A mystery man receiving $50 million from prominent Mississippi attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs earned the money by paying off allies during Scruggs' epic battle with the tobacco industry in the late 1990s, said a former colleague turned government witness.I used to think that this was all a Repub DOJ witchhunt and Scruggs was getting railroaded, a la Don Siegelman next door in Bamalammy. I still think it's basically a Repub DOJ witchhunt, but I'm slowly beginning to realize that Dickie is potentially a lot dirtier than I ever would have imagined. After all, how many legitimate enterprises have a bagman?
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Scruggs has said a $50 million cut from his fees will go over 20 years to P.L. Blake, a politically connected son of the Mississippi Delta who now lives in Birmingham. Scruggs and Moore have said Blake worked political cloakrooms, bringing his keen political knowledge and connections to their settlement efforts.
What does Mr. Blake say he did to earn the money? Glad you asked.
Blake has said he simply clipped newspaper articles, watched C-SPAN and kept Scruggs updated on political maneuverings.
Fifty million bucks to clip newspaper articles and watch C-SPAN?! Nice work if you can get it.
Note to Dickie: Not to critique your business acumen, but if newspaper clippings and C-SPAN monitoring was all you needed, I know a couple of burnouts in Oxford who would do it for Funyuns and beer.
Cheap beer at that.
I would clip stuff out of newspapers and mount it neatly in scrapbooks for a tenth part of $50 million. Or tear them more or less neatly for cheap red wine.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mooncat. ;)
ReplyDeleteLet's not forget that Dickie is an equal opportunist and held a fundraiser for McCain last year. He's given the Republicans a lot of money over the years.
ReplyDeleteNot that this indicates any guilt or innocence. That's not my decision to make.