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The Greatest Act of Window Dressing
[Update: In January of 2020, Stephen Feaga left the embattled firm. Click here to read more.] A year ago, Balch & Bingham hired Stephen Feaga as their first ever Chief Compliance Officer. We applauded the move. Now, a year later we can opine it was the greatest act of window dressing. Feaga has been MIA. Balch & Bingham appears to have had its worse year ever: The loss of a dozen money-making partners; The criminal conviction of a Balch equity partner on all six federal counts including bribery and money laundering; The weakest year of revenue from lobbying efforts in…
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Year-End Update: North Birmingham Bribery Scandal
Next year will have more theatrics as the two indicted Balch & Bingham stooges Trey Glenn and Scott Phillips go to trial for alleged ethics violations in relationship to the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal. National media, as we write, are taking a deeper, investigative look at Balch & Bingham and the alleged manipulation of oversight agencies and politicians who blindly signed ghost-written letters by convicted felon Joel I. Gilbert. North Birmingham, with a population that is 92.5 percent African-American, may become the poster-child of environmental injustice and economic racism for the new leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives that…
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Year-End Update: Russia-linked Scandal
Our sources in Washington, D.C. tell us the allegations against Black Hall Aerospace a/k/a AAL USA Inc. were referred to investigators in Huntsville. We strongly believe our conversations with the Office of the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III may have spurred multiple probes. Both the Military Criminal Investigations Command and a Special Inspector General of the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense are allegedly still probing the company. The Special Inspector General is looking specifically at Afghanistan operations. With the change of leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, our outreach and debriefing of…
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Newsome Conspiracy Case Enrages Balch’s Ego
[This post was originally published over a year ago on December 12, 2017. With expenditures now estimated to be in the seven-figures, the Newsome Conspiracy Case highlights gross injustice, abuse of the judicial system, and to some, a sign of sheer stupidity.] They say that anger is the enemy of logic. In our almost 17 years of doing advocacy work, we have never seen an entity like Balch & Bingham that is so defiant, so blind, so unrealistic, so angry over the Newsome Conspiracy Case that the matter has now impacted their reputation, their legacy, and their institutional integrity. Speaking…
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Screwing and Polluting North Birmingham for $2,000?
In March, the Birmingham City Council denied a license to a scrap metal business in North Birmingham because of health, public safety and environmental concerns. A rare victory for the poor, African-American residents of North Birmingham, Jordan Scrap Yard fought back in April filing a lawsuit against the city. Yesterday, we visited the residents of North Birmingham and we learned a troubling fact: the community, which has fought vigorously against the Jordan Scrap Yard, was outraged and angered by a judge who ordered, adjudged, and decreed the city to grant the scrap yard a license on November 13, 2018 in…
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U.S. Congressional Investigations of “Massive Fraud”
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN’s State of the Union yesterday there have been “several massive frauds against the American people. And it’s now our job, the job of the Justice Department…the special counsel, and the Congress to get to the bottom of this.” One massive fraud has been the abuse of the all three branches of government in the State of Alabama by using the “legal” system of pay-through contributions from the usual suspects to obtain access and signatures on cookie-cutter letters and official acts, while hiding behind non-disclosure agreements, attorney-client…
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State Attorney General Abdicates
During Thanksgiving week, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall parted ways with Matt Hart (pictured right), the most feared state prosecutor who took on public corruption and successfully convicted high-profile politicos and others. Only Jefferson County has had the intestinal fortitude to investigate further and indict Balch stooges Trey Glenn (who resigned from the EPA the day before Hart was sent home packing) and Scott Phillips. The state, we believe, will no longer even contemplate a probe of Balch & Bingham or Southern Company. And State Senator Rodger Smitherman, Judge Carole Smitherman, and the secretive and unconstitutional Star Chamber, we also believe,…
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Will Prosecutors Now Take a Closer Look at Balch & Bingham?
[This post was originally published on September 26, 2017, two-days before now convicted felon and then-Balch & Bingham partner Joel I. Gilbert was indicted. We now can say that U.S. Congressional investigators and national media, too, are taking a closer look.] The Alabama Political Reporter wrote about our site yesterday morning, driving traffic to our site up at least 250%. Besides law firms, we received identifiable traffic from the U.S. Department of Justice, the Alabama State Legislature, and several law enforcement agencies. Alabama Political Reporter wrote: [BanBalch.com] seems “to know much about Balch & Bingham’s internal activities. Someone’s spent a…
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Balch & Bingham’s Prophylactic Hypocrisy
[This post originally appeared on October 25, 2017. Over a year later, these actions have become a pillar in the civil RICO lawsuit to be filed next year and appear to demonstrate the manipulation of the Alabama judicial system. The legal doctrine of estoppel looks like it has been violated for Balch & Bingham’s benefit.] In February of 2015, when the Newsome Conspiracy Case was at its infancy, Balch and alleged other co-conspirators vehemently fought the sealing of the case. Balch attorneys wrote at the time: “While Plaintiffs couch their motion as a prophylactic measure to ‘protect’ the reputations of…
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What will Southern Company do in December?
A year ago today, Tom Fanning, CEO of Southern Company, personally called us and spoke about their commitment to “listening to the community” and wanting to hear our concerns about Balch & Bingham, the Newsome Conspiracy Case, and the North Birmingham Bribery Scandal. A year later, the entanglement of Southern Company in the Newsome Conspiracy Case has been solidly linked, and the civil RICO action and possible U.S. Congressional hearings to come in 2019 could only spell for further headaches and embarrassments for Fanning and friends. Tom Fanning, who we believe is an inherently good man, could pick up the…
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Southern Company and Balch & Bingham’s Mockery
Southern Company and Balch & Bingham appear to not give a damn and are thumbing their noses at (or giving the bird to) you, us, and the justice system. Beyond yesterday’s news that Balch caved and finally admitted re-hiring Irving Jones, Jr., the Spy vs. Spy former counter-intelligence agent who so valiantly infiltrated GASP meetings and ghost-wrote letters for a ghost-writer extraordinaire, another headline shook Alabama yesterday afternoon. Criminal felon Dave Roberson, the Drummond Coal executive who along with ex-Balch partner Joel I. Gilbert were convicted on all six criminal counts including money laundering and bribery, was honored for his…
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Balch & Bingham Caves; Finally Admits Re-hiring Irving Jones, Jr.
Over three weeks of silence after we broke the story, Balch & Bingham has caved and finally admitted to re-hiring Irving Jones, Jr. with a news release posted yesterday evening. Jones will forever be known as the junior ghost-writer of the ghost-writer extraordinaire, convicted felon and ex-Balch partner Joel I. Gilbert. Of course, Balch’s fluff has no mention of Jones’ testimony during the criminal trial or how Gilbert told Jones to “dumb down” the ghost-written letters that Jones had written for African-American residents of North Birmingham. Jones, who boasts of having served as a counter-intelligence agent for the NSA, had…
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Southern Company, Balch and an Alleged $50 Hate Crime
The “free coat drives” were not warm jackets or comfortable winter coats. Yesterday, U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler announced a probe is coming in 2019 looking at hate crimes. The Washington Post reports, “The expected incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to top Trump administration officials Tuesday warning that when Democrats take over the chamber, they will investigate the rise in hate crimes.” The CDLU has spoken to and briefed Nadler’s office while we were in New York City and Washington, D.C. two weeks ago. Will ex-Balch partner and former Southern Company lobbyist Jeffrey H. Wood or…
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Obstruction of Justice and Southern Company
18 U.S.C. § 1503 defines “obstruction of justice” as an act that “corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice.” Robert M. Ronnlund, the attorney that sent the alleged “criminal obstruction of justice” letter in January of 2016 telling AT&T not to release any information about the telephone numbers linked to the Newsome Conspiracy Case falsely claiming there was a court order prohibiting such release, is in the center of the eye of the storm. His wife, Millicent Ronnlund, had…
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Newsome Conspiracy Case, North Birmingham Bribery Case, Secret Star Chamber, Southern Company, Spotlight on Balch & Bingham
Corrupt State of Affairs in Alabama
We returned late Friday from a very insightful and productive trip to New York City and Washington, D.C. Our high-level sources tell us that with the local Jefferson County indictment of Balch & Bingham stooges Scott Phillips and Trey Glenn, pressure on the U.S. Department of Justice to take a deeper look at the corrupt state of affairs in Alabama has escalated—especially now that Jeff Sessions was ousted. The reporting to prison of bought-and-paid-for politician and former Alabama State Representative Oliver Robinson is scheduled for next week and shows how a Balch & Bingham partner corrupted the legislative branch in…
