Day 4: Alabama Power Exposed; Balch Clients Grilled
Alabama Power has the right to tackle government overreach, environmental extremism, and even cleanup efforts.
In September, we broke news that Mike Thompson, the fundraising chairman of Luther Strange’s U.S. Senate campaign was listed as a director of the Alliance for Jobs and the Economy (AJE), a tax-exempt entity created in 2015 whose purpose was to funnel $360,000 in bribes to a corrupt politician, former Alabama State Representative Oliver Robinson, according to court filings of the U.S. Department of Justice.
On Friday, Thompson, CEO of Thompson Tractor, was grilled on the stand along with other members involved with the AJE.
Kyle Whitmire of AL.com tweets:
Thompson says he never asked to see the books or bank records of AJE. Alabama Power was among founding members, along with Thompson Tractor and Drummond. ACIPCo came later, Thompson says.
Alabama Power? We knew they were involved when their lobbyist Jeffrey H. Wood, a then-Balch partner, was on Capitol Hill in 2016 inquiring about the North Birmingham EPA matter.
Nucor Steel was also involved in AJE and a corporate executive declared under oath, according to a Whitmire tweet, that he “didn’t know AJE money was going to pay the Oliver Robinson Foundation. He found out about that in May 2017” after reading the bombshell story on AL.com.
Even if Alabama Power was duped like Nucor (or more actively involved like Drummond), the intricate details being exposed demonstrate unequivocally that inherent goodness was not behind the “brilliant scheme” Gilbert and others at Balch had in mind.
Alabama Power has the right to tackle government overreach, environmental extremism, and even cleanup efforts.
But being advised to set up a bogus, AstroTurf entity that eventually and secretly bought a politician and suppressed poor African-Americans in North Birmingham goes way too far; it’s criminal.
Like the abandonment of Bill Canary at BCA, now more than ever, Tom Fanning, CEO of Alabama Power’s parent company Southern Company, should immediately and swiftly abandon the sister-wife relationship between Southern Company and Balch & Bingham.
And so should others like Nucor and Thompson Tractor.
Balch appears to have failed their clients miserably and dragged them into this mess and up to the witness stand because of Balch’s alleged unscrupulous and criminal behavior.
