Looks like Dopey
Lawyer: D.C. Climate Suit Could Accept Investment From Hedge Funds, Per Contract
Attorney argues clause allows 'buying a piece of the state's law enforcement authority'
A D.C.-based attorney and associate with the Cato Institute says the contract being offered by the district asking for a legal team to take up a contingency-fee based suit against energy producers like Exxon has a clause allowing the law firm or team to sell their proceeds of a judgment in advance to investors or a hedge fund. The upshot, according to lawyer Andrew Grossman, is the prospect of third-party financiers essentially making bets on whether a government can successfully sue deep-pocketed energy companies. This adds another ethical complication to a scheme some high-profile attorneys have already complained is dubious to begin with.
Since 2017, numerous governments—including the cities of Oakland and San Francisco, and the state of Rhode Island—have launched lawsuits against energy producers such as Exxon Mobil and BP seeking millions in damages due to climate change. The D.C. attorney general's office currently is seeking bids from outside law firms or legal teams to do the same on a contingency-fee basis, meaning the firm would only be paid if the suit is successful in recovering damages. A clause in the contract allows that the contractor "may assign to a bank, trust company, or other financing institution funds due or to become due as a result of the performance of this contract.
"The D.C. office of attorney general's proposed contract permits the private attorneys to sell off a portion of their contingency fee, and they could sell it to litigation investors, they can sell it to a hedge fund," Grossman said. "They could sell it to anyone who might put up money. "The result would be that that third-party investor would effectively be buying a piece of the state's law enforcement authority.""
The AG's office disagrees, saying the specifics for the legal arrangement were laid into a contract that is mainly boilerplate, and therefore contains clauses geared toward vendors of more standard services. "State attorneys general routinely use outside counsel to provide the technical and legal resources needed for labor- and expertise-intensive investigations," a spokesman with the AG's office said in an email.
"The contract language you point to is a standard provision contained in contracts between the District government and outside vendors for all kinds of services. Its purpose is to allow vendors to obtain the necessary resources to perform the contract while awaiting payment from the District government. Importantly, the contract also ensures that all litigation decisions, including the terms of settlement, are made solely by the Attorney General and in the interest of District residents."
Grossman says he's not convinced that the clause ended up in the contract accidentally. "We do know that that draft contract has a variety of other terms all throughout that are incredibly specific to this particular legal engagement and are not any type of boilerplate whatsoever," Grossman said in response to the AG's claims. "So clearly the district did give some thought into how exactly to structure this agreement and wasn't just pulling boilerplate off the shelf." "If that wasn't the intention of the attorney general's office, it would be very easy for them to simply remove that provision."
Nearly all of the climate suits currently underway across the country are contingency-fee based, something many high-profile Republican attorneys have criticized as unethical. Gale Norton, former secretary of the interior under President George W. Bush and also a former attorney general of Colorado, is one such critic. "I saw firsthand as an Attorney General involved in the national tobacco litigation and settlement in the 1990's that contingent fee arrangements can get out of hand," Norton told the Free Beacon in October. "Public-agency litigation should be about seeking justice and representing the public interest. When contingent fee attorneys are controlling the litigation, they often put their individual interests ahead of the public interest. They seek large damages, so they can collect a large percentage for themselves." The AG offices that have entered into the suits have consistently argued they retain full control over the litigation, mitigating any ethical concerns.
https://freebeacon.com/issues/lawyer-d-c-climate-suit-could-accept-investment-from-hedge-funds-per-contract/
Democrats Fundraising Off Mueller
Democrats are reaping the benefits of special counsel Robert Mueller's findings, just not in the way expected. Prominent Democrats are using the idea that Mueller's full findings will never be released to the public in order to grow their fundraising and engagement lists, as the Daily Beast first noted.
"If you agree that the Mueller report should be released in full to Congress and the public, add your name," states an ad on Sen. Cory Booker's (N.J.) Facebook page. The ad links to Booker's presidential campaign website where individuals can input their contact information.
Booker isn't the only White House aspirant to rely on such tactics. Similar ads have been launched by other 2020 Democrats—including Sens. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), among others—since Sunday, when Attorney General William Barr informed Congress there was no collusion.
"While Attorney General William Barr contemplates whether or not to release the full findings of the Mueller report, we have one job—and that is to make it clear that is exactly what we seek: the full report," a Sanders ad reads. "Sign our petition, call on Attorney General William Barr to release the full findings of the Mueller investigation to the American people as soon as possible."
Such ads are also being utilized by the Democratic National Committee and high profile members of the party's Congressional leadership. "Robert Mueller's evidence and full report—not just a summary—MUST be released to Congress. The integrity of our constitutional system and the rule of law depend on it. Add your name to oppose White House interference and demand transparency," reads an ad from Sen. Mark Warner, the ranking member of the Senate intelligence committee.
This isn't the first time that Democrats have raised the specter of Russian meddling to line campaign coffers. In August, the Washington Free Beacon reported Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) sent a fundraising email on behalf of former senator Claire McCaskill (Mo.) citing prior attempts to by Russia to hack her Washington, D.C., office.
https://freebeacon.com/politics/democrats-reap-benefits-of-mueller-investigation/
Not sure if we have looked into Harry Reid's part in the Russia/Spygate investigation but here are a couple of letters he drafted and sent to Comey during his tenure.
http://static.politico.com/2e/1a/5bb86d684289bd506452c43b1065/reid-letter-to-comey.pdf
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3035844/Reid-Letter-to-Comey.pdf
Agreed, threatening tone was interesting as well
"I have always been a supporter of yours"
That is what I am trying to research at the moment, one of the articles I read stated that just before he received the letters from Reid, he had planned to close the investigation on the candidate Trump. So what I was looking for were responsive letters from Comey back to Reid.