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.

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.

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.

Justice Department Opposes Bruce Weyhrauch's Requests for Legal Fees and Discovery

Anchorage--

The prosecution has opposed the request of former State Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch (R.-Juneau) for the government to pay more than $600,000 in attorney and paralegal fees and $63,000 in costs the ex-lawmaker racked up defending against four bribery-related federal felony charges that ultimately went away when Weyhrauch pleaded guilty to a unique state misdemeanor.

Weyhrauch's requests for fees and costs relied on a statute allowing a defendant in a federal criminal case to get payment for reasonable expenses if the defendant is "the prevailing party" in the case and the court determines the government's prosecution was "vexatious, frivolous or in bad faith." The federal government initially charged Weyhrauch with bribery, extortion, honest services fraud, and conspiracy for his role in an alleged scheme to give legislative assistance to VECO's bribers on oil tax legislation in 2006 in return for VECO giving Weyhrauch work as an attorney.

In opposing the defense motion, the government relies heavily on Weyhrauch's guilty plea to the state misdemeanor of knowingly allowing VECO executives Bill Allen and Rick Smith to lobby him when Weyhrauch was aware of a substantial probability that the two men were not registered as lobbyists.

Although those in the know saw that resolution as a big victory for Weyhrauch and an embarrassment for the prosecution, that is not at all how the government's attorneys profess to view it in their response to the motion for fees and costs. To the Justice Department, Weyhrauch's guilty plea was highly significant because it shows that he was not the prevailing party in the litigation. This is particularly true, say the prosecutors, because his guilty plea included an admission that he had asked VECO's top executives for legal work during a legislative session in which he would have the opportunity to vote on oil tax legislation of great interest to VECO. The prosecutors contend that this admission means that he admitted the factual assertion that was "the centerpiece of the federal indictment."

The Justice Department also argues that Weyhrauch's admissions to his dealings with Allen and Smith in the plea agreement show that the original federal prosecution was in good faith, even if Weyhrauch was not convicted of any of the corruption-related felonies initially charged.

The prosecution's opposition does not directly deny the defense's central factual allegation suggesting the government acted in bad faith in prosecuting Weyhrauch. This allegation concerns the different ways an FBI agent characterized a comment made by Weyhrauch to Allen in a meeting monitored by the feds. The defense has alleged that in an affidavit, the FBI agent characterized Weyhrauch's warning to Allen about dealing with a certain unnamed individual as evidence that the legislator was honest because he was telling the tycoon to steer away from somebody who was taking bribes. The defense has also claimed that before the grand jury, that same FBI agent characterized that same comment as showing that Weyhrauch was corrupt because he was advising Allen to stay away from somebody who was "in league with the FBI." (Although that somebody who Weyhrauch was warning about is not identified, it is reasonable to speculate that it was Rep. Tom Anderson (R.-Anchorage), who took bribes, served as a cooperating witness for the feds after being confronted, and then backed out of his cooperation.)

The prosecution does not concede that the alleged misconduct as suborning perjury before the grand jury occurred, but what the government's attorneys really want to stop is any additional court orders for the government to turn over evidence to Weyhrauch's lawyers. The prosecution argues that the statute authorizing payment of fees and costs does not permit any more discovery. In any case, the prosecutors say, Weyhrauch's guilty plea to the state misdemeanor shows that he has not shown good cause to get any order for more production of documents.

In the prosecution's final flourish, the government's lawyers argue that Weyhrauch has not met the statute's requirement that any ex-defendant seeking relief must show that his net worth is less than $2 million. Unless Weyhrauch has won a lottery, a solo practitioner who racked up more than $600,000 in legal fees and costs while being under felony indictment for almost four years would obviously satisfy that standard.

Disclosure: I have known Bruce Weyhrauch for about three decades, but he has never discussed this case with me. More on this here.

Appeals Court Panel Denies Kott and Kohring's Requests for Rehearing of Their Appeals

Anchorage--

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied the requests of former State Reps. Vic Kohring (R.-Wasilla) and Pete Kott (R.-Eagle River) for rehearing of that panel's decisions to reverse their convictions but allow the federal government to retry them. As Jill Burke explained yesterday in her piece in http://www.alaskadispatch.com/, attorneys for the two ex-legislators caught up in the Alaska public corruption scandals were "pushing for a chance to have the court rule that prosecutors screwed up so badly that the only way to make things right is to throw the cases out."


The three-judge panel also denied Kott's motion for an evidentiary hearing into the trial prosecutors' handling of discovery.

The vote in both cases on the rehearing and Kott's motion for an was 2-1, with the dissenting vote coming from Circuit Judge Betty Binns Fletcher. In the earlier decision overturning the convictions, Judge Fletcher had been particularly scathing in her criticism of the conduct of the trial prosecutors in the Kott and Kohring cases.

This blogger maintains his view that the question of whether the Department of Justice has the legal power to retry Kott and Kohring is effectively moot, as the federal government would never exercise that power. Putting either of those two men back on trial would open doors the Justice Department is trying to leave closed.

Presentation on Alaska Public Finances Last Week

Anchorage--

I have received some interest in my presentation last week about Alaska's public finances from those who couldn't attend it. Accordingly, here are my notes, plus my bio for the introduction.

P.S. Watch this space for another announcement coming soon on my work on Alaska public corruption.



Cliff Groh
“The Prudhoe Bay Curve and the Squeal Point”
Bartlett Democratic Club May 12, 2011

The Pipeline Is Less than One-Third Full and Production Continues to Fall

High Oil Prices Can’t Bail Us Out Indefinitely

Gasline and ANWR Are More Political Footballs than Economic Saviors

Alaska Eventually Hits a Squeal Point

What Should Happen Then?

Actual Alternatives Include:

1. Budget Cuts Beyond the Bone
2. Personal Taxes
3. “Permanent Fund Solution”

Your Answers to “What Should Happen Then?” Turns on:

1. How Long You Intend to Live in Alaska
2. What You Fear the Most
3. What You Think the Permanent Fund Is For

Cliff Groh

Cliff Groh is a lifelong Alaskan who has been a lawyer for more than 20 years. He is now a writer and attorney in Anchorage.

Groh served as the Special Assistant to the Commissioner of Revenue in the administration of Gov. Steve Cowper 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 to revise the Economic Limit Factor (ELF) 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. He worked closely then with two former Speakers of the Alaska House of Representatives, State Representatives Terry Gardiner of Ketchikan and Hugh Malone of Kenai. That legislation adopted in 1982 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 has been a board member of Alaska Common Ground for more than 15 years. He has organized, presented at, and/or moderated at more than a dozen events regarding Alaska fiscal policy over the past two decades. He was a delegate to the Conference of Alaskans in 2004.

Groh is probably the only Alaska lawyer who has performed stand-up comedy in multiple states, and he is definitely the only Alaska lawyer who has been interviewed for an hour on national television about public corruption.

His speech today is entitled “The Prudhoe Bay Curve and the Squeal Point.” He would like each of you to think of vicious questions to ask him at the end of his presentation.


Bartlett Democratic Club May 12, 2011

Even More Updated Biography, with Still More Disclosures

Anchorage--

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

Biography of Cliff Groh

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Disclosures of Potentially Relevant Interests and Relationships

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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