Weyhrauch Case Goes to U.S. Supreme Court
7 12 2009
>Meep! Meep! Meep!< Corrupt Bastards Alert!
Once again the Corrupt Bastards Club is in the news, and I’d like to say, “Thank you.” Thank you corrupt bastards for reminding us that there is Alaska news and scandal that has nothing to do with Sarah Palin.
OK, well… she did take credit for taking down the Corrupt Bastards Club in her book. She added that little “viral email” to the back of the book where Dewey Whetsell from Eagle River touts her accomplishments, including apparently kicking the door in and busting the ring of political corruption that included sitting and former legislators, and the oil industry.
…she tore into the Republicans Corrupt Bastards Club (CBC) and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits.
Tore into them and sent them packing? Guess the FBI were just playin’ tiddly-winks in the back of that black van. Court System? Chinese Checkers. Who knew all a governor had to do was point and say, “Go to your room!” to sweep the house clean.
But I digress.
Former Representative Bruce Weyhrauch (R) did not go gently into that good night and admit guilt. He has been kicking and scratching all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Weyhrauch, a Juneau Republican, solicited legal work from the oil-field service company Veco Corp. at a time when Veco was pushing hard to win support for lower oil taxes in the state Legislature. Federal prosecutors said Weyhrauch should have disclosed his job search as a conflict of interest.
But Weyhrauch’s attorneys argued that state law didn’t specifically require such disclosure and as a result, the federal fraud statute couldn’t be used to charge him with defrauding Alaskans of his “honest services.”
An Alaska District Court judge agreed –> Government appealed –> 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with government –> Appealed to the Supreme Court. And that’s where we stand today.
The appeals court sided with prosecutors, saying legislators had a duty to disclose such conflicts. The court reasoned that even if a state has weak ethics laws, it was no reason for its citizens to be deprived of the honest services of their public officials.
It will be interesting to see which way the court rules on this little piece of Weyhrauch’s pending criminal case.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:36 PM
Even the eyes of an appellate lawyer glaze over at the government’s argument about the legislative history of the relevant U.S. Code provision, and its intersection with state law. That said, seems like a darn persuasive brief filed on behalf of the Solicitor General……with whom a certain Mudflatter shared some memorable poker games back in our undergrad years. I’ll say no more, unless someone wants the full story of our competing full houses (I had aces over; she had kings).
December 7th, 2009 at 1:37 PM
Just as a little counting exercise, how many of the former CBCers are actually “wearing orange jumpsuits”? Or have worn?
December 7th, 2009 at 1:38 PM
AKM, this is even more “interesting” than you may realize. And once again Alaska politics is spilling out across the nation. We in IL, and the Feds everywhere, are watching this case closely as one of the charges against Big Hair Blago is “defrauding Illinois citizens of his Honest Services”.
December 7th, 2009 at 1:54 PM
Would the defrauding of honest services apply to Mark Sanford also? Too there.
December 7th, 2009 at 4:24 PM
Sarah would look good in orange from head to toe.
I though Veco was her big contributor when she ran for Gov?
December 7th, 2009 at 4:35 PM
I wonder if Sarah can make a good tomato sauce?
December 7th, 2009 at 5:27 PM
BigSlick: Are you refering to the tomato throwing incident at the mall today.
Huff has some great comments on it .
Pity he missed and hit a policeman instead.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:13 PM
Sorry to be off topic but Andrew Sullivan on Joy Behar talks about the “wild ride”. The show repeats in an hour on headline news. Sure hope this gets picked up. s’error has some splanin’ to do.
December 7th, 2009 at 6:25 PM
LiLadyNY has a great idea about Sanford… but why wouldn’t the same apply to S’error Palin? Never mind the campaign trail, but didn’t she just kinda diddle around as governor prior to and subsequent to flirting with McCain, and prior to becoming queen bittertwitterquitterpants?
Why isn’t the same federal fraud statute used to go after her for defrauding Alaskans of “honest services?” What the he!l makes her so special??
December 7th, 2009 at 7:31 PM
If she was the one who blew the whistle on the CBC, why didn’t she overturn all of the bad anti-consumer and anti-labor legislation those clowns passed.
December 8th, 2009 at 5:36 AM
Good question, Ken. But you have to remember a key point: she’s a full-fledged member of the CBC. It would be like sitting on a sharp stick, and although I do not believe S’error is terribly smart, she’s not so stupid as to do that.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:24 AM
Just wondering if this could be used to finally get $arah into her form-fitted orange jumpsuit… After all, she did not give the State of Alaska her full attention from at the least the time before she ran for VP until the time she ran for Quitter-par-excellence! According to her own admissions, she basically wrote her Book of Lies during her time of Grifter-in-chief, and she devoted so much time to defeating the ethics laws she put into place…
December 8th, 2009 at 7:28 AM
Considering the track record of the Supremes, I’m not real confident they well choose protections for the little guy.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:04 AM
Tis the season…
anybody here know the German ‘Weihrauch’ meaning?
‘Holy Smoke’ [as used in the mass processional censer etc.]
December 9th, 2009 at 12:17 AM
ken Says:
December 7th, 2009 at 7:31 PM
If she was the one who blew the whistle on the CBC, why didn’t she overturn all of the bad anti-consumer and anti-labor legislation those clowns passed.
Actually the worst of the anti-labor events was when Union Business manager Jim Ducan took his position as BM straight out of Commissioner of Administration. That was a violation of state law.
The remedy was that Jim agreed with the Murkowski Administration that he would not represent any grievances arising during his tenure as COA orfor two yeas after his leaving the state. Basicly Jim sold out the representation of 8,000 state employees for his own personal gain in AAG file 223-03-0342. Talk about honest services fraud.
Hopefully the law is not struck down as vague so they can get some more Alaska CBC indictments served in a timely manner.