Attorneys interviewed for this series of articles have depicted the “gloves off” stance taken by the Republicans against the Democrats in the South as a domestic war between corporations on one side and lawyers representing plaintiffs on the other. During the early years of the Bush administration, some inside the Republican National Committee allegedly saw Minor as an obstacle to the Southern strategy that was then being planned.
Have you been waiting patiently for the Karl Rove connection? As early as 1988, Rove was demonizing lawyers who represent injury victims in claims against corporations and their insurers, portraying them as "greedy corruptors of the judicial process."
Rove also served a consultant for tobacco giant Philip Morris, which invested heavily in Texas judicial races, helping to secure Republican dominance in that state’s courts by the end of the decade. An internal Philip Morris document from 1995 indicates just how involved big tobacco was in creating the “Tort Reform Project” — although there is no evidence tying Rove directly to that strategy.
Rove even did his best to head off Texas’s participation in the state lawsuits against the tobacco industry. “From 1991 through 1996, while guiding the ascent of Bush to the Texas governorship and during his early years in that office, Rove worked as a $3,000-a-month consultant to Philip Morris,” Salon’s Sidney Blumenthal wrote last year. “In 1996, when Texas Attorney General Dan Morales filed a suit against tobacco companies seeking compensation for state Medicaid funds spent on workers who fell ill because of smoking, Rove conducted a dirty trick against him — a push poll spreading smears about him.”
Rove wasn't the only Republican to resent the lawyers who went after Big Tobacco.
As a result of the tobacco lawsuits, some Republican politicians and tobacco industry lobbyists — such as now-Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour — appear to have become implacable foes of the trial lawyers who had frustrated them and their clients. Barbour returned to lobbying in 1997, after a four-year stint heading the Republican National Committee, and became one of the main lobbyists for Phillip Morris, which spent nearly $16 million that year in lobbying fees.
In the summer of 2002, as Barbour was gearing up to announce his candidacy in the governor's race, the Mississippi legislature held hearings on tort reform.
A few months later, Mississippi newspapers began to print leaked allegations that the FBI had launched an investigation of Paul Minor — a leading opponent of tort reform — on suspicion of having bribed several judges. David Baria, president of the Mississippi Trial Lawyers Association, described the timing as “very interesting,” according to an article by the Associated Press in October 2002.
According to the same article, Bush-appointed Mississippi US Attorney Dunnica Lampton, who was leading the investigation, himself had deep ties to Republican politicians who were in favor of the tort reform plan supported by the tobacco industry.
Here's the bottom line:
The US Attorney scandal as it unfolded in the South might best be understood as a two-part strategy that simultaneously served both the corporate sponsors of Southern Republicans and the politicians to whom they contributed. One aspect of this two-pronged strategy can be seen as a bribery scandal, in which corporate interests received government favors as a corollary to campaign donations. ... In Mississippi, the corporate client was big tobacco — and their chief lobbyist now sits in the Mississippi governor’s chair.
The second aspect of the strategy is the politicization of US law enforcement by the Bush administration, specifically the Department of Justice. The US Attorney scandal is less about the US Attorneys who were fired than about those who remained and are alleged to have used federal law enforcement resources to intimidate Democratic campaign donors.
The demonizing of Democratic candidates instigated by the federal government helped both the Riley campaign in Alabama and the Barbour campaign in Mississippi. Until these prosecutions, both states were led by Democratic governors.
In addition, by targeting Paul Minor, Barbour and his backers ensured a glacial freeze in contributions to Democratic candidates, since other Democratic trial lawyers were afraid of being targeted by the US Attorney’s office as well.
No matter how long Karl Rove continues to duck his subpoena (he too would be a good candidate for arrest), this scandal is too important to be forgotten or ignored after the November election. Raw Story is doing great reporting on this story.
