Balch’s alleged womb to tomb misconduct appears to have devastated the once prestigious, silk-stocking law firm.
None of the hottest stars of the legal profession appear to want to be associated with the embattled law firm Balch & Bingham.
Two former Balch attorneys are sitting in federal prison.
One is serving 5 years for money laundering and bribery and the other is serving more than 8 years for possession of kiddie porn.
Balch was forced to pull former partner Clark Watson out of retirement after Balch’s banking and financial services practice suffered several crippling blows, culminating with the recent exit of 17-year Balch legacy partner W. Brad Neighbors.
Watson back in his earlier Balch days
Watson was a Balch partner until 2015, when he went to work for Samford University, eventually serving as General Counsel. He retired at the end of February.
Coming out of retirement, Watson was hired as “counsel” and takes a leadership role in Balch’s crumbling banking and financial services practice.
Hiring an old, retired white guy also doesn’t help Balch’s “diversity and inclusion” fluff.
Maybe Balch’s Managing Partner Stan Blanton will pay an advertising publication ? to create and help him collect a make-believe award for assisting senior citizens.
From kiddie porn to elderly exploitation, Balch’s alleged womb to tomb misconduct appears to have devastated the once prestigious, silk-stocking law firm.
In Washington, D.C.. seasoned Balch lobbyist Margaret Caravelli, who worked for the firm for eight years, has left.
Balch continues to struggle compared to their competitors.
According to Open Secrets, Balch made a tad over $700,000 in 2022 in federal lobbying fees while competitors like Bradley pulled in over $2 million and Maynard Nexsen collected almost $1.7 million in D.C. lobbying fees.
The numbers speak for themselves.
Balch has lost numerous federal lobbying clients including Southern Company.
McWane is Balch’s biggest federal lobbying client and is paying Balch $30,000 a month or $360,000 a year. McWane spends about $800,000 a year on lobbyists. They should shift the $360,000 to one of their other firms or find another well-qualified firm without the womb to tomb baggage.
After nearly two decades as a top partner at Balch’s Atlanta office, Christopher S. Anulewicz has dumped the embattled law firm. He has joined the law firm Bradley.
We applaud Chris and Teri for making the intelligent decision.
In November of 2017, we wrote about two honorable and respected Balch & Bingham partners who were fighting corruption in Georgia, Anulewicz and Mike Bowers, both based in Atlanta.
Mike Bowers
We asked at the time, “Will the Good Guys Bail on Balch?”
A West Point graduate, Mike Bowers, a former Attorney General for Georgia, as we predicted, dumped Balch in 2020 and left the embattled firm. Bowers moved over toJohnson Marlowe, a respected boutique law firm.
Anulewicz took three years longer but was finally lured away and picked off by Bradley, one of the fastest growing law firms in the Southeast. Bradley has attracted and hired many top-notch Balch partners, including some of their money-making attorneys from the banking and financial services practice.
Rumors are that Bradley wants to buyout Balch, and is in the midst of trying to bring over top partners in Balch’s energy and environmental law practices.
With the rebirth of the North Birmingham Bribery Trial, a highly-anticipated civil RICO action, and the fallout over the Matrix Meltdown and Southern Company’s million-dollar fear and intimidation campaigns, what sound seasoned lawyer would want to be associated with the embattled law firm?
As we prophetically wrote in January of 2020:
Like vultures, the competitors of Balch & Bingham are eyeing specific practice groups and talent at the embattled firm, ready to scoop up veteran partners and money-makers.
Hiring the best and brightest, competitors may begin to target Balch’s satellite offices in other states and pick up some terrific talent….
Embattled law firm Balch & Bingham finally made one of their most infamous African American attorneys partner.
Irving Jones, Jr., who worked with disgraced Balch-made millionaire and now federal prisoner Joel I. Gilbert, was a star witness in the North Birmingham Bribery Trial in 2018.
Jones ghost-wrote “dumbed-down” letters to be signed by African American community residents in the AstroTurf campaign to block EPA testing in North Birmingham, according to court testimony.
Living with polluted air and soil.
The effort was a success and kids in North Birmingham continue, to this day, to be poisoned by toxic soil and polluted air.
According to court proceedings and news reports at the time, Jones also infiltrated environmental group GASP’s meetings and monitored the environmental group’s social media feeds.
Maxwell and Irving: spy masters
Jones loves to boast that he is a former counterintelligence officer, and we are sure infiltrating GASP was probably one of the most high-risk operations Irving has ever done in his incredible spy life.
We wrote about his court testimony as reported by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist John Archibald, who wrote, “Gilbert also asked Jones to draft a confidentiality agreement relating to [then-State Representative] Oliver Robinson. Four days before Oliver Robinson was to speak to the Alabama Environmental Management Commission, Gilbert got Robinson to sign a confidentiality agreement.”
Jones was working for Christian & Small during the criminal trial. He was rehired by Balch in November of 2018.
Now that he is partner, Irving Jones, Jr. declares to Law.com, “Strive to make yourself irreplaceable. By that, I mean commit yourself to producing your best product every time for your partners and senior associates, and take ownership over the cases to which you are assigned such that you become an integral part of case’s progression.”
So was “Irreplaceable Irving” producing the best ghost letters for Gilbert?
Was “Irreplaceable Irving” an integral part of the North Birmingham Bribery Scheme born at the offices of Balch & Bingham?
How is “Irreplaceable Irving” feeling after he appears to have sold-out the African American community of North Birmingham and is now a full-fledged partner of an alleged racist law firm whose partners are 98 percent white?
“Irreplaceable Irving” standing next to Balch Managing Partner Stan Blanton holding Make Believe Award for Diversity and Inclusion.
The enormity of Southern Company’s alleged wrongdoing is unprecedented.
Now that two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Archibald has pealed back the alleged blatant corruption of the Alabama judicial system by the Southern Company criminal enterprise in regard to the ridiculoussealing of the rebirth of the North Birmingham Bribery Trial, the Office of Investigations at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission can finally tell the commissioners to place the Vogtle Nuclear Plant into receivership, with a third-party administrator.
The Office of Investigations “develops policy, procedures, and quality control standards for investigations of licensees, applicants, their contractors or vendors, including the investigations of all allegations of wrongdoing.”
Southern Company paid contractor and vendor Matrix, LLC, and its founder “Sloppy Joe” Perkins millions, with no need of invoicing, to allegedly investigate, target, spy on, and harass potential enemies and innocent children.
Southern Company, its subsidiaries, and vendors and contractors are out of control and appear to be involved in a large web of wrongdoing and deception.
Both disbarred attorneys at one point represented Southern Company. The bribery and money laundering were tied directly to the original North Birmingham Bribery Trial in 2018.
Now look at the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant. The Plant is operated by Southern Nuclear Operating Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southern Company.
Vogtle costs “have more than doubled to north of $31 billion after taking seven years longer to complete than projected,” according to a report Monday by the Georgia Recorder.
The cost overruns and delays appear to show “intentional deception and criminal concealment” to investors, ratepayers, and regulators.
Millie Ronnlund
The Compliance Officer and General Counsel at Southern Nuclear is Millie Ronnlund, the former Balch & Bingham partner whose husband, Robert M. Ronnlund, was the attorney accused of engaging in alleged obstruction of justice and the alteration of evidence in the Newsome Conspiracy Case.
“The [U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’] Jacksonville District hired Durham, N.C.-based PowerSecure Inc., a subsidiary of Atlanta-based Southern Co., via a sole source time-and-materials contract for repair and restoration of Puerto Rico’s power grid following Hurricane Maria in 2017. The Corps’ contract was initially worth $1.3 million. After several modifications, its value reached $523 million, according to a 2019 U.S. Dept. of Defense Inspector General audit.
“U.S. Justice Dept. officials alleged that PowerSecure violated the Truth in Negotiations Act, which requires that government negotiators have access to cost or pricing data when developing a proposal for a sole-source contract, as well as the False Claims Act, which makes contractors liable for defrauding the federal government, by knowingly failing to disclose pricing data related to labor and equipment costs on another post-hurricane restoration project it had taken in Florida and Georgia earlier in 2017.”
In December, Southern Company’s wholly owned subsidiary agreed to pay the federal government $8.4 million to resolve allegations that it improperly withheld pricing data.
Southern Company made 400 times than originally planned.
The concealment of pricing data confirms what we correctly foreshadowed in 2022: criminal concealment has been a consistent element involving Southern Company and their stooges, vendors, and contractors.
Wrongdoing? The enormity of Southern Company’s alleged wrongdoing is unprecedented.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has the irrefutable evidence, the documentation, the chronological timeline to put the Vogtle Nuclear Power plant into receivership and end the criminal RICO enterprise known as Southern Company.
Southern Company: Don’t mess with my mommy or salami!
An employment matter? That is a large spoonful of human waste.
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist John Archibald has ripped the legal mockery and lies of a Southern Company stooge blocking access to ex-Drummond executive David Roberson’s $75 million civil lawsuit against embattled law firm Balch& Bingham and Drummond Company.
Southern Company’s criminal racketeering enterprise is in full-throttle, on overdrive.
You want to know what happened when a former coal company executive – one convicted in the bribery of former Alabama Rep. Oliver Robinson – sued his powerful bosses and their powerful lawyers for putting him in that bind?
Of course you do. So do we.
But don’t hold your breath. Even in those polluted neighborhoods that started this thing. Finding basic facts – even the status of the case – is like, well, like finding a body in a Walker County coal mine.
Because a Jefferson County judge says “this is not a public issue.”
Despite the First Amendment. Despite Alabama open records laws. Despite appearances and the stench emanating from Judge Tamara Harris Johnson’s court.
“You just have to take my word,” she said.
Take her word?
Let’s look at the record.
In December of 2020, Alabama Power was in sheer, uncontrolled panic about the rebirth of the North Birmingham Bribery Trial.
Allegedly using the enormous weight of their racketeering enterprise, resources, and agents, Southern Company heavily fought back.
On Wednesday December 13, 2020, Alabama Power and Alabama Power CEO Mark A. Crosswhite objected to discovery and intent for deposition requests by Roberson.
That same day in Drummond’s pleading before the Alabama Supreme Court calling for a stay on discovery and depositions, Alabama Power and Crosswhite are mentioned as an example of the “burden and expense” the rebirth was causing.
Assisted Tackler McKinney
On Sunday, December 17, 2020, unheard from since the summer of 2018, Steven McKinney, the former Balch & Bingham partner who was indicted but acquitted in the North Birmingham Bribery Criminal Trial, came out of obscurity and retirement; and objected to discovery and intent to deposition requests, giving his old comrade Crosswhite an assisted tackle.
Trying to obscure their panic, Mark A. Crosswhite, the former Balch partner and now ex-CEO of Alabama Power, had his team of attorneys at White, Arnold, & Dowd, led by white-collar criminal attorney Mark White, file an avalanche of hard-copy, paper court pleadings at the courthouse in office, over the counter, that same week.
The two Marks offered a 22-page pleading asking for a protective order in part because of us, the CDLU and this website, BanBalch.com.
Alabama Power whined that we outlined correctly that Alabama Power, Mark Crosswhite and “an all-star reunion show”would be subpoenaed in the rebirth of the North Birmingham Conspiracy Case.
Judge Johnson eventually succumbed to the enormous pressure of the racketeering enterprise and blocked the discovery and deposition of Crosswhite, Alabama Power, and anyone tied to Southern Company in January of 2021.
Stooge Luther Strange
In February of 2021, we reported about the written testimony from the case in which Roberson answered to a list of admissions provided by Drummond. Roberson outlines an alleged bribery scheme involving ex-U.S. Senator Luther Strange and Drummond in which Strange, then-Attorney General of Alabama, was allegedly bribed to sign letters opposing the North Birmingham EPA clean-up effort.
Two days after our report that struck a raw nerve, Josh Moon, brain amputee of the discredited Alabama Political Reporter and alleged CDLU stalker, published a report apparently on behalf of Southern Company that viciously attacked us, the CDLU, about the $2 million grant that we had received in 2019, falsely alleging it was tied to attacking Balch & Bingham, the sister-wife of Southern Company.
Spreadsheets showed the $120,000 payoff to the envelope journalists at Alabama Political Reporter.
Southern Company’s criminal racketeering enterprise had authorized the payment of $120,000 to Alabama Political Reporter (APR) in August of 2020 to allegedly defame and smear us through July of 2021.
Shortly thereafter in March of 2021, Judge Tamara Harris Johnson sealed the entire case for what appears to be solely for the benefit of the Southern Company criminal enterprise.
Johnson created another Star Chamber so that Southern Company’s criminal enterprise can lie, cheat, and manipulate the system just like they did in the Newsome Conspiracy Case.
Now over two years later, the Energy and Policy Institute, according to Archibald, filed to intervene and open the case up. The Alabama Media Group filed brief in support of opening the case.
But Judge Johnson wants to keep the alleged corruption, bribes, and set up of the “fall guy” hidden.
Archibald writes:
Johnson has ordered the case sealed, lock, stock and coal-smoking barrel. Court dates are invisible on Alacourt, the state’s online court record system, and elsewhere. Even headings of past and scheduled hearings are stricken, because Johnson says it’s none of your business.
“This is not a public issue,” she told lawyers this week.
Why?
“It is strictly an employment matter,” she said.
An employment matter? That is a large spoonful of human waste.
Setting up an executive as a fall guy and sending him to federal prison is not an employment matter.
The reality is the Southern Company criminal racketeering enterprise appears to have been involved in the North Birmingham Bribery Scheme since day one.
Bowden
The alleged brainchild of the scheme was Matthew Bowden, the late Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Alabama Power, who curiously died two weeks after Roberson, Gilbert and McKinney were indicted.
Bowden wanted to discredit GASP.
North Birmingham appears to have been a side-show, a distraction to the real objective: squashing the tiny environmental group GASP before the Birmingham group could start probing the Miller Steam Plant, one of the biggest greenhouse polluting, coal-burning plants in the nation, according to news reports.
Jim Kerr, then-Chief Compliance Officer and General Counsel of Southern Company lied to us in 2018, when he claimed that Southern Company was not involved in the North Birmingham Bribery Scheme.
Kerr tried to ignore the alleged racist act of suppressing the poor African Americans of North Birmingham from having their toxic property tested. Kerr had the audacity to dismiss the racist scheme, telling the CDLU, “I don’t accept your proposition or your hypothesis.”
Five seconds of silence
North Birmingham’s population is 92.5 percent African American.
When confronted about why Balch lobbyist Jeffrey H. Wood was on Capitol Hill at the height of the bribery scheme inquiring about North Birmingham on behalf of Alabama Power, Kerr was silent for five seconds before regurgitating a canned legal answer.
Kerr was caught blind-sided, with his legal pants on the floor. Kerr appeared to have been protecting the criminal enterprise, and looked the other way.
Southern Company Executive Chairman Tom Fanning and current CEO Chris Womack also have looked the other way and let Crosswhite, Alabama Power, Mark White, Balch, embattled political consulting firm Matrix, LLC, and Matrix’s founder, “Sloppy Joe” Perkins run out of control.
Fanning authorized and Womack supported an internal investigation about the secret surveillance in 2017 of Fanning and his then-girlfriend, Kim Tanaka, that concluded with no conclusion. An utter farce!
Millions of investors’ resources at Southern Company were wasted on personal vendettas and efforts to defame an innocent man falsely as a rapist. In addition, the company foolishly terrorized innocent children.
As we have documented, law enforcement, including the former U.S. Attorney who resigned in disgrace in 2020, were compromised and appear to be agents of Southern Company’s RICO enterprise.
Upcoming civil RICO cases, derivative lawsuits, and federal probes may finally expose the truth, and force a deep, forensic investigation into all the criminal shenanigans, including the ex-parte communications between Judge Johnson and the criminal enterprise that has eroded the Alabama judiciary.
Take our word for it!
Ex-U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town and ex-Alabama CEO Mark A. Crosswhite chugging together.
Children were targeted, terrorized, and caused to cry in fear by Southern Company. And for what fudiciary duty to shareholders ? None. Zero. Zilch.
Southern Company had the testicular fortitude to foolishly tell The Wall Street Journal that “it has no idea who ordered the [surveillance] operation or why” of Southern Company’s Executive Chairman Tom Fanning and his then-girlfriend in 2017.
Observers unanimously agree that Southern Company appears to be lying to and intentionally misleading the public.
The million-dollar internal probe’s conclusion is now seen as a farce.
Why?
Because the most trusted advisor and confidant of Mark A. Crosswhite, the ex-CEO of Alabama Power who resigned in disgrace last November, was one of the key “investigators” of this buffoonery.
Mark White
Mark White, a white-collar criminal attorney from White, Arnold, & Dowd, was seen everyday at the courthouse during the North Birmingham Bribery Trial in 2018 and allegedly cut the deal with disgraced ex-U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town to keep Alabama Power “unmentionable” during the corruption trial.
According to the Wall Street Journal, White, Arnold & Dowd was involved in Southern Company’s internal probe that concluded with no conclusion.
White is not admired by some in Birmingham, and a few years back, a U.S. Department of Justice official in Washington, D.C. made some derogatory (but prophetic) comments about the fellow that frankly stunned us at the time.
In 2020, White showed his foolishness. He filed an avalanche of hard-copy, paper court pleadings on behalf of Alabama Power and Crosswhite in ex-Drummond Executive David Roberson’s $75 million civil lawsuit at the courthouse in person, over the counter, as if it were 1950 not 2020. The delay and “hiding the goods” tactic failed since the clerk immediately scanned and uploaded the paper pleadings.
Southern Company may claim they do not know who authorized the surveillance of Fanning and for what purposes, but we do know who authorized and which individuals were involved in the campaign of assault, intimidation, defamation and theft against the CDLU, Burt Newsome, K.B. Forbes, the Newsome family, and the Forbes Family.
Like David Copperfield, Southern Company wants to make these embarrassing million-dollar expenditures simply disappear with a half-baked internal probe, while “hiding the goods.”
Between 2018 and 2020, children were targeted, terrorized, and caused to cry in fear by Southern Company.
And for what fudiciary duty to shareholders ? None. Zero. Zilch.
And that, our dear reader, is why Southern Company appears to have “covered up and swept the criminal misconduct under the rug.”
Womack’s problem now.
Crosswhite’s problem has now become new Southern Company CEO Chris Womack’s problem, even though his spin doctors claim they have “moved on.”
Investigators from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Wall Street plaintiff attorneys for investors, and major civil RICO litigators are currently digging, probing, and preparing, sources affirm.
The anonymous spreadsheets and documents that we received show that Southern Company executives Zeke Smith and Jeff Peoples were involved in authorizing expenditures to scare and terrorize young children.
And no matter how badly Southern Company wants to “move on,” the evidence is rock solid. Even the laughable internal probe, with no conclusion, affirmed that millions were wasted by Southern Company.
Embattled and alleged racist law firm Balch & Bingham was handed a huge, crushing defeat this morning by the U.S. Supreme Court which rejected Balch’s congressional voting redistricting defense for the State of Alabama.
Dorman Walker
Dorman Walker, a Balch partner, represented the State of Alabama and John H. Merrill, the former Alabama Secretary of State, during arguments before the nation’s highest court.
“Under the Court’s precedents, a district is not equally open when minority voters face—unlike their majority peers—bloc voting along racial lines, arising against the backdrop of substantial racial discrimination within the State, that renders a minority vote unequal to a vote by a nonminority voter,” Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.
Civil-rights groups challenged the map in court, calling it “the latest example of a decadeslong pattern of the white-controlled Alabama Legislature enacting congressional and state legislative districts that discriminate against Black voters to maintain power,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Last year, a federal court in Birmingham, Ala., ruled that the map violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
Citing “Alabama’s extensive history of repugnant racial and voting-related discrimination,” the district court ordered Alabama to redraw its map to create an additional district “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it,” the Wall Street Journal added.
And what about Balch & Bingham’s history of repugnant racial discrimination?
The late Schuyler A. Baker, Sr. was at one time a top attorney at Balch & Bingham, and also an avowed and staunch segregationist who was part of racist Governor George Wallace’s inner circle in the 1960s.
And why was the federal highway scandal so sensational?
The Wallace-era highway scandal in 1964 involved the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Shelton, who was contracted as a “publicity man,” according to The New York Times.
Baker’s son, Schuyler Allen Baker, Jr., served as General Counsel at Balch from 1974 until his death in 2020.
Ironically, Schuyler, Jr. vowed to fight the CDLU and the Newsome Conspiracy Case to the death.
Now nearly 60 years later, the vestiges of racism still shine vibrantly.
In 2011, Balch’s Walker defended the state’s redistricting plan that was later tossed out by a federal court because the state improperly used race. And now 12 years later, the Supreme Court of the United States, with a conservative majority, rejected Walker’s latest defense.
Former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill is no puritan, no angel. In 2021, Merrill was rocked by a “tie-her-up-and-bite-me” sexual affair of three years when raunchy texts and audio recordings were released by the media. He did not run for re-election last year and Wes Allen took office in January.
Still refusing to apologize for the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal that targeted poor African American families (the scheme was born at the offices of Balch & Bingham), Balch Managing Partner Stan Blanton appears to be engaging in tokenism while collecting make-believe awards for “diversity and inclusion.”
Only 2 percent of Balch partners are people of color.
And Stan apparently can’t figure out why even the conservative Supreme Court of the United States hasn’t embraced Balch’s defense of a phony, fake, and racist redistricting plan.
Maybe Balch has contracted the wrong “publicity man.”
The correspondence we received recently from the Office of Professional Responsibility at the U.S. Department of Justice was clear: the probe of disgraced ex-U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town is over.
“We are taking no further action,” they wrote, which reveals that an alleged deal was cut in 2020.
The quid pro quo: the abrupt resignation of Town meant he wouldn’t be investigated or prosecuted for criminal misconduct, especially now since he is no longer a U.S. Attorney
No further action, indeed.
Even though Town is off the hook, insiders claim that the criminal probe of Southern Company’s criminal enterprise is escalating, now that former Southern Company Chairman and CEO Tom Fanning has retired.
Besides looking at the Kemper Plant debacle and Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant cost overruns, criminal investigators at the U.S. Department of Justice are apparently looking deeply at the alleged money laundering through third-party vendors tied to Southern Company and its subsidiaries, including embattled political consultant “Sloppy Joe” Perkins.
The criminal investigation complements an ongoing civil investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that is looking at the multiple, no-invoice-needed, multi-million-dollar secret contracts with Perkins and his affiliated entities.
The U.S Nuclear Regulatory Commission is looking at any potential misappropriate and alleged illegal communications between former NRC Chair Kristine L. Svinicki, now a member of the Southern Company Board of Directors, and the NRC staff or Commissioners in June and July of 2022.
Sources claim that Svinicki is barred for life from contacting the NRC about Southern Company since she voted for Southern Company’s Vogtle permits as NRC Chair, but may have communicated through NRC back channels last year.
Convicted pedophile and ex-Balch & Bingham attorney Chase T. Espy is now inmate 04104-510 at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, while ex-Balch partner Joel I. Gilbert, convicted of money laundering and bribery in the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal, is inmate 35504-001 at the Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama.
Balch has boasted these last five-years of expanding their footprint in the Southeast, and now the embattled firm can add two convicted felons in Atlanta and Montgomery.
Both convicted felons represented Southern Company, one of Balch’s top clients currently in the middle of a sex and accounting scandal.
With only 2 percent of Balch partners being people of color, the alleged racist law firm’s partners are 98 percent white while their esteemed convicts are 100 percent white.
So desperate to hide their racist and segregationist past, and links to Governor George Wallace and a Ku Klux Klan scandal, Balch recently added their Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer on their professionals list of attorneys and lobbyists, even though she is not involved in any practice area of law nor participates in government relations.
No other Balch officers are listed on the professional pages.
Neither the Chief Operating Officer, Director of Human Resources, Director of Finance, Director of Client and Community Engagement, Chief Information Officer, nor the Chief Marketing Officer.
Could it because that they are all white?
Tokenism. Tokenism of partners. Tokenism of attorneys. And now tokenism of management officers on their website.
How embarrassing!
But then again Balch managing partner Stan Blanton is collecting make-believe awards for diversity and inclusion.
Joe Perkins, the diminutive consultant to Alabama Power and founder of Matrix, LLC, the obscure political consulting firm, is embroiled in yet another scandal.
This time Perkins and his Matrix firm are in the middle of a lawsuit in the heart of Alabama that alleges libel and slander.
This latest scandal out of Tuscaloosa raises the serious question: Who would ever want to hire Perkins, the Oompa Loompa of Alabama politics, if you could end up getting sued, fired, or investigated?
Look at Florida.
Matrix, LLC, was officiallyterminated by Florida Power & Light (FPL), one of the largest utilities in the United States, in December. A few weeks later, FPL’s CEO was ousted in January.
Last August, an FPL company spokesman said in a statement. “Learning about the surveillance of the CEO of Southern Company further reinforces our decision to have severed all ties with Matrix, a consultant we regret ever having associated ourselves with.”
And who allegedly approved that surveillance? Alabama Power CEO Mark A. Crosswhite who was also ousted last November.
Now let’s look at the latest scandal out of Tuscaloosa.
Stan Pate, Tuscaloosa businessman and political donor, subpoenaed Joe Perkins, founder of Montgomery-based political consulting firm Matrix LLC, last month in a libel lawsuit.
Pate filed a civil lawsuit in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court in February against William L. Stephens, Jr., Gary Simpson, and Alvin Ray Grayson over statements made about Pate and various real estate projects on an Alliance for Responsible Growth website and Facebook page.
Pate filed the lawsuit for libel/slander, harassing communications and invasion of privacy/false light.Stephens filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit in April.
Pate also subpoenaed Perkins for the following information related to his involvement with Alliance for Responsible Growth:
Any and all contracts, communications, or correspondence between any representative of Matrix, LLC and William L. Stephens, Jr.
Any and all contracts, communications, or correspondence with any representative of the Alliance for Responsible Growth and any representative of Matrix, LLC or any representatives of Matrix, LLC.
Any and all advertisements or fliers created for the Alliance for Responsible Growth.
Any and all invoices, bills to, or payments from the Alliance for Responsible Growth or William L. Stephens, Jr.
Perkins is listed as the media contact on Alliance for Responsible Growth’s website. Perkins and Matrix represent a variety of powerful interest groups in Alabama. The consulting group has been in the headlines in recent months for their work in Florida, Alabama, and a settled lawsuit between Perkins and former Matrix CEO Jeff Pitts.
So who is REALLY funding this alleged smear effort?
Is William L. Stephens, Jr. of the Alliance for Responsible Growth another “fall guy” like David Roberson was for the Alliance for Jobs and the Economy during the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal?
Is Alabama Power or another deep pocket entity behind this effort to smear Stan Pate?
Was Balch & Bingham in any way involved in the creation of this alliance?
1819news.com adds:
Jeffrey Smith, Pate’s attorney, said in the lawsuit the Alliance for Responsible Growth’s website is “replete with malicious and false information related to Mr. Pate, his projects, and business interests.”
“The website is evidence of Mr. Stephens’ malice toward Mr. Pate in referring to Mr. Pate, among other slanderous and libelous statements, as ‘greedy.’ Stephens also made false and misleading statements about another project proposed by Mr. Pate on Rice Mine Road,” Smith said in the lawsuit. “It is clear that the Alliance for Responsible Growth Facebook page was initially created not for any legitimate civic discourse but, again, to paint Mr. Pate and his businesses in a false light and to cause damage to Mr. Pate in his business efforts and damage his plan for the project at the McFarland Mall site, the Rice Mine Road project, and other projects.”
So who is Stan Pate?
He is a successful businessman, philanthropist, and political donor.
According to BhmWiki, Pate was an A-student in Tuscaloosa’s public schools, graduating from high school in 1975. Though he had planned to enlist, the close of the Vietnam War led him instead to enter college with an eye toward a medical career. He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Alabama in 1981.
After briefly working for local chemical companies, Pate determined to go into business for himself and invested in rental property. His ventures were immediately successful, leading him to pursue business opportunities across the country. In addition to buying, leasing and selling property, his Pate Holdings offers real estate management, development and construction services.
Jim Kerr, the former Chief Compliance Officer and General Counsel at Southern Company, who met with us, the CDLU, in December of 2017 and later lied to us about Southern Company’s involvement in the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal and the Newsome Conspiracy Case, is allegedly looking for a new job, according to DonaldWatkins.com.
On January 5, 2023, the Southern Company announced that Jim Kerr would assume the position of chairman of the Board of Directors, CEO, and president of the Southern Gas Company, effective on March 31, 2023.
… Jim Kerr is attempting to flee his new CEO job at the Southern Gas Company.
Last month, Jim Kerr quietly submitted his resumé to the executive search firm of Korn Ferry, a management consulting firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Korn Ferry offers executive job placement services for senior management executives who are looking for better employment opportunities.
After we “outed” Jim Kerr as a racist, black employees at the Southern Gas Company wanted to have no association with him.
During the first week of April, Jim Kerr worked hard to endear himself to the company’s black employees
However, Jim Kerr’s words on the audiotape [with the CDLU] and his actions in the North Birmingham situation overshadowed his phony attempts at endearment and his self-serving “wokeness” makeover at the Southern Gas Company.
The company’s black employees are not buying it.
They saw beyond Kerr’s fake smiles, hand-holding, and hugs while he was prancing around in their faces. They have judged Kerr by his words on the audiotape and his hostile actions toward the company’s black customers in North Birmingham. These customers had their environmental justice rights willfully suppressed by a cold and calculating Jim Kerr for the benefit of the Southern Company, Alabama Power Company, and their business alliance partners.
The news came as Southern Company is embroiled in a five-alarm scandalinvolving alleged accounting fraud, self-dealing, money laundering, secret contracts, and conflicts of interest allegedly involving Southern Company executives and members of Southern Company’s Board of Directors.
How did Southern Fiber Company, which was destitute in 2020 when it applied for a PPP loan in 2020, become awash in multimillion dollar fiber optic installation contracts with Georgia Power Company in 2022?
Why is this Georgia Power Company key external vendor relationship not listed in the consolidated Form 10-K financial statement for 2022 filed by the Southern Company with the SEC on February 15, 2023? The amount paid to Southern Fiber falls within the Southern Company’s definition of a “material” expense for its 10-K for 2022.
It is obvious that someone in the Georgia Power/Southern Company sphere of influence has taken a special interest in growing Southern Fiber Company.
It is also obvious that the Southern Company, via its partnership between Georgia Power and AT&T, has staked out the hosting of fiber optic communications lines – for a fee — as a profit center for the Southern Company’s business operations. The installation, splicing, maintenance, and repair business of these fiber optic lines is an add-on economic benefit for Southern Fiber and whoever else is discretely financing and growing the company behind-the-scenes.
Some individual or entity has financed the restructuring and rapid expansion of the Southern Fiber Company and this person or entity is hiding behind the thick veil of a well-known Georgia law firm to conceal his/her/its identity.
It is obvious that somebody at Georgia Power is channeling a lot of fiber optic installation work to a company that was near bankruptcy in 2020.
Who at the Southern Company would have a focused interest in growing Southern Fiber Company?
And now more gas is being thrown on the fire with the expected report on a steamy sex scandal in which mistresses were allegedly paid off in millions.
The investigative report comes as Southern Company faces a highly anticipated civil RICO lawsuit, an ongoing SEC probe, an investigative review after numerous complaints were filed with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency, and alleged investigation(s) by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Donald Watkins writes:
One important fact was never disclosed to the 9 million Southern Company customers who were forced to pay these rate increases: These utility companies used millions of dollars of customer money each year to pay the mistresses and lovers of Southern Company executives and other corporate officers.
What is more, these secret romances, as well as the inherent conflicts of interest related to them, were never disclosed to the Southern Company’s board of directors or to the company’s state and federal regulators, as required by law.
We have all of the fascinating details related to this sex and romance scandal. We will break down this misuse of corporate funds for you.
Stay tuned for an explosive investigative report that will leave you speechless!
Will they remove McWane’s name from the children’s science center in Downtown Birmingham?
McWane, the cutting-edge and innovative iron pipe, plumbing, and waterworks company, has taken an enormous step backwards by hiring embattled law firm Balch & Bingham for lobbying services in Washington, D.C.
Starting in 2020, McWane has emerged as Balch’s largest federal lobbying client and Open Secrets reports that McWane has paid the alleged racist law firm over $1.1 million.
In March, Chase T. Espy, an eight-year veteran of the Balch firm, who had pled guilty to possession of kiddie porn, was sentenced to 97 months in federal prison.
Espy, a registered sex offender, was arrested by local authorities in August of 2021 for soliciting a child for sex. The online “child” actually was an undercover local law enforcement officer.
According to authorities, there were approximately 69 videos and four images of child sexual abuse material located on Espy’s cellphone including two involving toddlers, 20 depicting penetration, three depicting humiliation, and 29 involving masturbation.
The total number of child sexual abuse material images for sentencing purposes was 5,178.
Espy’s plea deal described the repulsive, graphic, and disgusting images and videos. (We wanted to literally throw up when we read the document last fall.)
No corporate client with a moral conscience should be using Balch & Bingham.
How many clients will end their relationship with Balch over Balch’s history of alleged child exploitation?
Will McWane, East Texas Electric Cooperative, Northeast Texas Electric Cooperative, Globe Life, O’Neal Industries, and others finally cut the ropes with Balch?
Espy’s kiddie porn included revolting photos of young children less than 12 years of age, according to law enforcement officials.
But child exploitation is not new at the century-old law firm.
The young children in North Birmingham, an area that is 92.5% African American, were targeted and alleged victims of Balch & Bingham’s repulsive scheme in the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal which suppressed and discouraged African American families from having their toxic and contaminated property tested by the EPA.
The idea to target the children of North Birmingham was born at the offices of Balch & Bingham.
But McWane appears not to care.
Jim Proctor, Senior Vice President of Legal and External Affairs at McWane, should immediately terminate Balch & Bingham.
If there is a specific lobbyist or team of lobbyists he likes, he should tell them to jump ship, like William F. Stiers did in 2017.
McWane is paying Balch $30,000 a month or $360,000 a year. McWane spends about $800,000 a year on lobbyists. They should shift the $360,000 to one of their other firms or find another well-qualified firm without the baggage.
We have no bones to pick with McWane or Mr. Proctor except to criticize their absurd decision to hire an embattled law firm that has two former attorneys sitting in federal prison right now.
According to a recent review of Balch’s website, people of color account for less than 9 percent of their professionals and only 2 percent of their partners.
Critics are asking, “Will they remove McWane’s name from the children’s science center in Downtown Birmingham?”
Not a bad idea if they keep on subsidizing a law firm that has yet to apologize to the residents and African American children of North Birmingham.
The emails and documents we recently received show unequivocally that Blake Andrews, the “confused” General Counsel of Drummond Company, was briefed regularly about the North Birmingham Scheme.
On February 18, 2015, at the inception of the money laundering entity, Alliance for the Jobs and the Economy (AJE), convicted felon and now ex-Balch partner Joel I. Gilbert reached out to Andrews and his underling, Curt Jones, an Assistant General Counsel at Drummond Coal Company.
Both men, according to Gilbert’s email, “expressed interest in participating in the planning/strategy session of the establishment” of AJE.
In our story about the over 20 entities that participated in AJE, we posted the body of the email written by former Balch partner Steve McKinney warning Drummond executives and his staff about emails falling into the wrong hands. Blake Andrews and Curt Jones were included in the header.
In the body of the email, McKinney called the operatives “the Drummond/AJE team.”
Interesting choice of words or a Freudian slip of the keyboard?
A day after McKinney warned Andrews and others about the emails, he drafted another email to Blake Andrews discussing:
1.) a potential AJE contractual agreement with Dr. Kenneth A. Mundt of ENVIRON. The goal was to present “truth squad” work that went counter to the arguments laid out by GASP and the EPA.
2.) and asking Andrews if Balch’s AJE effort was or was not “perfectly on track with the company’s interests and concerns.”
As we reported in 2020 before ex-Drummond executive David Roberson’s $75 million civil lawsuit was sealed in its entirety, Drummond’s attorney foolishly argued that lying to and framing Roberson was ” a legal service.”
We wrote at the time:
Drummond’s attorney threw a hand grenade when he testified at the hearing. This is what he foolishly said:
With respect to the argument that Drummond’s general counsel was not giving legal advice, I think [Roberson’s attorney] just made the argument for me. Their theory is that Drummond’s general counsel formed a legal opinion that this whole plan was illegal and did not tell Mr. Roberson about it, and in fact told him things that would basically make him be the fall guy, I think is their theory. That is — the formation of a legal opinion as to whether something is legal or illegal is the definition of what a lawyer does. So I don’t know that I can state it any better than [Roberson’s attorney] did. That is legal services.
Problem is that Drummond’s General Counsel Blake Andrews allegedly never, ever told Roberson the scheme was illegal.
Roberson’s attorney Burt Newsome rips Drummond’s argument to shreds. From the transcript:
[Drummond’s attorney] did a great job summing up Balch and Drummond’s legal services argument in a nutshell. He just told you because Blake Andrews formed in his head that this lobbying scheme was illegal and decided, I better not pay these invoices to the foundation because I’ll go to jail, then I’m going to — so I’m going to get David Roberson to pay these so he will go to jail, that that was providing a legal service to Mr. Roberson. That is absurd. Blake Andrews making a legal opinion in his head that this is illegal, I better not pay these, I better get somebody else to do it, that’s not giving legal advice to Mr. Roberson. That doesn’t make David Roberson his client. That makes David Roberson him and Balch’s fall guy.
Roberson appears to have been set up as the “Fall Guy” in the North Birmingham Bribery Case.
In court documents, Drummond denied ever having received invoices in Andrews name, an apparent bold-faced lie.
In early 2021, Roberson filed concrete evidence that Drummond Company lied in a court proceeding and that original invoices sent to Drummond from Balch & Bingham were addressed to Blake Andrews, the “confused” General Counsel of Drummond Company.
White lies, damn lies, and fall guys!
Blake Andrews should have been and should be investigated for his participation in AJE and the North Birmingham Bribery Scheme.
Now, in 2023, Andrews should also be probed for his alleged role in which Roberson’s defense attorneys (paid by Drummond) rejected a full-immunity deal for David Roberson back in 2017, allegedly trampling Roberson’s civil rights.
For at least two years, 2017 and 2018, U.S. Attorney Jay Town, Principal Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey H. Wood, and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions appear to have never allowed a probe of Southern Company or an expansion of the investigation in North Birmingham to happen on their watch.
Southern Company Stooges (L to R) Sessions, Wood, and Town
The anonymous documents we, the CDLU, received included a list of corporate attendees to a luncheon of the Alliance for Jobs and the Economy (AJE) that was held on November 30, 2015.
The AJE, an entity pushed by ex-Alabama Power Chairman and CEO Mark A. Crosswhite, was the organization that laundered over $360,000 in bribes to former Alabama State Representative Oliver Robinson.
Through the emails and documents that we have obtained, over 20 entities were involved at some point with the AJE.
The “lone wolves” theory issued by disgraced ex-U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town was a crock.
Southern Company was involved (as were others) and a good prosecutor should have interviewed each and every entity and individual involved, even if their involvement was peripheral.
McWane’s Proctor
From Jim Proctor, Senior Vice President of Legal and External Affairs, at McWane, to Chip Grizzle, General Counsel at Brasfield & Gorrie, from Van Richey, the CEO and President at American Cast Iron Pipe Company, to Joe Howle, the Manager of Environmental, Community, and Government Affairs at Vulcan Materials, each and every individual who had any interaction with AJE should have been interviewed.
Now with a new EPA director, Michael S. Regan, and new leadership at the U.S. Department of Justice, law enforcement should re-open the North Birmingham Bribery Probe and investigate Southern Company’s criminal RICO enterprise, and the other 19 or so entities involved with AJE.
Embattled law firm Balch & Bingham was so wary and preoccupied with the scheme that Balch partner Steve McKinney dispatched an email in April of 2015 warning staff and Drummond executives to be careful about dispersing information in email correspondence since “your emails will not be privileged and it not hard to imagine that they could easily end up in the wrong hands.”
McKinney included a distribution list that included top brass at Southern Company, Drummond, ABC Coke, Alabama Power, McWane, United States Steel and the American Cast Iron Pipe Company.
Balch & Bingham’s Steve McKinney warned that emails could “easily end up in the wrong hands.” We have intentionally obscured email addresses out of privacy.
In an addition to that email, we also received a list of attendees to an AJE luncheon, showing that many leading businesses were invited to participate at the inception of this money laundering entity.
At the lunch was Mike Thompson, the owner of Thompson Tractor who was listed as a director of the AJE in the incorporation documents from the State of Delaware.
Thompson allegedly took Balch & Bingham’s biggest stooge, former U.S. Senator and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, directly to Drummond’s headquarters in 2014 to meet Drummond family members and pick up a $25,000 check.
Mike Thompson
A few days later, Strange signed a letter ghost-written by Balch & Bingham attacking the EPA’s efforts to put the North Birmingham Superfund Site on the National Priorities List and expanding the site to include the City of Tarrant.
An official act in exchange for an alleged $25,000 bribe?
Without a doubt, now is the time to re-open the North Birmingham probe and question all of these business leaders and entities.
The four pages of attendees. We have removed email addresses and phone numbers out of privacy.
Pate filed a civil lawsuit in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court in February against William L. Stephens, Jr., Gary Simpson, and Alvin Ray Grayson over statements made about Pate and various real estate projects on an Alliance for Responsible Growth website and Facebook page. 
Last month, Jim Kerr quietly submitted his resumé to the executive search firm of 
It is obvious that someone in the Georgia Power/Southern Company sphere of influence has taken a special interest in growing Southern Fiber Company.
