a run of strong work on the troubling story of Bill Weimar, who went from private corrections magnate on the Last Frontier to convicted felon to fugitive on a child sexual abuse warrant. A multimillionaire retiree, Weimar had moved to Florida following the end of his imprisonment following convictions arising out of the federal probe into Alaska public corruption. Weimar left the Sunshine State for Cuba after he was questioned by a sheriff's detective about an allegation that he sexually molested a six-year-old child he was caring for. You can find another interesting article by Mauer on Weimar's travels and ultimate arrest in Mexico here.

Bill Weimar Captured in Cancun

Anchorage--

In the category of I can't make it up, the Anchorage Daily News reports that the Mexican Navy has grabbed Bill Weimar on his 60-foot yacht and sent him back to the United States. The former halfway house king from Alaska was a fugitive from a Florida warrant for child sexual battery. Rich Mauer's article states that U.S. government authorities had tracked Weimar to Havana (!) before the convicted felon headed to the Mexican resort city of Cancun. Mexican officials arrested him in Cancun on his cabin cruiser, where he was hosting his girlfriend and her brother. Weimar had moved to Florida after serving a sentence for two crimes uncovered in the federal investigation into public corruption in Alaska, where Weimar had become a multimillionaire in the private corrections industry.

Sordid New Details Alleged Against Bill Weimar in Florida Child Abuse Case

Anchorage--

Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News has additional ugly details that are alleged--and I emphasize alleged--in a child sexual abuse case against former Alaska corrections kingpin Bill Weimar. Charging documents accusing Weimar of child sexual battery in Florida allege that he committed the crime at a time that Mauer notes that Weimar was under probation supervision for felony convictions in 2008 arising out of the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption. The documents also allege that Weimar molested a six-year-old girl while caring for her during her mother's trip to the airport.

Weimar is still at large.

Bill Weimar Wanted on Florida Child Sexual Battery Warrant

Anchorage--

The Anchorage Daily News is reporting tonight that Bill Weimar is being sought on a Florida warrant for child sexual battery against a victim alleged to be under 12 years old. Weimar was convicted in 2008 and served time as one of the defendants in the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption, but he appears to be facing much bigger problems now.

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.

Why Haven't the Feds Indicted Jerry Ward?

This blog is pleased to present another guest post from Mark Regan:

Fairbanks--

Why hasn’t Jerry Ward been prosecuted?

After all, Bill Weimar pled guilty in 2008 to crimes involving an “understanding” with Ward that if Weimar helped Ward retire his debt, Ward would support Weimar’s private prison proposal; the Feds told Ward back in November 2008 that he had become a target of their investigation; and a day or so after the Feds told Ward this, he apparently helped Dave Anderson send in complaints about the Ted Stevens investigation which included the claim that the Feds had promised immunity to a whole raft of people connected with Dave Anderson, including Jerry Ward, but then had gone back on their promise.

Problem # 1: The case against Ward might depend on the honest services statute. The core of Weimar’s plea was that he had conspired with Ward to deprive the public of Ward’s honest services, if and when Ward was elected. The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to invalidate or at least drastically limit the honest services statute.

Problem # 2: Ward didn’t win the election. So maybe he never got into the position to deprive anyone of his honest services, or to do anything in response to an anticipatory bribe from Weimar.

Problem # 3: The federal prosecutors who are themselves being investigated are at the heart of the Ward/Anderson problem. Statements from them about Ward and Anderson, saying that they didn’t promise immunity to Ward or other people associated with Anderson, are all over the Ted Stevens court file. Maybe the replacement prosecutors don’t want to go ahead with an indictment of Ward until or unless the prior prosecutors are cleared of wrongdoing in the Ted Stevens case.

Problem # 3A: Maybe the Feds really did promise immunity to Jerry Ward. Weirder things have happened ... naaah.

Problem # 4: Maybe someone could indict Ward for preparing a false affidavit signed by Anderson, or for obstructing justice; but if the Polar Pen investigation is stalled, going after Jerry Ward for obstructing it might not be a politic thing to do.

--Mark Regan

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.

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.

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.

Pete Kott and Vic Kohring Are Out of Prison

Anchorage--

Pete Kott and Vic Kohring are free pursuant to a go-faster order to the U.S. Marshals from Judge John Sedwick. Details on their release--including bits on Kohring's tastes in food and hair--are available in the Anchorage Daily News at http://www.adn.com/news/politics/fbi/story/827603.html on the Internet.

There will be hearings on June 17 to determine the conditions of their release, and other hearings at some unspecified date to figure out what relief the two should get following the Department of Justice's admissions that they didn't get all the evidence they should have before their trials.

The release of these two former state legislators leaves ex-State Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage) and former businessman/powerbroker Bill Weimar as the only two people in confinement as a result of the federal probe into Alaska public corruption. Anderson is in federal prison, and former halfway house magnate Weimar is in a halfway house.

Beverly Masek Sentencing Delayed, Bill Wiemar Moves to Halfway House, and a Recommendation for You

Anchorage--

Three notes:

1. Former State Rep. Beverly Masek's sentencing has been continued (legalese for postponed) from today until Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 10 a.m.

2. As the Anchorage Daily News reported, long-time halfway house magnate Bill Weimar has moved from federal prison to a halfway house where he will finish the sentence of institutional confinement he began in January. Once out of the halfway house in Montana, he starts a period of home confinement under the sentence.

3. If you're noticed that I've been posting less lately and you're wondering what to do with all your time, I've got a suggestion: Start making lists of all the friends and relatives you can make a gift of the book I'm writing on the subject of this blog.

Bill Weimar Takes His Medicine Like a Man--But Would You Want to Be that Man?

Anchorage—

Retired private prisons magnate Bill Weimar was sentenced to six months in prison and six months of home confinement at a subdued proceeding yesterday in which vanilla-coating and contrition were the orders of the day.

Weimar’s journey to the defendant’s seat in federal criminal court was long and strange:

· Civil rights activist in the 1960s
· Firebrand leader of the “Ad Hoc” insurgents who tried to take over the Alaska Democratic Party in 1972
· Repeat political candidate
· Owner of a Last Frontier corrections empire
· Retiree in Montana since 1999

And starting in January: Prisoner.

The Setting: It’s Lonely for this Defendant

The mood was somber and restrained. Right from the get-go, there was a reminder that white-collar cases look more like big-dollar civil cases than the regular run of criminal proceedings. All the people at the counsel tables—including the defendant—wore dark business suits, and all the lawyers and the accused shook hands with each other before the judge came in.

These courteous expressions took place in a courtroom that was desolate by the standards of the Alaska public corruption cases. There were only about a dozen people in the room just before the sentencing started, and even with the late arrivals there were never more two dozen. It was a far cry from the throngs of reporters and paparazzi that followed the Ted Stevens trial in Washington, and a smaller turnout than appeared at other sentencings in the Alaska public corruption cases.

What was particularly surprising about the few people in the courtroom for Weimar’s sentencing, however, was that except for the defendant and his attorney it appeared that everyone there was either a federal employee or a member of the media. Even though Weimar lived in Alaska for 30 years before moving to Montana in 1999, not one friend or family member appeared to have come to support him as he faced prison. And the only letter in the file about the sentencing is from the administrator of a Montana domestic violence abuse prevention program who says that Weimar’s free work would be welcome community service.

The Facts of the Case

Weimar’s case is different from several of the other Alaska public corruption cases, as his Seattle-based attorney David Bukey took pains to point out. There were no wads of cash handed to legislators, and the government does not allege any long-running schemes to funnel money or gifts to an office-holder.

Instead, Weimar used telephone calls and the mails back in 2004 to arrange to pay $20,000 of an Alaska legislative candidate’s campaign costs. His concealment of that payment involved going to post offices in three Montana towns in two days to mail that money to a campaign consultant in three separate packages of less than $10,000 apiece. One of those packages carried a $3,000 check, and each of the other two packages contained $8,500 in cash. (Note to big cash handlers: Banks have to report to the IRS cash transactions of $10,000 or more, and it’s illegal to break up a transaction into parts of less than that amount to avoid this limit.)

Federal prosecutors call that conduct “Conspiracy to Commit Honest Services Mail and Wire Fraud” and “Structuring Financial Transactions,” and both those things are felonies.

The proceeding was fairly dull because the feds had Weimar dead to rights. The Department of Justice had the bank records, and also had the 68-year-old on tape in phone calls with the candidate and the consultant. With the evidence staring him in the face, Weimar pleaded guilty and sat down for a thorough debriefing with the FBI to tell what he knew about other potential crimes.

With no dispute over the facts or the intent, all that was left was characterizations of the defendant’s past life and the seriousness of this conduct.

The defense lawyer did a solid job of presenting Weimar’s view of his personal history and his offenses. Setting aside a case arising out of his 1960s civil rights activism, Bukey said his client had led a “crime-free life” until these offenses. Weimar was a “good man” and an “optimistic man” who through a “regrettable, sad, ironic” turn of events made a “series of very poor judgments” in 2004 that put him in court now.

The major disagreement the defense had with the prosecution was why Weimar did it. The defense—particularly the defendant—saw the case as a man who went wrong out of a misguided effort to help an old friend of more than 30 years who had limited means to fund a campaign. As Weimar told the court in his allocution, his friendship with that candidate was so long and strong that he had spent Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays with the candidate’s family.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Bottini viewed the defendant’s motivations a little differently. Although by 2004 Weimar had basically retired from the private prisons industry after selling five Alaska halfway houses and moving to Montana, he still had a dog in the hunt in the construction of a private prison in the 49th State. If the company to which Weimar had sold out got a contact for that prison, Weimar would receive approximately $5.5 million. (That amount was a pittance compared to the value of the contract, pegged at $1 billion for 25 years in an article by Tom Kizzia in the Anchorage Daily News.)

Construction of the private prison required approval by the Alaska Legislature. During his previous service in the legislature, the candidate secretly funded by Weimar had always supported efforts to privatize prisons. Given that history and the big financial incentive for Weimar, his actions in paying a $20,000 campaign debt for that candidate were merely an attempt to buy influence with a politician, Bottini said.

As Bottini stated in the government’s sentencing memorandum, "Weimar's conduct here was serious—he took deliberate action to illegally fund a State Senate candidate's campaign with the full expectation that this was going to pay off for him in the future once the candidate was elected."

Bottini also disputed the significance of Weimar’s thorough debriefing with the FBI of the details of his relationships with politicians after the feds confronted him his criminal conduct.

While the prosecutor said that he personally found that history “fascinating,” Bottini contended that the defendant should not receive a reduced sentence for his cooperation because it had not increased the government’s knowledge of other crimes. “The bottom line was that it didn’t advance the ball one inch for the government.”

Weimar Takes Personal Responsibility

After Bottini spoke, Weimar got his chance to speak directly to the judge. He spoke without notes, although his voice faltered on occasion.

Weimar stressed that “This was my fault….This was me and me alone.” Particularly given his background in operating prisons, “I should have known better.” (Unlike his attorney’s sentencing memorandum, Weimar did not mention his law degree, which would have underscored even more the opportunities he had to learn about how to avoid committing crimes.)

While running halfway houses and drug rehabilitation programs, he helped set up behavior modification sessions, which often focused on criminal thinking errors. Weimar said “This was a criminal thinking error.”

The Judge Imposes Sentence

U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick bought Weimar’s version of his own life. “This is obviously a sad day for Mr. Wiemar, but it’s also a sad day for everyone in the courtroom,” the judge said.

Given the defendant’s hard work, success, and contributions to the community, the judge considered it “basically astonishing” that he had committed these crimes.

“Really, this offense is the only thing that I can see in the record that would be of concern to anybody in a negative way,” the judge said. “Mr. Weimar is somebody who appeared by all accounts to be a very honest and upright hardworking individual who made an effort as best he could to assist others—people who ended up in situations he’s in now.”

On the other hand, Weimar’s crimes were serious, particularly his concealment of the $20,000 campaign contribution. "It was the kind of offense that does great damage to our community because...it allows for the corruption of a public process that we all really depend upon," Judge Sedwick said.

Balancing his view of Weimar’s laudable past life and the seriousness of the offenses, the judge gave him a sentence closer to what the defense requested than what the prosecution asked for.

Judge Sedwick handed down a sentence of six months in prison followed by six months of home confinement. During that period of confinement at his Montana home, Weimar can leave for a few limited purposes, including volunteering at a domestic violence program aimed at rehabilitating offenders.

The court added a $75,000 fine to the sentence. The entire presentence report was sealed, but the judge observed that it showed that Weimar had a "substantial annual income and net worth." Noting that the crime was motivated by money, Judge Sedwick said that a significant fine was needed to deter “well-heeled” and “successful” people from similar conduct.

Lessons from this Sentencing

The entire proceeding was significant on a number of levels in what it revealed about the ongoing corruption probes in the 49th State and what it didn’t reveal about Bill Weimar.

The deliberate pace of the investigations of the Alaska public corruption scandals was again on display, as Weimar will go to prison for crimes he committed more than four years before. The federal criminal investigations into the 49th State’s public corruption started when Barack Obama was a state legislator, and it is likely to be well into his Presidency when the feds close up shop on those cases.

Others in the feds’ crosshairs are the persons referenced as Consultant A and Candidate A in the Weimar case’s charging documents. Although still not officially identified, the consultant appears to be a Seattle-based campaign specialist. Various media accounts have fingered former Sen. Jerry Ward, an Anchorage Republican, as the legislative candidate who received Weimar’s illegal help in 2004. (Weimar’s illegal help was unsuccessful, as Ward lost that race.)

Neither Ward nor the Seattle-based campaign consultant has been charged. Ironically, the tangled connections that Ward has with Bill Allen and VECO—another partner in the push for private prisons in Alaska—may have complicated the investigation and slowed down any charging decisions the feds may make about the former legislator.

The big private prison sought by Weimar, VECO, and others never came to Alaska, and the proposal is now dead. Those years of efforts did bring at least one prescient comment by then-Rep. Eric Croft, D.-Anchorage, at a 2004 legislative hearing. After complaining about repeatedly seeing “sole-source, pre-arranged, heavy-money deals that go to specific contractors,” Croft predicted that "We are going to see somebody indicted and probably imprisoned over this series of proposals."

But the most unusual aspect about Weimar’s sentencing was the way it only scratched the surface of a person whose life trajectory has been stranger than that of anybody else in the Alaska public corruption scandals.

Bill Weimar’s 68 years on this planet have been much racier and richer than the depiction offered by his defense attorney. The gap between the man described in court and the man known by numerous Alaskans was substantially greater than in most criminal sentencings. As is common in letters of recommendation, singles ads, and obituaries, some of the juiciest parts of his life were left out at this proceeding.

Long-time Weimar subordinate Philip Munger expressed a particularly dark view on his blog in August when the feds announced the charges against his former boss:

If I were Bill, I'd hire a first-rate bodyguard very, very soon. Bill may be one
of the dirtiest operators in Alaska history. What he's been charged with today
by the U.S. Department of Justice isn't the tip of the iceberg. It is the tip of the
tip of the iceberg.

Weimar's past creative manipulation of funds touches both major political parties
in Alaska.

Deeply.

Munger’s suggestion that Weimar’s knowledge of dirty deeds committed by others as well as himself puts him at risk seems overblown given the prosecution’s statement at Weimar’s sentencing that he hadn’t given the feds anything that the government didn’t know already.

You don’t have to go as far as Munger, however, to know that the sentencing was a very sketchy portrait of an intriguing and troubling figure.

Intelligent and calculating, this 6’4’’, 250-pound force of nature was a chameleon across the decades. Most people could not imagine going from civil rights activist, antiwar organizer, and insurgent Democratic Party powerbroker to a multimillionaire operator of private prisons and a drug-testing laboratory. Weimar’s vision and narrow dedication to himself, however, helped make him successful in several endeavors.

His voice stayed deep and husky and his manner remained intense even as his jetblack hair turned whitish gray, but the shifts in his lines of work and in his political associates were much more significant than any change in his appearance.

Weimar’s inability to get elected to the legislature despite repeated tries showed the limitations of most backroom operatives: The kind of strategist who can get others elected often lacks the kind of one-on-one personal appeal to voters that can make himself successful at the polls.

Like many others, Weimar turned from the pursuit of political power to the pursuit of wealth in the 1980s, and he got rich. It wasn’t just his entrepreneurial instincts and hard work that made the money for him, though—it was also the transactional nature of his personal relationships (his ties to Ward appear to be an example).

Near the end of his seventh decade, however, this approach seems to have netted him a lot more money than friends.

If you were 68 years old and going to court to face being sent to prison for a number of months, what would you want more: a big house on a big spread on a Montana lake and your own yacht, or even one person who would show up at your felony sentencing because they cared about you?