Anchorage--
Vic Kohring's defining characteristic may be a lack of shame.
Showing posts with label Vic Kohring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vic Kohring. Show all posts
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Monday, May 14, 2012
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:
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.
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.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Vic Kohring Goes on in His Own Words
Anchorage--
Vic Kohring continues his lengthy account of his investigation, arrest, trial, conviction, successful appeal, and plea of guilty to a felony to end his case before his re-trial could start. About the kindest thing I can say is that this series definitely gives a good flavor of his personality.
Vic Kohring continues his lengthy account of his investigation, arrest, trial, conviction, successful appeal, and plea of guilty to a felony to end his case before his re-trial could start. About the kindest thing I can say is that this series definitely gives a good flavor of his personality.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Catching Up
Anchorage--
Three quick hits in the snowfall that is whitening and warming up Anchorage:
1. The Department of Justice has spent close to $1.8 million paying the legal fees of the lawyers under investigation for their roles in the bungled prosecution of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska). And the attorneys getting those legal fees are still on the clock.
2. The Alaska Dispatch has re-published what promises to be the first installment of the in-his-own-words defense of former State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla). He includes the statement that "[M]y defense cost upwards of $1.25 million."
3. And--very belatedly--here is what I told KTVA-TV in Anchorage last month when the Justice Department advised Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska) that it would review its decision not to prosecute convicted briber and star prosecution witness Bill Allen for alleged offenses related to sex with underage girls.
Three quick hits in the snowfall that is whitening and warming up Anchorage:
1. The Department of Justice has spent close to $1.8 million paying the legal fees of the lawyers under investigation for their roles in the bungled prosecution of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R.-Alaska). And the attorneys getting those legal fees are still on the clock.
2. The Alaska Dispatch has re-published what promises to be the first installment of the in-his-own-words defense of former State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla). He includes the statement that "[M]y defense cost upwards of $1.25 million."
3. And--very belatedly--here is what I told KTVA-TV in Anchorage last month when the Justice Department advised Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R.-Alaska) that it would review its decision not to prosecute convicted briber and star prosecution witness Bill Allen for alleged offenses related to sex with underage girls.
Monday, November 21, 2011
UPDATED WITH MORE NEWS AND SPECULATION--Judge Sullivan Announces Special Counsel Found "Widespread" and "At Times Intentional" Misconduct by Ted Stevens Prosecutors, but Recommends No Prosecution for the Prosecutors
Anchorage--
The trial judge in the Ted Stevens case has issued an order summarizing a report by special counsel investigating whether prosecutors involved in that case should be prosecuted for criminal contempt of court. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan states that special counsel "concluded that the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens 'were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated his defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness...'"
Judge Sullivan states, however, that Special Counsel Henry F. Schuelke, III does not recommend charging anyone for criminal contempt because the trial judge never gave a specific "clear and unequivocal" order for the prosecutors to follow the law on sharing evidence with the defense (a process known as "discovery" in the law).
The judge will allow the review of the report by the Department of Justice, "the subject attorneys," and the lawyers for Senator Stevens before deciding how much to release. Although that review process will run on at least until January, Judge Sullivan's order makes clear his desire to release to the public as much of the report as possible.
Those are the headlines from today's 12-page order. Now for some details and analysis:
1. This order and the report it is based on are blistering for those involved with the investigation and prosecution of Ted Stevens. According to the order, Schuelke and his co-investigator William B. Shields “found that at least some of the concealment was willful and intentional, and related to many of the issues raised by the defense during the course of the Stevens trial.” Judge Sullivan's order says that special counsel found "significant, widespread, and at times intentional misconduct."
2. Although the report does not further describe any of the information that was improperly withheld from the defense, it is clear that much of it has not been officially disclosed. It is also clear that some of that information relates to allegations of sexual abuse of minor(s) by Bill Allen, that person only referenced in the report as "the government's key witness."
3. The announced decision not to prosecute any prosecutors for criminal contempt based on the lack of a "clear and unequivocal" order from the trial judge to the prosecutors to follow the law on discovery seems--with all due respect--to be a dodge. A better way to understand the lack of prosecution comes in the report's use of the word "systematic" to describe the discovery failures. The collapse of the Ted Stevens prosecution produced an orgy of fingerpointing among the government attorneys involved, and some of those fingers pointed at the cultural attitudes about discovery within the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section. Veteran Washington lawyer Schuelke may have decided it was too difficult--or unfair--to single out individual prosecutors for prosecution in this situation.
Additionally, the suicide last year of former Ted Stevens prosecutor Nicholas Marsh may have brought more complications to efforts to hold any government attorney criminally responsible for the misconduct found in the Schuelke report. Some of the remaining prosecutors under fire seemed susceptible to the temptation to dump it all on the dead guy, and that possible defense might have been a factor in stopping any prosecution of a prosecutor for criminal contempt.
The judge's order includes a footnote stating "Mr. Schuelke 'offer[s] no opinion as to whether a prosecution for Obstruction of Justice under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1503 might lie against one or more of the subject attorneys and might meet the standard enunciated in 9-27.220 of the Principles of Federal Prosecution.'" Although this footnote seems to kick the ball into the Justice Department's court, this blogger says that no prosecutor in the Ted Stevens case will face any prosecution for any offense related to this matter.
4. The court's order sets out deadlines for a process to release various materials. Those sealed materials include transcripts and pleadings in the cases of former state legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring as well as Ted Stevens. The order also references materials from the prosecution of former Anchorage businessman Josef Boehm. That case involved Bambi Tyree, whom Allen is alleged to have had sexual relations with when Tyree was underage.
5. The judge really wants to release as much as possible of this 500-page report, for which Schuelke and Shields reviewed more than 150,000 pages of documents and conducted numerous witness interviews and 12 depositions over two and a half years. About a third of the 12-page court order is devoted to laying out arguments and legal precedents justifying why the report should be made public. This order sets up a big battle over disclosure, as the Justice Department and some or all of the attorneys whose conduct is scrutinized will not want some of the report released.
6. In addition to the probe by the special counsel appointed by Judge Sullivan, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility ("OPR") has conducted a separate and parallel investigation in its role as DoJ's internal ethics watchdog. The Associated Press reported today that "a lawyer familiar with the investigation" said that OPR's draft report found that Department of Justice attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, as well as FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner, "engaged in misconduct" in the Ted Stevens trial. The AP report has similar information to an NPR report last year. Although Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month that OPR "had just about finalized" its report, the AP reported today that "lawyers familiar with that investigation" said that it remained open. Whatever the status of the OPR report, it is far more likely that significant portions of the court-ordered special counsel report conducted by Schuelke and Shields will be released publicly than it is that the Justice Department will make available the OPR report.
The trial judge in the Ted Stevens case has issued an order summarizing a report by special counsel investigating whether prosecutors involved in that case should be prosecuted for criminal contempt of court. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan states that special counsel "concluded that the investigation and prosecution of Senator Stevens 'were permeated by the systematic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated his defense and his testimony, and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witness...'"
Judge Sullivan states, however, that Special Counsel Henry F. Schuelke, III does not recommend charging anyone for criminal contempt because the trial judge never gave a specific "clear and unequivocal" order for the prosecutors to follow the law on sharing evidence with the defense (a process known as "discovery" in the law).
The judge will allow the review of the report by the Department of Justice, "the subject attorneys," and the lawyers for Senator Stevens before deciding how much to release. Although that review process will run on at least until January, Judge Sullivan's order makes clear his desire to release to the public as much of the report as possible.
Those are the headlines from today's 12-page order. Now for some details and analysis:
1. This order and the report it is based on are blistering for those involved with the investigation and prosecution of Ted Stevens. According to the order, Schuelke and his co-investigator William B. Shields “found that at least some of the concealment was willful and intentional, and related to many of the issues raised by the defense during the course of the Stevens trial.” Judge Sullivan's order says that special counsel found "significant, widespread, and at times intentional misconduct."
2. Although the report does not further describe any of the information that was improperly withheld from the defense, it is clear that much of it has not been officially disclosed. It is also clear that some of that information relates to allegations of sexual abuse of minor(s) by Bill Allen, that person only referenced in the report as "the government's key witness."
3. The announced decision not to prosecute any prosecutors for criminal contempt based on the lack of a "clear and unequivocal" order from the trial judge to the prosecutors to follow the law on discovery seems--with all due respect--to be a dodge. A better way to understand the lack of prosecution comes in the report's use of the word "systematic" to describe the discovery failures. The collapse of the Ted Stevens prosecution produced an orgy of fingerpointing among the government attorneys involved, and some of those fingers pointed at the cultural attitudes about discovery within the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section. Veteran Washington lawyer Schuelke may have decided it was too difficult--or unfair--to single out individual prosecutors for prosecution in this situation.
Additionally, the suicide last year of former Ted Stevens prosecutor Nicholas Marsh may have brought more complications to efforts to hold any government attorney criminally responsible for the misconduct found in the Schuelke report. Some of the remaining prosecutors under fire seemed susceptible to the temptation to dump it all on the dead guy, and that possible defense might have been a factor in stopping any prosecution of a prosecutor for criminal contempt.
The judge's order includes a footnote stating "Mr. Schuelke 'offer[s] no opinion as to whether a prosecution for Obstruction of Justice under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1503 might lie against one or more of the subject attorneys and might meet the standard enunciated in 9-27.220 of the Principles of Federal Prosecution.'" Although this footnote seems to kick the ball into the Justice Department's court, this blogger says that no prosecutor in the Ted Stevens case will face any prosecution for any offense related to this matter.
4. The court's order sets out deadlines for a process to release various materials. Those sealed materials include transcripts and pleadings in the cases of former state legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring as well as Ted Stevens. The order also references materials from the prosecution of former Anchorage businessman Josef Boehm. That case involved Bambi Tyree, whom Allen is alleged to have had sexual relations with when Tyree was underage.
5. The judge really wants to release as much as possible of this 500-page report, for which Schuelke and Shields reviewed more than 150,000 pages of documents and conducted numerous witness interviews and 12 depositions over two and a half years. About a third of the 12-page court order is devoted to laying out arguments and legal precedents justifying why the report should be made public. This order sets up a big battle over disclosure, as the Justice Department and some or all of the attorneys whose conduct is scrutinized will not want some of the report released.
6. In addition to the probe by the special counsel appointed by Judge Sullivan, the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility ("OPR") has conducted a separate and parallel investigation in its role as DoJ's internal ethics watchdog. The Associated Press reported today that "a lawyer familiar with the investigation" said that OPR's draft report found that Department of Justice attorneys Joseph Bottini and James Goeke, as well as FBI agent Mary Beth Kepner, "engaged in misconduct" in the Ted Stevens trial. The AP report has similar information to an NPR report last year. Although Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month that OPR "had just about finalized" its report, the AP reported today that "lawyers familiar with that investigation" said that it remained open. Whatever the status of the OPR report, it is far more likely that significant portions of the court-ordered special counsel report conducted by Schuelke and Shields will be released publicly than it is that the Justice Department will make available the OPR report.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Tapping into the Vein of Alaskans' Conflicted Views of "POLAR PEN": "Alaska Edition" Version
Anchorage--
A wrap-up of the re-sentencings of former Alaska legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring contains one of the purest distillations of the ambivalent feelings on the Last Frontier about the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption. In kicking off the discussion last Friday on the public radio and TV program "Alaska Edition," Eric Adams of Alaska Dispatch noted that many Alaskans saw the federal government exposing a "deeply corrupted legislature" as well as leaving its own competence "in tatters" through the revelation of prosecutorial misconduct.
Veteran Anchorage journalist Paul Jenkins, editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet, had a different take. Jenkins--who once worked for ex-VECO CEO and confessed briber Bill Allen--said "There was no justice." Jenkins downplayed the severity of the public corruption uncovered and emphasized the prosecutorial misconduct. Jenkins also lamented that a result of the probe was the defeat of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
"We lost the most powerful Senator in the country. He was worth $5 billion a year to this state," Jenkins said. "Plus he was 'Uncle Ted.' If you needed something badly enough, 'Uncle Ted' would get it for you. We lost him because of this."
Jenkins said that he thought that "Alaskans are generally sick of it" and "fed up" with the federal investigation and prosecutions.
A wrap-up of the re-sentencings of former Alaska legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring contains one of the purest distillations of the ambivalent feelings on the Last Frontier about the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption. In kicking off the discussion last Friday on the public radio and TV program "Alaska Edition," Eric Adams of Alaska Dispatch noted that many Alaskans saw the federal government exposing a "deeply corrupted legislature" as well as leaving its own competence "in tatters" through the revelation of prosecutorial misconduct.
Veteran Anchorage journalist Paul Jenkins, editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet, had a different take. Jenkins--who once worked for ex-VECO CEO and confessed briber Bill Allen--said "There was no justice." Jenkins downplayed the severity of the public corruption uncovered and emphasized the prosecutorial misconduct. Jenkins also lamented that a result of the probe was the defeat of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens.
"We lost the most powerful Senator in the country. He was worth $5 billion a year to this state," Jenkins said. "Plus he was 'Uncle Ted.' If you needed something badly enough, 'Uncle Ted' would get it for you. We lost him because of this."
Jenkins said that he thought that "Alaskans are generally sick of it" and "fed up" with the federal investigation and prosecutions.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Two Editorials on Kott and Kohring's Guilty Pleas
Anchorage--
While I continue to sharpen my thinking on POLAR PEN's significance, here are two editorial reactions to the guilty pleas and re-sentencings last Friday that marked the official end of the federal probe into Alaska public corruption. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is relieved that former legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring had gained enough good judgment to throw in the towel and end their cases without more trials, while the Anchorage Daily News regrets that the discovery failures of federal prosecutors led to those two ex-lawmakers getting off too easily.
While I continue to sharpen my thinking on POLAR PEN's significance, here are two editorial reactions to the guilty pleas and re-sentencings last Friday that marked the official end of the federal probe into Alaska public corruption. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner is relieved that former legislators Pete Kott and Vic Kohring had gained enough good judgment to throw in the towel and end their cases without more trials, while the Anchorage Daily News regrets that the discovery failures of federal prosecutors led to those two ex-lawmakers getting off too easily.
Friday, October 21, 2011
Pete Kott and Vic Kohring Trade Away Their Citizenship Rights to Guarantee They Won't Return to Prison While Karen Loeffler Declares a Victorious End to "POLAR PEN"
Anchorage—
On a chilly October morning, two men who had admittedly sold their public offices for cash traded away their rights as citizens to buy a guarantee that they would not return to prison.
The guilty pleas of Pete Kott and Vic Kohring triggered a muted victory dance by the people who had pursued them. U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler proclaimed at a post-sentencing press conference that the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption had been a "huge thing" and was now over.
In back-to-back hearings, U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline accepted the plea agreements the two former Alaska lawmakers made with prosecutors. Kott pleaded to bribery, and Kohring pleaded to conspiracy to commit bribery. The bribery occurred in connection with the efforts of VECO CEO Bill Allen and VECO VP Rick Smith in 2006 to get the Alaska Legislature to set tax rates on oil production at levels desired by major oil producers, who were big customers of that Alaska-based multinational oil-services company.
The Apologetic Former Drunk and the Surprisingly Quiet Lightweight
These two defendants were each elected seven times and had tenures as legislators from Southcentral Alaska districts that almost completely overlapped, and both engaged in public corruption. But their different postures in court reflected their different stations in life.
Former Speaker of the Alaska House Kott went first, just as he rose far higher than his fellow Republican Kohring had in the legislature. Kott apologized for his deeds and comments, at least those shown on the "Animal House"-style FBI surveillance videos taken in a VECO-rented hotel suite that were shown at his trial in 2007. That trial produced convictions overturned on grounds of prosecutorial failures discovered in the meltdown of the Ted Stevens prosecution.
"In my heart, I thought that my actions in the Legislature were for the best interests of the State of Alaska," Kott told the court. "I understand that my actions and words off the floor of the Legislature were perhaps wrong."
Judge Beistline agreed with the "wrong" part, telling Kott that the former Air Force officer had "demonstrated a significant character flaw." After 14 years in the legislature, the judge said, Kott seemed to become tired and in need of financial help, so "you sold your soul."
Kott got the sentence he bargained for: no additional time in prison beyond what he has already served on convictions that were overturned, three additional years of supervised release, a $10,000 fine--and no re-trial with the associated cost, hassle, and risk of going back behind bars.
Kohring's sentencing had a different feel presaged by him shaking my hand as he walked into the courtroom and thanking me for being "supportive" on this blog. His comment reminded me of a conversation I had with my wife this morning. I told her that while Kott's lawyer could say in his sentencing memorandum that Kott recognizes that he had an alcohol problem but no longer suffers from it, it was unlikely that Kohring's attorney would say that his client recognized that he had formerly been delusional.
But I was wrong. In a sentencing memorandum whose contents were only disclosed after the proceeding, Kohring's lawyer said that his client had acknowledged to the federal government before his 2007 trial that Bill Allen had given him $1,000 in cash at a restaurant during the 2006 session. Kohring had previously maintained that he believed that the cash "was intended as a gift."
In the sentencing memorandum submitted this week, Kohring's new lawyer said that "What is different now is that Mr. Kohring has reflected on his actions and Bill Allen's motivations when this money was provided, and now acknowledges that receiving $1,000 came with expectations from Bill Allen that he would get something in return from Vic Kohring."
In another unusual move, Kohring's lawyer contended that his client's cluelessness justified a less severe sentence than other public corruption defendants received. Michael Filipovic, Kohring's Seattle-based public defender, said that the tall man sporting long locks was "not a person who had much persuasive ability with others in the House" and "not the person who could move other people's opinions." In a reversal from what politicians' campaign brochures usually boast, Kohring's lawyer argued that it was his client's own low "horsepower" with his legislative colleagues that meant that he was less dangerous than other office-holding defendants.
The final surreal moment at Kohring's sentencing came when he got his chance to speak directly to the court. His lawyer told his client in one of the loudest stage whispers ever that he had the right to say nothing, and--to the surprise of many in the courtroom--Kohring took that advice.
So there Kohring sat. In addition to the "shame, embarrassment and public ridicule" that other defendants in the "POLAR PEN" probe have suffered, Kohring has particularly bad personal problems. He has poor health that leads him to take medication to fight both pain and anxiety, and he is broke with only a lot of debts and only limited part-time work. Kohring lives with his elderly parents in their mobile home in Wasilla, and serves as their primary caregiver.
Perhaps relieved that Kohring did not try to orally reclaim the innocence that his signed plea agreement had given away, Judge Beistline gave Kohring a break. Kohring got the time served he had bargained for, and--in an area in which the parties had not negotiated a specific agreement--the judge only imposed 18 additional months of supervised release. There is no fine for Kohring, and no curfew like Kott got for the first year of his supervised release.
Judge Beistline seemed to lecture Kohring less, and he reserved much of his remarks in both cases for denunciations of two men who were not in the courtroom. The judge called Allen and Smith "two real disreputable characters" whose behavior in handing out baseball caps advertised their moral flaws. (Testimony at Kott's trial showed that his girlfriend had made up caps that read "CBC"--for "Corrupt Bastards Club"--that Smith had flung around a bar.) The judge called Allen and Smith "rich, greedy, amoral" (although Smith would surely disagree about the term "rich" being applied to him as well as the multimillionaire Allen).
The corruption scandals uncovered in the "POLAR PEN" probe were a "truly dark moment in the state's history," the judge said. Echoing President Gerald Ford's comment when he pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon for his role in the Watergate scandals of the 1970s, Judge Beistline told Kott that he was accepting the plea agreement because "I recognize the need to put this long state nightmare to an end."
This Thing's Over and It Gave Us Better Government
That was a common theme from the prosecution and the judge throughout the day: The federal investigation had improved Alaska government, and it was finished.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Feldis said during the Kohring sentencing that he was proud to live in a state and a country where public corruption was not tolerated, and he stated that "Juneau is not the same place it was five years ago."
What had happened to Kohring and Kott would "send shudders to anybody thinking about crossing the line," the judge told Kohring.
"The message has been sent," U.S. Attorney Loeffler said at the post-hearings press conference. "We're in a different era, I hope."
Loeffler worked hard in front of the reporters to embrace the positive while tap dancing away from the negative. Pointing to the 10 people convicted of crimes--including six people who had been sitting lawmakers, representing 10 percent of the legislature--the chief federal prosecutor in Alaska said that the record showed that "We're not a Third World country." She said that the investigations and prosecution had produced a state legislature that was "more honest and open."
Although Loeffler left open the possibility that some other unit of the Department of Justice would do something else, she announced that the job was over for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Alaska. "We're done."
Loeffler repeatedly refused to answer questions about some less attractive aspects of the federal probe into Alaska public corruption. She made it clear that the decisions about Ben Stevens--including the one not to prosecute him--were not made by her office, but by other elements within the Department of Justice. Any federal charges of Bill Allen for alleged sexual abuse of minors would come from the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, not her office. All questions about investigations of prosecutors and investigators who formerly handled "POLAR PEN" cases had to be directed to people in Washington, D.C., where those investigations were being run.
Loeffler and the chief FBI agent in Anchorage, Mary Rook, did confirm the locations of some personnel who formerly worked on those cases. The former lead FBI agent on POLAR PEN, Mary Beth Kepner, attended Kott's sentencing and still works in the Anchorage FBI office. Chad Joy, who formerly served as co-lead agent and became a whistle-blower with grievances particularly aimed at Kepner, is no longer with the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Bottini still works in the Anchorage office, and Assistant U.S. Attorney James Goeke works for the Department of Justice outside of Alaska.
(This blog post was improved by sitting next to Mark Regan during some of the proceedings. The precise wording of the quotation from Pete Kott comes from the report of Kim Murphy in the Los Angeles Times.)
Tomorrow: What Did "POLAR PEN" Mean?
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Pete Kott Will Plead Guilty to Bribery Charge
Warwick, R.I.--
So I'm here visiting my son in college, and Pete Kott's lawyer announces that the former Speaker of the Alaska House will plead guilty to a charge of accepting a bribe from VECO executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith. All indications would be that the defense and the prosecution have made a plea agreement in which the government will dismiss the other three counts against Kott: conspiracy; extortion; and honest services wire fraud.
Given that my location thousands of miles away from Alaska, I feel even more free to speculate than usual:
1. It would appear that the former seven-term Republican State Representative from Eagle River is more concerned about the cost, hassle, and risk of a trial scheduled for Fairbanks in December than he is bothered about the prospect of becoming a felon again.
2. The logic that seems to be working here is consistent with my understanding of the defendant and what it seems likely he understands from his conversations with his attorneys. Pete Kott strikes me as a sensible realist who had become afflicted with world-weariness and an alcohol problem, and when he heard--as he probably did--that he is highly unlikely to spend more time in prison, he decided to cop a plea and cut his losses.
3. As suggested above, I think it likely that Pete Kott believes that his guilty plea will not lead to more prison time, probably because the plea agreement either specifically guarantees that result or because the prosecution has promised not to ask for it and the defense believes that under all the circumstances the judge would not impose it.
4. Note that my prediction that the government would not re-try Pete Kott and Vic Kohring now looks to be at least half-correct. Just like Lincoln seized upon the partial Union victory at Antietam to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, I will take this opportunity to offer a new motto for this blog based on the football columnist Gregg Easterbrook's repeated disclaimer: "All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back." I'm going one better than Easterbrook: Here, it's "All Predictions Wrong or Double Your Money Back."
So I'm here visiting my son in college, and Pete Kott's lawyer announces that the former Speaker of the Alaska House will plead guilty to a charge of accepting a bribe from VECO executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith. All indications would be that the defense and the prosecution have made a plea agreement in which the government will dismiss the other three counts against Kott: conspiracy; extortion; and honest services wire fraud.
Given that my location thousands of miles away from Alaska, I feel even more free to speculate than usual:
1. It would appear that the former seven-term Republican State Representative from Eagle River is more concerned about the cost, hassle, and risk of a trial scheduled for Fairbanks in December than he is bothered about the prospect of becoming a felon again.
2. The logic that seems to be working here is consistent with my understanding of the defendant and what it seems likely he understands from his conversations with his attorneys. Pete Kott strikes me as a sensible realist who had become afflicted with world-weariness and an alcohol problem, and when he heard--as he probably did--that he is highly unlikely to spend more time in prison, he decided to cop a plea and cut his losses.
3. As suggested above, I think it likely that Pete Kott believes that his guilty plea will not lead to more prison time, probably because the plea agreement either specifically guarantees that result or because the prosecution has promised not to ask for it and the defense believes that under all the circumstances the judge would not impose it.
4. Note that my prediction that the government would not re-try Pete Kott and Vic Kohring now looks to be at least half-correct. Just like Lincoln seized upon the partial Union victory at Antietam to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, I will take this opportunity to offer a new motto for this blog based on the football columnist Gregg Easterbrook's repeated disclaimer: "All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back." I'm going one better than Easterbrook: Here, it's "All Predictions Wrong or Double Your Money Back."
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Pete Kott Gets the Same Remedies of Curative Instruction and Special Verdict Form that Vic Kohring Did
Anchorage--
U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline handled the duplicity issue with Pete Kott the same way he did for Vic Kohring.
U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline handled the duplicity issue with Pete Kott the same way he did for Vic Kohring.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Prosecution Announces Preliminary Intent to Put Bill Allen on Witness Stand in Vic Kohring Re-Trial
Anchorage--
The notice filed by the United States this afternoon states that government lawyers will ask the court to declare off-limits certain questions on cross-examination "to prevent confusion of the jury and the creation of irrelevant and improper side-trials on collateral issues," such as Bill Allen's alleged sexual crimes with minors and any alleged efforts to cover them up.
Judge Orders Curative Instruction and Special Verdict Form in Kohring Trial to Address Duplicity Issue in Bribery Charge
Anchorage--
To remedy a problem with charging too much bribery in one count of an indictment, the court has ordered that the jury in the Vic Kohring re-trial get a curative instruction and a special verdict form to insure that any conviction reflects unanimous jury agreement on what act constituted a bribe.
U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline quoted the government's characterization that the court had decided that the indictment charges five bribes involving the former Wasilla Republican legislator and VECO executives. The government has described those five alleged bribes as:
1. the acceptance of approximately $1,000 in cash on February 23, 2006 ("the Island Pub incident")
2. the solicitation and securing of a job for Kohring's nephew beginning in February, 2006
3. the acceptance of cash payments on March 30, 2006 ("the Easter egg and Girl Scout uniform incident"
4. the solicitation of $17,000 on March 30, 2006 ("the credit card incident")
and
5. the acceptance of between $500 and $1,000 on June 8, 2006 ("the McDonald's incident").
For a variety of reasons--including the unfairness and uncertainty involved in not knowing exactly what conduct the jury would be convicting on--the defense asked the court either to dismiss the bribery count or force the government to choose in advance which conduct it would be relying on in seeking a conviction for bribery in the re-trial.
The government countered by requesting that the court issue a special jury instruction ordering the jury to agree on what act of bribery it was convicting on as well as a special verdict form in which the jury would specifically identify that conduct.
The court sided with the prosecution, ordering a special jury instruction and a special verdict form. Citing "expediency" and "public accountability," the court rejected the defense's requests for either dismissal of the bribery count or an order requiring that the prosecution elect in advance which of the five acts it was relying on. The court announced that the special instruction "would allow the jury to try Kohring on all the acts of alleged bribery" and that the special verdict form "would forestall any possible double jeopardy or unanimity problems."
This is a significant victory for the prosecution if there is a re-trial. The government lawyers will get to present to the jury what they have called "the full range of Kohring's corrupt conduct."
To remedy a problem with charging too much bribery in one count of an indictment, the court has ordered that the jury in the Vic Kohring re-trial get a curative instruction and a special verdict form to insure that any conviction reflects unanimous jury agreement on what act constituted a bribe.
U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline quoted the government's characterization that the court had decided that the indictment charges five bribes involving the former Wasilla Republican legislator and VECO executives. The government has described those five alleged bribes as:
1. the acceptance of approximately $1,000 in cash on February 23, 2006 ("the Island Pub incident")
2. the solicitation and securing of a job for Kohring's nephew beginning in February, 2006
3. the acceptance of cash payments on March 30, 2006 ("the Easter egg and Girl Scout uniform incident"
4. the solicitation of $17,000 on March 30, 2006 ("the credit card incident")
and
5. the acceptance of between $500 and $1,000 on June 8, 2006 ("the McDonald's incident").
For a variety of reasons--including the unfairness and uncertainty involved in not knowing exactly what conduct the jury would be convicting on--the defense asked the court either to dismiss the bribery count or force the government to choose in advance which conduct it would be relying on in seeking a conviction for bribery in the re-trial.
The government countered by requesting that the court issue a special jury instruction ordering the jury to agree on what act of bribery it was convicting on as well as a special verdict form in which the jury would specifically identify that conduct.
The court sided with the prosecution, ordering a special jury instruction and a special verdict form. Citing "expediency" and "public accountability," the court rejected the defense's requests for either dismissal of the bribery count or an order requiring that the prosecution elect in advance which of the five acts it was relying on. The court announced that the special instruction "would allow the jury to try Kohring on all the acts of alleged bribery" and that the special verdict form "would forestall any possible double jeopardy or unanimity problems."
This is a significant victory for the prosecution if there is a re-trial. The government lawyers will get to present to the jury what they have called "the full range of Kohring's corrupt conduct."
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Vic Kohring's Trial Moves to Fairbanks, Too
Anchorage--
Judge Ralph Beistline yesterday moved the trial of ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) from Anchorage to Fairbanks in an order that expressed the same logic as his order making the same shift for ex-State Rep. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River).
Judge Ralph Beistline yesterday moved the trial of ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) from Anchorage to Fairbanks in an order that expressed the same logic as his order making the same shift for ex-State Rep. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River).
Thursday, August 11, 2011
What About Ben?
Anchorage--
So I haven't been the most consistent blogger. To compensate, here's an early taste of my new column for the Alaska Bar Rag, the official quarterly publication for the Last Frontier's lawyers. As you can see, I submitted a few hours before the news of last night, which caused me to drop in one sentence as an update.
What About Ben?
By Cliff Groh
Judging by what has happened in court, Ben Stevens might argue that he was an honest man wrongly dragged into the Last Frontier’s public corruption scandals.
After all, the man who only a half dozen years ago seemed set to be the next Alaska Governor or U.S. Senator was the only state legislator in 2006 whose offices were searched by the FBI who did NOT become either a criminal defendant or a cooperating witness.
But you have to wonder.
Accounts of the actions of Ben Stevens in the seafood industry as a consultant, lobbyist, investor, and member of a federally funded non-profit board while his father Ted was in the U.S. Senate read like textbooks on conflict of interest. While continuing to deny wrongdoing, Ben Stevens was by his own account under investigation by four federal agencies in 2007.
More pointedly, two executives of the now-defunct oil-services giant VECO testified under oath in 2007 that they had pleaded guilty to bribing Ben Stevens. Those VECO executives—Bill Allen and Rick Smith—agreed with federal prosecutors that the $243,250 in consulting fees that the Anchorage Republican lawmaker reported receiving from VECO through a private company he owned while he served in the State Senate was actually for “giving advice, lobbying colleagues, and taking official acts in matters before the legislature.”
Yet the eight-year-old federal investigation into Alaska public corruption has not produced a charge against Ben Stevens, and I will eat my baseball cap if he is prosecuted in that probe. [UPDATE: Several hours after this column was submitted to the Alaska Bar Rag, the Anchorage Daily News reported on its website that the Department of Justice has advised former Alaska State Senate President Ben Stevens that the ex-lawmaker will not face charges in the federal investigation into public corruption in the 49th State.]
Why didn’t that dog bark?
We must clear substantial underbrush in answering this question. Understand that nothing in this analysis is based on inside information from decision-makers within the federal government. Recognize that nothing written here is intended to accuse anyone of committing a crime. Ignore the controversy stirred by Ben Stevens getting more than $715,000 for three years of part-time work as chief executive of the 2001 Special Olympics World Winter Games. Set aside any surprise over the fact that he served four years on the Select Committee on Legislative Ethics.
Let’s skip any sense of regret or schadenfreude about this obviously intelligent and hard-working man’s meteoric career in business and public office, folks, and just focus as lawyers on how Ben Stevens escaped criminal charges.
It is not enough to whistle the Creedence Clearwater Revival song lyric “I ain’t no senator’s son.” Whatever protection (as well as career promotion) was afforded by having Ted Stevens as a father seemed to be over by 2008, when the iconic U.S. Senator got charged in a case that generated guilty verdicts on seven felonies before imploding less than six months later.
Nor does it work to suggest—as some observers have—that Ben Stevens made his own deal with the feds to give him immunity from prosecution. It’s not just that no evidence exists of such an agreement—there appears to be nothing that the former Anchorage Republican lawmaker ever gave the Justice Department to make such a deal plausible.
No, Ben Stevens’ avoidance of prosecution in the “POLAR PEN” probe seems to stem from a combination of luck, prudence, and hiding in plain sight.
Ben Stevens caught a big break when the Justice Department did not include him in the first wave of defendants charged in May of 2007 with crimes associated with VECO executives’ corruption of state legislators over oil-tax legislation debated the previous year. This omission might have been caused in part by the feds seeing the potential prosecution of Ben Stevens as a bargaining chip they could play later in the negotiations with his father.
Yet time did not turn out to be kind to the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption. The feds charged Ted Stevens without charging Ben Stevens, and the probe’s fortunes soured quickly after the jury returned guilty verdicts against Ted Stevens in October of 2008. The Ted Stevens prosecution collapsed in April of 2009 in the wake of revelations of failures to provide discovery, putting the government employees best informed about “POLAR PEN” under investigation themselves. Additional disclosures have dented the credibility of Allen and Smith, two of the prosecution’s key witnesses in previous trials. Last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Skilling v. U.S. sharply pruned the scope of the honest services fraud statute, a favorite weapon wielded by federal prosecutors in public corruption cases that was used against half of the 12 defendants charged in the “POLAR PEN” probe.
The prosecutors might well have perceived additional problems with charging Ben Stevens even back when the feds were flying high in 2007, however. The combination of what appears to be his relative invisibility on incriminating tapes and his extensive financial disclosures may have saved him.
Ben Stevens received almost a quarter of a million dollars in fees from VECO while he was in the State Senate and also took positions as a legislator on oil taxes that VECO wanted him to take, but those facts do not by themselves constitute a crime. What was going on in Ben Stevens’ mind is where the action is in prosecuting him, as it often is in public corruption cases. (That’s also true in the broader category of white-collar crime cases, like that of his father.)
Prosecutors have found that the best way to show that a defendant in a public corruption case has criminal intent is by playing tapes that show him saying and/or doing things that make him look guilty. All the defendants that juries have returned guilty verdicts against in the Alaska public corruption cases have had damaging tapes of them played in front of the jury.
Tapes tend to trump other evidence. As one former federal prosecutor observed, the government attorneys in the “POLAR PEN” cases sometimes seemed primed merely to walk into court and push “PLAY,” and the feds might have thought they didn’t have enough incriminating tapes on Ben Stevens to go forward.
Unlike other legislators convicted in the probe, Ben Stevens might not have frequented the infamous VECO-rented Suite 604 in Juneau’s Baranof Hotel that the FBI bugged to such effect. Whether this conduct flows from a sensible desire to stay away from that “Animal House” atmosphere or from the family needs of a father of four, Ben Stevens’ apparent lack of a starring role in the FBI’s greatest hits has served him well.
Aside from whatever the more than 17,000 conversations the feds intercepted in the “POLAR PEN” probe may show about Ben Stevens, there is another problem the feds have in prosecuting him on offenses involving either VECO or fisheries. That problem is the fact that the former State Senator apparently disclosed all the income he collected for consulting and/or lobbying that he was legally required to disclose. You might think his conduct was unseemly and unsavory, but it’s likely that Ben Stevens would say that he is just a hard-working businessman who laid bare his income as the law required, both when he served as a federal lobbyist and later when he served as a state legislator.
As to all that money from VECO that came in to the legislator when his work product may look minimal or even non-existent, Ben Stevens might well say that he thought he was on retainer—a retainer that allowed Bill Allen to call Ben Stevens about work for VECO anytime 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ben Stevens might add that it was not his problem that Allen seemed to call him so infrequently to work on matters such as advice on salvaging vessels.
Observers might point to the $983,807.66 in fees that Ben Stevens reported receiving for business services and/or management services from VECO and fishing interests alone during the five full calendar years he served as a legislator in comparison to the relatively small amounts involved in the cases that sent other lawmakers to prison. The sheer amount of money, however, is not all that matters.
A common thread in the cases against the state legislators convicted at trial in the “POLAR PEN” probe was what juries saw as clumsy attempts to conceal benefits: a bogus flooring invoice submitted by former Rep. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River); a request to hide help on a credit card balance by former Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla); a phony Website in the case of former Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage). The contemporaneous cover-ups helped the juries find the guilty intent. (Reversals on appeal of the convictions of Kott and Kohring have led to re-trials being scheduled for late this year.)
With Ben Stevens, on the other hand, there appeared to be no subterfuge—all the income seems to have been reported. Although paper trails are often seen as trouble, a particular kind of paper trail—one shorn of detailed descriptions of tasks performed or time spent working—appears to have helped keep Ben Stevens out of trouble. The system could not handle that hiding in plain sight.
You might think that the story of Ben Stevens is a prime Alaska example of the maxim of columnist Michael Kinsley to the effect that the real scandal is not what’s illegal—it’s what’s legal. You might also think that not prosecuting Ben Stevens after getting Allen and Smith to plead guilty to bribing him might pose a particular public relations problem for the Department of Justice, but such a result would be neither illegal nor unprecedented. One well-known irony that involved verdicts by juries rather than the exercise of prosecutorial discretion comes from the notorious Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s. Albert Fall was convicted for taking a bribe from oilman Edward Doheny while serving as Secretary of Interior, but Doheny was acquitted of the charge of bribing Fall.
Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has worked as a prosecutor and represented some criminal defendants in his private practice. He is a lawyer and writer in Anchorage whose law practice focuses on the writing and revision of briefs and motions. Disclosures potentially relevant to his writings about the Alaska public corruption probe can be found at http://alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/2011/05/even-more-updated-biography-with-still.html on the Internet. Conversations with numerous people—including Anchorage lawyers Mark Regan and George Freeman—have sharpened the author’s thinking on this column’s subject.
So I haven't been the most consistent blogger. To compensate, here's an early taste of my new column for the Alaska Bar Rag, the official quarterly publication for the Last Frontier's lawyers. As you can see, I submitted a few hours before the news of last night, which caused me to drop in one sentence as an update.
What About Ben?
By Cliff Groh
Judging by what has happened in court, Ben Stevens might argue that he was an honest man wrongly dragged into the Last Frontier’s public corruption scandals.
After all, the man who only a half dozen years ago seemed set to be the next Alaska Governor or U.S. Senator was the only state legislator in 2006 whose offices were searched by the FBI who did NOT become either a criminal defendant or a cooperating witness.
But you have to wonder.
Accounts of the actions of Ben Stevens in the seafood industry as a consultant, lobbyist, investor, and member of a federally funded non-profit board while his father Ted was in the U.S. Senate read like textbooks on conflict of interest. While continuing to deny wrongdoing, Ben Stevens was by his own account under investigation by four federal agencies in 2007.
More pointedly, two executives of the now-defunct oil-services giant VECO testified under oath in 2007 that they had pleaded guilty to bribing Ben Stevens. Those VECO executives—Bill Allen and Rick Smith—agreed with federal prosecutors that the $243,250 in consulting fees that the Anchorage Republican lawmaker reported receiving from VECO through a private company he owned while he served in the State Senate was actually for “giving advice, lobbying colleagues, and taking official acts in matters before the legislature.”
Yet the eight-year-old federal investigation into Alaska public corruption has not produced a charge against Ben Stevens, and I will eat my baseball cap if he is prosecuted in that probe. [UPDATE: Several hours after this column was submitted to the Alaska Bar Rag, the Anchorage Daily News reported on its website that the Department of Justice has advised former Alaska State Senate President Ben Stevens that the ex-lawmaker will not face charges in the federal investigation into public corruption in the 49th State.]
Why didn’t that dog bark?
We must clear substantial underbrush in answering this question. Understand that nothing in this analysis is based on inside information from decision-makers within the federal government. Recognize that nothing written here is intended to accuse anyone of committing a crime. Ignore the controversy stirred by Ben Stevens getting more than $715,000 for three years of part-time work as chief executive of the 2001 Special Olympics World Winter Games. Set aside any surprise over the fact that he served four years on the Select Committee on Legislative Ethics.
Let’s skip any sense of regret or schadenfreude about this obviously intelligent and hard-working man’s meteoric career in business and public office, folks, and just focus as lawyers on how Ben Stevens escaped criminal charges.
It is not enough to whistle the Creedence Clearwater Revival song lyric “I ain’t no senator’s son.” Whatever protection (as well as career promotion) was afforded by having Ted Stevens as a father seemed to be over by 2008, when the iconic U.S. Senator got charged in a case that generated guilty verdicts on seven felonies before imploding less than six months later.
Nor does it work to suggest—as some observers have—that Ben Stevens made his own deal with the feds to give him immunity from prosecution. It’s not just that no evidence exists of such an agreement—there appears to be nothing that the former Anchorage Republican lawmaker ever gave the Justice Department to make such a deal plausible.
No, Ben Stevens’ avoidance of prosecution in the “POLAR PEN” probe seems to stem from a combination of luck, prudence, and hiding in plain sight.
Ben Stevens caught a big break when the Justice Department did not include him in the first wave of defendants charged in May of 2007 with crimes associated with VECO executives’ corruption of state legislators over oil-tax legislation debated the previous year. This omission might have been caused in part by the feds seeing the potential prosecution of Ben Stevens as a bargaining chip they could play later in the negotiations with his father.
Yet time did not turn out to be kind to the federal investigation into Alaska public corruption. The feds charged Ted Stevens without charging Ben Stevens, and the probe’s fortunes soured quickly after the jury returned guilty verdicts against Ted Stevens in October of 2008. The Ted Stevens prosecution collapsed in April of 2009 in the wake of revelations of failures to provide discovery, putting the government employees best informed about “POLAR PEN” under investigation themselves. Additional disclosures have dented the credibility of Allen and Smith, two of the prosecution’s key witnesses in previous trials. Last year’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in Skilling v. U.S. sharply pruned the scope of the honest services fraud statute, a favorite weapon wielded by federal prosecutors in public corruption cases that was used against half of the 12 defendants charged in the “POLAR PEN” probe.
The prosecutors might well have perceived additional problems with charging Ben Stevens even back when the feds were flying high in 2007, however. The combination of what appears to be his relative invisibility on incriminating tapes and his extensive financial disclosures may have saved him.
Ben Stevens received almost a quarter of a million dollars in fees from VECO while he was in the State Senate and also took positions as a legislator on oil taxes that VECO wanted him to take, but those facts do not by themselves constitute a crime. What was going on in Ben Stevens’ mind is where the action is in prosecuting him, as it often is in public corruption cases. (That’s also true in the broader category of white-collar crime cases, like that of his father.)
Prosecutors have found that the best way to show that a defendant in a public corruption case has criminal intent is by playing tapes that show him saying and/or doing things that make him look guilty. All the defendants that juries have returned guilty verdicts against in the Alaska public corruption cases have had damaging tapes of them played in front of the jury.
Tapes tend to trump other evidence. As one former federal prosecutor observed, the government attorneys in the “POLAR PEN” cases sometimes seemed primed merely to walk into court and push “PLAY,” and the feds might have thought they didn’t have enough incriminating tapes on Ben Stevens to go forward.
Unlike other legislators convicted in the probe, Ben Stevens might not have frequented the infamous VECO-rented Suite 604 in Juneau’s Baranof Hotel that the FBI bugged to such effect. Whether this conduct flows from a sensible desire to stay away from that “Animal House” atmosphere or from the family needs of a father of four, Ben Stevens’ apparent lack of a starring role in the FBI’s greatest hits has served him well.
Aside from whatever the more than 17,000 conversations the feds intercepted in the “POLAR PEN” probe may show about Ben Stevens, there is another problem the feds have in prosecuting him on offenses involving either VECO or fisheries. That problem is the fact that the former State Senator apparently disclosed all the income he collected for consulting and/or lobbying that he was legally required to disclose. You might think his conduct was unseemly and unsavory, but it’s likely that Ben Stevens would say that he is just a hard-working businessman who laid bare his income as the law required, both when he served as a federal lobbyist and later when he served as a state legislator.
As to all that money from VECO that came in to the legislator when his work product may look minimal or even non-existent, Ben Stevens might well say that he thought he was on retainer—a retainer that allowed Bill Allen to call Ben Stevens about work for VECO anytime 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Ben Stevens might add that it was not his problem that Allen seemed to call him so infrequently to work on matters such as advice on salvaging vessels.
Observers might point to the $983,807.66 in fees that Ben Stevens reported receiving for business services and/or management services from VECO and fishing interests alone during the five full calendar years he served as a legislator in comparison to the relatively small amounts involved in the cases that sent other lawmakers to prison. The sheer amount of money, however, is not all that matters.
A common thread in the cases against the state legislators convicted at trial in the “POLAR PEN” probe was what juries saw as clumsy attempts to conceal benefits: a bogus flooring invoice submitted by former Rep. Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River); a request to hide help on a credit card balance by former Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla); a phony Website in the case of former Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage). The contemporaneous cover-ups helped the juries find the guilty intent. (Reversals on appeal of the convictions of Kott and Kohring have led to re-trials being scheduled for late this year.)
With Ben Stevens, on the other hand, there appeared to be no subterfuge—all the income seems to have been reported. Although paper trails are often seen as trouble, a particular kind of paper trail—one shorn of detailed descriptions of tasks performed or time spent working—appears to have helped keep Ben Stevens out of trouble. The system could not handle that hiding in plain sight.
You might think that the story of Ben Stevens is a prime Alaska example of the maxim of columnist Michael Kinsley to the effect that the real scandal is not what’s illegal—it’s what’s legal. You might also think that not prosecuting Ben Stevens after getting Allen and Smith to plead guilty to bribing him might pose a particular public relations problem for the Department of Justice, but such a result would be neither illegal nor unprecedented. One well-known irony that involved verdicts by juries rather than the exercise of prosecutorial discretion comes from the notorious Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s. Albert Fall was convicted for taking a bribe from oilman Edward Doheny while serving as Secretary of Interior, but Doheny was acquitted of the charge of bribing Fall.
Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has worked as a prosecutor and represented some criminal defendants in his private practice. He is a lawyer and writer in Anchorage whose law practice focuses on the writing and revision of briefs and motions. Disclosures potentially relevant to his writings about the Alaska public corruption probe can be found at http://alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/2011/05/even-more-updated-biography-with-still.html on the Internet. Conversations with numerous people—including Anchorage lawyers Mark Regan and George Freeman—have sharpened the author’s thinking on this column’s subject.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Traffic Cop in the Sunshine: Vic Kohring Maneuvers to Get Advantages in the Negotiations with Prosecutors
Anchorage--
I'm busy today working on income-producing tasks, so all I can do is point you to Richard Mauer's story in the Anchorage Daily News about ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring's motions from yesterday. The attorney for the former Republican legislator from Wasilla asked the court to trim Kohring's indictment to reflect the mixed jury verdicts at his trial. The defense also requested the court to order ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen to announce whether he would assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering any questions under oath about his alleged sexual crimes with underaged girls. More later.
I'm busy today working on income-producing tasks, so all I can do is point you to Richard Mauer's story in the Anchorage Daily News about ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring's motions from yesterday. The attorney for the former Republican legislator from Wasilla asked the court to trim Kohring's indictment to reflect the mixed jury verdicts at his trial. The defense also requested the court to order ex-VECO CEO Bill Allen to announce whether he would assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to avoid answering any questions under oath about his alleged sexual crimes with underaged girls. More later.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
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.)
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.)
Friday, July 8, 2011
Vic Kohring Asks for Trial Outside of Alaska
Anchorage--
Citing heavy and strongly unfavorable publicity over the last half-decade, the attorney for former State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) asked the court to move his trial out of Alaska. The re-trial on public corruption charges is currently scheduled to start in Anchorage on October 31 of this year. The ex-lawmaker's motion for change of venue does not request a specific location for the trial, but suggests that it should be held somewhere within the boundaries of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court for the West.
Blogging will continue to be a little light while I recover from my wedding last week. (To paraphrase the writer Seth Mnookin about his own nuptials, it surprised the hell out of me as well.)
Citing heavy and strongly unfavorable publicity over the last half-decade, the attorney for former State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) asked the court to move his trial out of Alaska. The re-trial on public corruption charges is currently scheduled to start in Anchorage on October 31 of this year. The ex-lawmaker's motion for change of venue does not request a specific location for the trial, but suggests that it should be held somewhere within the boundaries of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appellate court for the West.
Blogging will continue to be a little light while I recover from my wedding last week. (To paraphrase the writer Seth Mnookin about his own nuptials, it surprised the hell out of me as well.)
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Traffic Cop in the Subarctic Summer: Pete Kott's Trial Scheduled for Aug. 8; Impoverished Vic Kohring Gets Court-Appointed Lawyer
Anchorage--
A conflict kept me from attending a pre-trial hearing yesterday in the case of U.S. v. Victor Kohring, but fortunately Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News did show up at that proceeding regarding the former Republican member of the Alaska State House from Wasilla. Mauer's article covers both that hearing and some procedural events in the case of former State Rep. Pete Kott, R.-Eagle River. You can find Mauer's story here.
Nuggets from Mauer's piece:
1. The court has set Kott's trial to start August 8 in Anchorage.
2. Despite what you may heard from other media sources, the question of whether retrials of Kott and Kohring will actually happen is still up in the air. Mauer's article says that Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Feldis told him that "the Justice Department hadn't yet decided whether it would retry Kohring, but as in Kott's case, prosecutors were moving ahead as if it would. The decision would be made by a high-level official in Washington, Feldis said."
The higher up that decision-maker, the less likely Kott and Kohring will be retried. I maintain my previously expressed prediction that those two disgraced ex-officeholders will not face trial again on these public corruption charges.
3. Vic Kohring is still poor. The famously broke former legislator announced yesterday that he came to court in a borrowed vehicle carrying a borrowed $40. In a successful bid to get a court-appointed defense attorney, Kohring testified that his four bank accounts hold less than one dollar combined.
A conflict kept me from attending a pre-trial hearing yesterday in the case of U.S. v. Victor Kohring, but fortunately Richard Mauer of the Anchorage Daily News did show up at that proceeding regarding the former Republican member of the Alaska State House from Wasilla. Mauer's article covers both that hearing and some procedural events in the case of former State Rep. Pete Kott, R.-Eagle River. You can find Mauer's story here.
Nuggets from Mauer's piece:
1. The court has set Kott's trial to start August 8 in Anchorage.
2. Despite what you may heard from other media sources, the question of whether retrials of Kott and Kohring will actually happen is still up in the air. Mauer's article says that Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Feldis told him that "the Justice Department hadn't yet decided whether it would retry Kohring, but as in Kott's case, prosecutors were moving ahead as if it would. The decision would be made by a high-level official in Washington, Feldis said."
The higher up that decision-maker, the less likely Kott and Kohring will be retried. I maintain my previously expressed prediction that those two disgraced ex-officeholders will not face trial again on these public corruption charges.
3. Vic Kohring is still poor. The famously broke former legislator announced yesterday that he came to court in a borrowed vehicle carrying a borrowed $40. In a successful bid to get a court-appointed defense attorney, Kohring testified that his four bank accounts hold less than one dollar combined.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Pre-Trial Fencing Starts Regarding Pete Kott's Re-Trial
Anchorage--
A court hearing in the re-started Pete Kott case this morning resulted in some judicial decisions on procedural matters, but left open the question of whether the United States government will ever re-try the former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives.
The magistrate granted the defendant's motion to appoint an attorney to defend him in the possible re-trial, and then went ahead and selected the lawyer who has already represented Kott on appeal. The court provisionally denied, however, the request for a second defense attorney more experienced in trials to represent the former Eagle River Republican lawmaker, now a Juneau resident.
Looming over the hearing was the issue of whether the prosecution would press ahead after all that has happened. U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler told U. S. Magistrate John Roberts that "for now" the feds plan to re-try the former legislator, but that "things could change." The government made moves that protected its options on a re-trial--Loeffler named two additional prosecutors in Washington, D.C. who are set to work on the Kott case, one of whom was among the lawyers in four cities participating in the teleconferenced hearing.
Printing your roster is of course not the same thing as playing the game, however, and I adhere to my previously expressed belief that the federal government will never re-try either Kott or his former legislative colleague, ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla). I predict with even more certainty that neither man will ever spend another day in prison for their roles in Alaska's public corruption scandals.
The pressures on the prosecution and the defense in each of those cases may lead to Kott and Kohring resolving their cases against them by pleading guilty to that same unique state misdemeanor of knowingly consorting with unregistered lobbyists that the feds got former Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau) to plead guilty to in a deal to make the multiple federal felonies go away. Although the evidence is stronger against Kott and Kohring than it was against Weyhrauch, the incentives for the prosecution to avoid airing in a courtroom the federal government's interactions and decisions regarding convicted briber and accused sex abuser Bill Allen are very strong in the cases of all three former legislators.
Whatever happens, it looks like the decisions on the re-trials of Kott and Kohring will come before the leaves fall. U.S. District Judge John Sedwick has ordered that the lawyers agree on a proposed re-trial date that is no later than August 9 of this year in the Kott case, and it looks like the schedule will run about a week later in the Kohring case. Stay tuned.
A court hearing in the re-started Pete Kott case this morning resulted in some judicial decisions on procedural matters, but left open the question of whether the United States government will ever re-try the former Speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives.
The magistrate granted the defendant's motion to appoint an attorney to defend him in the possible re-trial, and then went ahead and selected the lawyer who has already represented Kott on appeal. The court provisionally denied, however, the request for a second defense attorney more experienced in trials to represent the former Eagle River Republican lawmaker, now a Juneau resident.
Looming over the hearing was the issue of whether the prosecution would press ahead after all that has happened. U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler told U. S. Magistrate John Roberts that "for now" the feds plan to re-try the former legislator, but that "things could change." The government made moves that protected its options on a re-trial--Loeffler named two additional prosecutors in Washington, D.C. who are set to work on the Kott case, one of whom was among the lawyers in four cities participating in the teleconferenced hearing.
Printing your roster is of course not the same thing as playing the game, however, and I adhere to my previously expressed belief that the federal government will never re-try either Kott or his former legislative colleague, ex-State Rep. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla). I predict with even more certainty that neither man will ever spend another day in prison for their roles in Alaska's public corruption scandals.
The pressures on the prosecution and the defense in each of those cases may lead to Kott and Kohring resolving their cases against them by pleading guilty to that same unique state misdemeanor of knowingly consorting with unregistered lobbyists that the feds got former Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau) to plead guilty to in a deal to make the multiple federal felonies go away. Although the evidence is stronger against Kott and Kohring than it was against Weyhrauch, the incentives for the prosecution to avoid airing in a courtroom the federal government's interactions and decisions regarding convicted briber and accused sex abuser Bill Allen are very strong in the cases of all three former legislators.
Whatever happens, it looks like the decisions on the re-trials of Kott and Kohring will come before the leaves fall. U.S. District Judge John Sedwick has ordered that the lawyers agree on a proposed re-trial date that is no later than August 9 of this year in the Kott case, and it looks like the schedule will run about a week later in the Kohring case. Stay tuned.
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