Excessive Payments to Miers Law Firm

This following should prove to be interesting. Perhaps it is time for the government to hire a special prosecutor to look into Bush's activities similar to the ‘Whitewater Investigation' thrust upon the Clinton administration. Of course, there is little chance of that with the Republicans controlling the entire government. ...AG

Miers Firm Received Bush Campaign Payments
By FRANK BASS, Associated Press Writer Oct 21
Excerpts with my comments from the this AP post:

George W. Bush's rising political fortunes provided a windfall for Harriet Miers' law firm.

Campaign records show Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president's 1998 re-election bid.

Senators are planning to explore Miers' legal work for Bush during her confirmation process to be the newest Supreme Court justice, but the White House says it won't release any memos.

Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that two payments of $70,000 were made to Miers' Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell firm in Dallas within a month of each other during the 1998 campaign. Another $16,000 in payments were made between March and December 1999.

The 1998 totals dwarfed the $7,000 Bush paid Miers' firm during his first run for governor in 1994, and are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.

"I'm baffled," said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. "I've never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It's unprecedented."

The amount received by Locke, Purnell for the 1998 Texas race approaches the national tab for the 2004 Bush presidential re-election campaign, when at least $191,000 was spent on lawyers, Federal Election Commission records show.

In 2000, the Bush presidential campaign spent about $365,000 on legal services, the records show.

The Associated Press reviewed Texas records between 1993 and 2000, although detailed reports weren't available for the last half of 1995. A state commission spokeswoman said the panel had planned to retain all of the records because of their historic significance when Bush became president, but some were misplaced. –

[Yeah, just like many of Bush's National Guard records... and perhaps his DUI arrest records - or perhaps worse?!]

Former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, a Democrat who was defeated handily by Bush in the 1998 campaign, said both the amount and the timing of the payments are curious. In late September, when Miers' firm received the first of two $70,000 payments, Mauro said he trailed Bush in the polls by 35 points

[- that's 35 percent! Mauro didn't have a chance of winning unless there would be some possible scandal which the lawyers could suppress by buying silence. ...AG]

"If they're spending that kind of money," said Mauro, now an Austin attorney who estimates he spent less than $20,000 on legal fees during the campaign, "they're spending it to protect themselves from something."

A spokeswoman for Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the panel plans to explore the legal work done by Miers' firm for Bush.

[I'm willing to bet they won't find anything. And they used to call Clinton, "slick Willie"!]

A questionnaire sent out last week by Leahy and Sen. Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the committee, has asked Miers to "explain how you will resolve any conflicts that may arise by virtue of your service in the Bush Administration, as George W. Bush's personal lawyer, or as the lawyer for George W. Bush's gubernatorial and presidential campaigns."

Miers provided answers to the questionnaire earlier this week, but lawmakers [from both parties] rejected her answers as too vague.

[‘Vague' is in vogue right now. She's not going to say anything.

One could wonder considering this latest revelation, whether her surprising (even to Republicans) appointment to the bench is the result of blackmail?

What a blast that would be with a blackmailer on the Supreme Court for life! This is pure speculation, of course. But it does make you wonder - especially if you read Kitty Kelley's book, "The Family," about the Bushes... and wonder why Kitty isn't being sued! ...AG]