Day 7: Balch Allies Corrupted AEMC; Gilbert Left to Hang
With this afternoon headlines about the resignation of embattled EPA Director Scott Pruitt, the focus in the federal courtroom in Birmingham at about the same time was on the Regional EPA Administrator Trey Glenn (pictured) who used to be head of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission (AEMC) between 2005-2009.
Glenn admitted under oath that he (as a third-party consultant to Balch & Bingham) took a confidential presentation submitted to the AEMC by GASP, the health and environmental public charity, and handed it over to indicted Balch partner Joel Gilbert.
Gilbert, knowing in advance what GASP was going to present, allegedly drafted up questions for commissioners to ambush and grill the public charity about.
But even if that was bad enough, John Archibald of AL.com tweets:
Trey Glenn, while being paid by Balch, offered suggested edits for letter Balch’s Joel Gilbert wrote for Rep. Oliver Robinson to send to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. This is ugly.
Not only that, but AEMC member Scott Phillips met with Glenn, Defendants Roberson and Gilbert and Oliver Robinson to prepare Robinson for his presentation before the AEMC — of which Phillips was a member and Robinson was paid to attend by polluters.
Appears to be a complete corruption of the system by Balch allies, consultants, and clients. As Archibald put it, “This is not how it’s supposed to work.”
Another bad day for Gilbert, attorneys for his former colleague and fellow defendant Steven McKinney began aggressively separating McKinney from Gilbert’s actions with corrupt and bought-and-paid-for politician Oliver Robinson.
McKinney’s attorney grilled Oliver Robinson.
Lauren Walsh of ABC 33/40 tweets:
Now Steve McKinney’s attorney is up. He’s stressing that Robinson and McKinney (a Balch attorney) never communicated.
Q: No communications, no documents, no meetings, no conference calls, nothing between you and McKinney.
A: Correct.
Gilbert now appears to be the fall guy or the fool left to be hanged.
Poor fellow should have probably pled out.
