More on Christie’s Below-Market Loan Gift to a Prosecutor in His Office

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Update: Here’s the document the IRS would use to weigh whether this would count as a below-market loan. I’m trying to figure out precisely where Brown’s loan will fall, but given the short term of the loan (10 years) it appears it would not count as a below-market loan. (h/t Duncan) 

NYT has a version of the Chris Christie loan story with some details that seem to confirm prostratedragon’s suggestion earlier: that the loan Christie gave to the Executive Assistant AUSA (and now First AUSA) in his office, Michele Brown, would probably count as a below-market loan (and therefore a gift) for someone in her financial position.

Mr. Christie said he received a second mortgage on Ms. Brown’s home, which was in her name only, and had been receiving regular payments ever since. County records show the loan was dated Oct. 22, 2007, and carried a 5.5 percent yearly interest rate, with monthly payments of $499.22 over 10 years. [my emphasis]

As prostratedragon pointed out, given the reported financial circumstances of Brown and her husband, there’s little possibility she could have gotten that rate from a bank.

I get a farthing under 5.5% p.a. using a standard 17B II. From the story, the loan sounds like a second mortgage which under the AUSA’s family circumstances especially, would be priced more like a subprime loan —higher.

By 2007 sometime, both seconds and subprimes dried up abruptly and haven’t really recovered since, making the effective interest rate on one a very large number.

Which would make this a gift. A gift that keeps on giving, you might say, particularly since both are now in a position where their potential mutual interest in influencing one another would make this a big ethics no-no. And keeps on giving because Christie hasn’t been declaring this source of income on his disclosure forms.

Mr. Christie did not list the loan on his June 21, 2008, personal financial disclosure form as a member of the federal executive branch, which requires the detailing of any assets (like loans or receivables) worth more than $1,000, and any sources of income of more than $100 a year. Ms. Comella confirmed that Mr. Christie’s final disclosure as a prosecutor also omitted the loan.

Nor did he include the loan on his candidate’s disclosure with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission in April 2009. One of its catchall categories of unearned income requires the detailing of “other income (including interest)” of more than $100 when the total in that category exceeds $1,000. Mr. Christie listed Pfizer and three government bonds as the sources of such income, but made no mention of the loan to Ms. Brown.

Golly. Read more →

The $46,000 Question: What Are the Terms of Chris Christie’s Loan to NJ’s First AUSA?

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New Jersey’s PBS station, NJN, has just reported that Chris Christie, the former US Attorney with ties to Karl Rove, gave a loan of $46,000 to the First AUSA in the NJ office, Michele Brown, for a mortgage. She will continue to pay him $499 a month until 2017. When asked by NJN, Christie just explained that they were close friends and he helped her out of a financial pinch.

That’s mighty interesting, for two reasons. First, there have been a slew of questions over the way a huge bust of 44 politicians–and some rabbis selling kidneys–last month shortly preceded a bunch of Christie campaign events touting his anti-corruption plan. That remarkable coincidence would be a whole lot easier to pull off if you had a very close relationship with the number two person in the US Attorney’s office. 

In addition, there have already been questions asked about her attendance at events that included a bunch of top NJ Republicans. (h/t brendan)

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown was among the guests at a small social gathering held last Sunday at the Mendham home of Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, but her attendance at the event – which was not political event though many of the attendees were Republican County Chairmen, legislators and campaign staffers – did not violate any federal law or regulation. 

Brown was the Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney and Christie’s counsel before Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra, Jr. elevated her to his old job as the number two in command of the federal prosecutor’s office.  A career prosecutor, she is a close personal friend of Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, and has been the U.S. Attorney’s office for seventeen years.

Amid all the questions of whether or not Christie violated the Hatch Act with his discussions with Karl Rove about his race, it seems rather, um, curious that the woman he has given a significant loan to also has had questions about Hatch Act violations raised.

Update: A link with some more hard data.

As U.S. Attorney, Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie gave high ranking staffer Michele Brown a $46,000 mortgage loan that she continues to pay off, NJN reported in its news cast tonight.

The report by correspondent Zachary Fink, which is not yet available online, said that Brown has been paying Christie and his wife, Mary Pat, back in monthly increments of $499.22 since taking the loan in Read more →

The Cost Of Obama’s Beer Fest Failure Is More Tasered Moms

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I wrote a series of posts about the incident surrounding Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. First, it was an illegal and unconstitutional arrest because of the abuse of police power and discretion. Second, irrespective of whether it was a racially motivated moment, it was one from which serious discussion could, and should, ensue. Third, that it was a teaching moment being given short shrift by the clumsy way Barack Obama inserted himself into it and then tried to extricate himself through the bogus "beer summit".

The thing that got me up in arms, from the start, is the undeniable fact that Gates’ arrest was illegal and an abuse of police power. As I described, take Gates’ conduct at its worst as described by the Cambridge police report, and the conduct simply does not meet the elements of disorderly conduct as arrested and charged on under the Massachusetts statute. There was no probable cause or legal basis for the arrest; it was simply a case of contempt of cop, and Sergeant Crowley decided to use the time honored police way of dealing with citizens in such situations, he abused his authority and badge by arresting the citizen.

The only thing unique about the Gates case is that it ended without serious harm to the citizen and it pierced the national conscience. The same base conduct plays out every minute of every day somewhere in the US. But the Gates/Crowley moment appears to have been lost without any intelligent discussion of the rampant abuse of police power and authority. Save for the opinions of Jonathan Turley and Jeff Toobin, which were minimized by MSNBC and CNN television coverage, there was precious little recognition by major media outlets of the root point of police power abuse.

Well, the scene in the video attached hereto is what happens in a society that refuses to address overreaching authoritarianism and unrestrained police projection. Moms with kids in minivans get Tasered and roughed up. In front of their children. Why? Because the cops can with relative impunity. The "Blue Line" circles the wagons around their fellow officers, prosecutors need their cooperation for prosecution and trials in actual major cases, and politicians are too cravenly worried about their next election to care. As Digby says:

If this is what they do when they have a video camera rolling Read more →

McCaskill: Crazier than Corker on Cash for Clunkers

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Let’s get one thing straight: Tennessee is a car state. And so is Missouri. In fact, unlike Missouri, Tennessee does not have a car on the top 10 new vehicle purchased under Cash for Clunkers. Nevertheless, Tennessee’s two Republican Senators voted for the program. But Claire McCaskill did not.

Here are the votes that deviated from party line (final vote was 60-37):

Republicans Voting Yes:

Brownback (KS)

Collins (ME)

Snowe (ME)

Bond (MO)

Voinovich (OH)

Alexander (TN)

Corker (TN)

Democrats Voting No:

McCaskill (MO)

Nelson (NE)

Leahy (VT)

Warner (VA)

Democrats Not Present:

Mikulski (MD)

Kennedy (MA)

Byrd (WV)

I look forward to McCaskill’s Tweeted explanation for why she was almost alone of car-state Senators voting against an effective stimulus program. Unfortunately for McCaskill, even the normally press-friendly but regressive Bob Corker won’t be able to give her reasons, since he voted in favor.

Is Robert “Gold Bars” Luskin Hoping for Real Estate in Antigua?

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So, Dick DeGuerin just ditched his former client, Allen Stanford because Stanford couldn’t guarantee DeGuerin would get paid.

 Allen Stanford has refused to authorize undersigned counsel to seek assurances of future legal fees and expenses. . . . Dick DeGuerin and his associated lawyers are unwilling to go forward without the assurance of being paid for work in the future.

Gosh, if you’re an accused white collar criminal with some goods stashed away but with the bulk of your known wealth frozen by regulators, who are you going to call?

Sure enough, Robert "Gold Bars" Luskin has come to Stanford’s rescue. WSJ’s Law Blog is wondering openly how Luskin imagines he’ll get paid.

In any event, we’re not sure how, or whether, this issue got resolved with Luskin and Patton Boggs well enough to allow him to take over.

Me, I’m just wondering if it’s going to be something more outrageous than the 45 gold bars Luskin accepted once from a money launderer. Maybe Stanford’s promised some real estate he managed to hold onto in Antigua or some other tax haven?

Lurita Doan: Still a Moron, Though Thankfully Not on Our Dime

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Curses on fatster, who induced me to look at this awful Lurita Doan op-ed. In it, she tells a very interesting story about her father, and then uses it to claim she’s got special insight on the Gates scandal. 

The story about her father (involving racism in intercollegiate sports) is actually pretty interesting. But here’s the sum total of her "lessons" for Gates.

His first reaction was to demand preferential treatment, see himself as a victim and see his arrest as "the way a black man is treated in America." The message he has sent is that what happened to him was purely about race, when we’re far beyond that.

If he looked around, he would discover that black men and women can and do compete equally at Harvard, and need no special protection, class or distinction.

Look, until I learned Crowley apparently incorrectly claimed on the arrest report that the neighbor who called in the report said two black men were breaking into Gates’ house (at least in her 911 call she described them simply as men), I wasn’t sure this was about race either. I thought it was about abuse of power. But, as it turns out, it’s about race and abuse of power.

But I really challenge anyone to explain WTF Doan means when she claims Gates’ "first reaction was to demand preferential treatment." What special treatment? The special treatment of the ability to enter his own home without getting arrested? The special treatment of being released when the Cambridge police realized it was an improper arrest? What special treatment, Lurita?

Moreover, where does Doan get off lecturing Gates–who came to Harvard in 1991 at a time when he was already a recognized leader in the field of English, to say nothing of African-American Studies–about whether or not black men can compete at Harvard? Gates is, in his field, a tremendously accomplished figure, white, black, red or purple. Yet Doan thinks she needs to lecture Gates about whether he can compete at Harvard?

The issue, which the idiotic Doan appears to miss, has nothing to do with what happens to Gates at Harvard (which makes her use of her father’s history moot). Rather, it’s what happens when he leaves the campus and tries to enter his own home.

Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s Pre-Emptive Disavowal of C Street

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Crazy Pete Hoekstra, who will use Dick DeVos’ almost unlimited funds to run for MI Governor next year, has pre-emptively admitted, but disavowed, C Street.

Hoekstra said he stopped attending meetings about two years ago, saying he’d gotten what he needed out of his visits. While never living at C Street, he was a regular for about seven years at a dinner-fellowship every Tuesday.

"We’d fellowship, we’d pray, we’d talk about Jesus, and we’d eat," Hoekstra said. "In the headiness of Washington, D.C., it’s trying to make sure you keep your head screwed on straight."

Now, frankly, I hadn’t even realized Crazy Pete was a member of this group, and I could swear I’ve checked once (he is definitely their "type"). So it surprises me a bit to see Crazy Pete offering up his ties to the group.

Obviously, his upcoming gubernatorial run may be part of that. MI has its share of conservatives who like to advocate authoritarianism in the name of Christ (and the U.P.’s Bart Stupak is one of the Democrats who lives at C Street).  But MI still has the remnants of a sane Republican party, it has open primaries, and it has a big number of independents and Dems who would detect the stench of the group.

In other words, it’s not necessarily a state where crazy religious ties helps in a state-wide election.

I’m wondering, too, whether Leisha Pickering’s suit against Chip Pickering’s new gal has anything to do with this. Leisha Pickering has submitted a secret diary in which Chip documented his affair, and named those members of the Family who facilitated his affair.

While former Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi allegedly carried on an extramarital affair with Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd, he recorded details of his exploits in a secret diary, including the dates and locations of his adulterous encounters.

Pickering, a Republican, described several assignations he had with Creekmore Byrd inside the C Street House, a Capitol Hill townhouse inhabited by an all-male group of right-wing Republican congressmen belonging to The Fellowship, an evangelical group, according to a person familiar with the diary’s contents.

And according to a divorce filing by Pickering’s estranged wife, Leisha, the former congressman’s diary reveals the identities of several men who enabled his adulterous trysts and helped him cover his tracks.

Pickering resigned in August 2007, just under two years ago. If the diary precipitated the divorce, then it may end about two Read more →

CIA Fraud In State Secrets Assertions

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There is a new case causing a stir on the state secrets front today. The case is Horn v. Huddle et. al, is filed in the DC District, and has been quietly going on behind the scenes since 1994. From Del Wilber at the Washington Post:

A federal judge has ruled that government officials committed fraud while defending a lawsuit brought by a former DEA agent who accused a CIA operative of illegally bugging his home.

In rulings unsealed Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote that he was also considering sanctions against five current and former agency lawyers and officials, including former director George Tenet, for withholding key information about the operative’s covert status.

The rulings, issued in recent months, highlighted what the judge called fraudulent work by CIA lawyers in defending a suit that Lamberth said had a lengthy and "twisted history."

Here is the ruling issued by Judge Royce Lamberth today that set off the firestorm.

There is a lot of great background on the case, and events behind it, in an old post from Bill Conroy at Narco News in 2004:

Former DEA agent Richard Horn has been fighting the U.S. government for the past 10 years trying to prove the CIA illegally spied on him as part of an effort to thwart his mission in the Southeast Asian country of Burma.

After being removed from his post in Burma, Horn filed litigation in federal court in Washington, D.C., in 1994 accusing top officials for the CIA and State Department in Burma of violating his Fourth Amendment rights.

After languishing in the federal court system for some 10 years, Horn’s case was dismissed in late July of this year [2004] after crucial evidence in the case was suppressed on national security grounds.

…

What really happened in the Horn case, though, is not supposed to come out, if the government has its way. From the start, Horn’s litigation was sealed and critical evidence that could have supported his claims censored by the court.

Specifically, the evidence – two federal Inspector General (IG) reports that centered on Horn’s accusations – was determined by the court to be protected from disclosure based on something called state secrets privilege. The privilege, which was established as part of a 1953 Supreme Court ruling known as the Reynolds case, allows the government to deep-six information if it is deemed a threat to national security.

“Having determined that state secrets privilege bars disclosure of the IG Reports and certain attachments … the case cannot continue and Read more →

California’s Detroit

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Like Atrios, I view this partly with the awe of watching a massive slow-moving trainwreck.

About a year and a half ago, well before Mendota started making headlines, things had gotten bad enough that Riofrio stopped selling fresh milk at his store. Too few could afford it anymore. In the last few months, the downward spiral has greatly accelerated. Farmers in Westlands, who’ve yanked about 100,000 acres out of production since 2000, say they may now be forced to idle as many as 150,000 more for lack of water.

The issues at play are complicated. They’re also fraught with bad blood. Farmers are set to receive only 3.7 million acre-feet of water this year from federal and state plumbing systems–about 2 million acre-feet less than in a normal year. Some environmentalists, however, have been quick to accuse the growers of overstating the problem. They say farmers have extra water stored both above and below ground and have gotten supplies transferred from other locations.

[snip]

What’s critical for policymakers to keep in mind is that, in the end, none of this squabbling matters. It’s simply a distraction from the one thing they should be focused on: The people of Mendota are suffering terribly — and steps need to be taken right away to bring them relief.

First, U.S. officials have to resist pressure from environmental groups and others and allow, at least temporarily, for the partial lifting of the fish protections. It won’t completely solve things, but it will help. It will also send a crucial signal of support to Riofrio and his customers, who are fast becoming a more endangered species than Chinook salmon or delta smelt.

Second, and most important, federal, state and local officials need to coordinate on a long-term economic development strategy — and put some serious dollars behind it. This must go way beyond the $260 million in federal stimulus money that’s been promised by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to patch up ailing irrigation infrastructure across the state.

The real question is what emerges after the almonds, tomatoes and cantaloupes disappear. What happens as ever more Central Valley farmland is retired, as is inevitable? What does the future look like for the northwest corner of Fresno County? Will the usual solution — building a new prison — be all that’s conceived? Read more →

The Real Reason They’re Hiding Cheney’s Interview?

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Ostensibly, DOJ is trying to withhold Dick Cheney’s interview materials for the following three reasons (in order of their centrality to the argument):

  1. Law enforcement privilege: If DOJ turns over Cheney’s interview, it will make future Vice Presidents unwilling to cooperate in investigations. This argument fails given the evidence that it has long been routine to release interview materials from high ranking White House figures, going back to the era of Cheney’s first White House job under Nixon, continuing through the investigation conducted parallel to the one Cheney participated in on Iran-Contra, and up through Bush’s predecessor, Clinton. Thus, Cheney’s cooperation itself proves the lie of DOJ’s argument.
  2. Deliberative and presidential privilege: Much of the contents of Cheney’s interview comprise his description of deliberations within the White House regarding how to respond to Joe Wilson. This argument fails, in significant part, because much of this was already released during the trial. Furthermore, with the knowledge of at least two other White House officials, Dick Cheney’s lawyer leaked key portions of this to Michael Isikoff in April 2006.
  3. National security classification: Finally, DOJ argues that it can’t turn over material already made public, such as the names of Cheney’s and Libby’s briefers, David Terry and Craig Schmall. DOJ and CIA may actually even be protecting the name of that secret CIA officer, Valerie Plame Wilson!

For the most part, this argument doesn’t make sense at all. Most importantly, the core argument–that releasing this interview will inhibit future cooperation–is belied by the last half century of history. Nevertheless, for some reason DOJ has decided to fight release of this document. That’s partly because, I think, this fight started last year, while Cheney still had sway to make it happen. It’s partly because of Obama’s fear of doing anything that would look political. Still, something must explain why Obama’s DOJ is making this crappy argument with such intensity. Something–aside from the defense of secrecy in general–must explain DOJ’s almost comical efforts to keep this interview hidden in spite of the long history of releasing similar interviews.

As I suggested in this post, their concern appears to be much more narrow. I suspect they’re not trying to protect the content of Cheney’s interview, in the abstract. Rather, they’re trying to protect the content because of what Cheney said.

Read more →