I have it on the best authority that business will be picking up rather dramatically and I plan on being at ground zero when the muck begins to fly later today. Meantime we have Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood joining State Auditor Stacey Pickering in an incredible display of asshatitude per Paul Hampton’s recap of Judge Schloegel’s contempt order against Pickering, Hood and company.
“General Hood curiously stated it might be very embarrassing for a chancery judge to be admonished by a federal judge should the assistant U.S. attorney charge the chancellor with obstruction of justice and contempt of a grand jury subpoena,” Schloegel wrote about the phone call. “General Hood’s hypothetical regarding criminal charges against the undersigned chancellor and other remarks reinforced General Hood’s clear intent not to seek to mitigate the contempt of his client, the auditor, and furthermore, raised questions of his own role, the role of the Attorney General’s Office and the role of the defendants and their employees in the issuance of the federal grand jury subpoena and the wrongful removal of the records from state court jurisdiction.”
It gets better because Pickering, while denying public records to the Sun Herald and coming across like a fool last December at the court hearings on the related litigation stopped woefully short in his investigation into DMR wrongdoing in favor of crushing a few lower level employees that now stand accused of padding their travel by a few hundred dollars a piece. Biloxi Blues summed it up nicely in comments:
I read again what they are charged with and it seems with so many obvious potential violations of the law these charges are so small, even if they did occur. I ask why ignore the boat(s) scam, the Harbor Landing scam, the Reynolds Front Beach property purchase and all of the other inflated real estate deals that are so obvious? I did not even mention all that went on during the oil spill cleanup. Who is being protected? Be assured certain people are. Pursuing Perkins and Larsen is nothing more than a distraction.
And that is where we stand today because I am hearing there will be a court hearing today that may determine the fate of the state defendants except Kerwin Cuevas and I absolutely plan on being there. Stay tuned.
I really like the caption to this story on Slabbed:
http://slabbed.org/2013/08/18/the-heat-is-on-auditor-pickering-investigation-or-coverup/
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/8c336681fea34f0fa769ca64407eeea6/MS–Fisher-Resigning
Trudy Fisher told Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality employees Wednesday in an email that she intends to resign later this summer.
Do I smell lawnmower fumes or something else?
This does not surprise me. There is an older topic that needs a second look.
Probably actually has nothing at all to so with what you are there for today, unless the feds are way busier than I think they are.
She probably knows she has been given up
Good Tweets up on the board. I also heard that Larsen stated that he tried to make payments when he returned from the trip but were refused by Tina Shumate. It almost sounds like Larsen was set up or she planted dirt on him. Only Tina would really know the answer to that.
My bold prediction: Tina Shumate is going to be a crispy critter when all is said and done.
Tina Shumate’s trial will take months to hear just based on the number of people that will be testifying against her. I think she will plead soon due to knowing she maybe the last person standing by the time she gets to court. Sad because I think this is all Bill Walker’s doings and he will not get anywhere near the credit he deserves for running a criminal organization out of the Bolton Building. Just think of the lives lost or disrupted. Millions have been stolen, misused, wasted or lost because of him. He should get the maximum amount of time in prison and then some. I wish Chet Nicholson, God bless his soul, would have had time on this earth to write a book about the Walkers and the DMR like the “Dream Room,Tales of the Dixie Mafia” he authored. Maybe a good title would be from “From Habitat for Humanity to Million Dollar Mansion” or “Dept.of Marine Mafia”. The story must be told.
It appears former Governor Barbour, Governor Bryant and Senator Wiggins’ ‘golden girl’ Trudy Fisher has bit the dust. Like so many others, it seems she is involved in the DMR Walkergate scandal by the writings of the Clarion Ledger if one reads between the lines. Now, all the players are praising her work with the BP Oil and Katrina restoration. I’m wondering if she dipped in the till like it seems so many others who helped theirselves. Claiming client privileges don’t ring true when one redates so much information via Sun Herald confiscated records.
Today’s Sun Herald states that DMR has hired an additional attorney to fight paying for legal fees and expenses incurred by the Sun Herald. It appears Judge Schloegel found DMR, Pickering and the state auditor’s office in contempt for hiding records of DMR from the public. DMR attorneys Runnels and Chesnut need to find another line of work.
Is there anyone at DMR in authority honest? I would hope so but have my doubts.