-
Southern Company Should Dump Balch & Bingham
With the explosive and deadly events in Charlottesville, hate and racism are vividly alive in the United States. Southern Company, the large and innovative utility company based in Atlanta, should take a strong and unequivocal stand against racism, against unscrupulous behavior, and dump Balch & Bingham as their outside counsel and lobbyists. On June 23, 2017, the day after corrupt politician Oliver Robinson made a plea agreement in the $360,000 bribery scheme involving Balch & Bingham in which Robinson suppressed and discouraged poor African-Americans in North Birmingham from having their toxic and contaminated property tested, we wrote to Southern Company…
-
Mueller Can Investigate “Any Crimes that He Might Discover”
During the 2016 election cycle, then-U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions was to endorse Trump at the Russian-linked aerospace company tied to Balch & Bingham. For months we have been providing the Office of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III with detailed information about the alleged scurrilous, unscrupulous, and questionable actions by Balch & Bingham and associates. The Washington Post reported Sunday: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said Sunday that the expanding investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is continuing apace ….[and that] special counsel Robert S. Mueller III can investigate any crimes that he might discover within…
-
Falsity! Not Telemarketers! Balch & Bingham Flips Out
Balch & Bingham appears to have now done a 180 degree flip right into a larger manure lagoon. With Balch & Bingham under the scrutiny of two federal investigations (one in Alabama and the other in Mississippi), will scrutiny now extend to New Jersey? When we wrote to Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III on May 18th, besides Balch’s ties to the Russia-linked aerospace company Black Hall Aerospace, Inc. a/k/a AAL USA, Inc., we asked him to look at two possible issues arising from the investigation (which Mueller can investigate under his charge). One of them was the case of…
-
Alabama’s Watergate
Project on Government Oversight today published an investigative report on Alabama’s Watergate. Adam Zagorin and Nick Schwellenbach write: Whether or not Attorney General Jeff Sessions survives in office, it won’t silence the hubbub in his home state of Alabama over a major bribery scandal that highlights Sessions’ conflicts of interest and could lead law enforcement to examine the role of his hand-picked successor, Senator Luther Strange, in the controversy. The mess, which some commentators have started calling “Alabama’s Watergate,” stems from the recent admission by a state lawmaker, Oliver Robinson, that he accepted $360,000 in bribes. According to a Justice…
-
Under FBI Scrutiny, Balch Acknowledges “Billing Error” in Mississippi
Michael Rejebian summarized it best in an article in the Clarion-Ledger posted yesterday, July 24th: “A billing error? We asked about this three years ago,” Rejebian said Friday. “So it begs the question: How many other ‘billing errors’ haven’t they found?” Balch & Bingham is in the middle of an FBI investigation. As the Clarion-Ledger reported in early July, “The probe looks at contracts granted by DEQ [Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality] in an attempt to determine whether Fisher [the former DEQ director] personally benefited from them…. Under Fisher, private contractor and attorney Amy Whitten reaped nearly $2 million in…
-
Gagging on their Own Lies and Loss of Control
Balch & Bingham appears to be suffering from a loss of control as scandal appears to engulf the prestigious firm. On Friday July 21st, there was a flurry of activity in the Burt Newsome conspiracy case according to an alert by Alacourt.com. The most interesting document is Balch & Bingham’s motion to amend the protective order from May. As readers may recall, the brilliant and esteemed lawyers at Balch lied about us in that open court filing last May 9th. Appearing to attempt to impose a universal gag order on the media, social media, and the public in general, the…
-
Uncategorized
Special Counsel and (205) 410-1494
While Balch attorneys were foolishly attempting to claim the single phone number that connects the alleged co-conspirators in the Burt Newsome case was from a telemarketer, we had been in touch via phone and email with the Office of the Special Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice following up on our correspondence from late May about Balch’s Russian sanctions website scrub. We let Mueller’s office know about Balch & Bingham’s latest troubles: the $360,000 Alabama bribery scheme; the FBI investigation in Mississippi; and of course Burt Newsome’s smoking gun: the single phone number that connects all the…
-
Victory! CDLU Squashes Balch Nominee for Assistant U.S. Attorney General
In a blow to the embattled law firm Balch & Bingham, the Trump Administration has quietly decided to nominate Jeffrey Bossert Clark instead of Jeffrey H. Wood, a former lobbyist and partner at Balch, as Assistant U.S. Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. The decision was made days after the CDLU sent dispatches to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary calling on them to block the Wood nomination, writing, “We have asked Mr. Wood to resign in his acting capacity because blatant economic racism and environmental injustice cannot be tolerated. Anyone involved in an alleged conspiracy to…
-
Balch Slaps Newsome’s Wife with Subpoena
While the acting U.S. Attorney in North Alabama makes it a “priority” to investigate an unnamed Balch & Bingham partner in the $360,000 Alabama bribery scandal and the FBI scrutinizes Balch invoices in Mississippi, Balch has decided to slap the wife of the victim of an alleged conspiracy with a subpoena. As we have noted, Burt Newsome was wrongly targeted, falsely arrested, and defamed. Now his wife, a mother of four young children, is being targeted. Why would Balch want to drag Newsome’s wife into their manure lagoon? Have they lost their minds? Because of us: the CDLU. Our organization…
-
Mississippi FBI Investigation
We have consistently asked, what is Balch hiding? And the same is true in Mississippi. When we began our effort to have Balch & Bingham change their alleged unscrupulous and unprofessional conduct in the Burt Newsome case, who would have thought a $360,000 bribery scandal, a Russian sanctions website scrub, and interest from the Special Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice would escalate our fight into a national matter? Now comes a new FBI investigation that involves Balch out of Mississippi. The Sun-Herald reports: “Two Mississippi women — a state agency director and a private contractor — called the shots…
-
Balch’s Telemarketers
Does Balch & Bingham really think defendants would be talking to a telemarketer near or after midnight or at 1 in the morning? In one of the most absurd and ridiculous comments made at a court hearing in the Burt Newsome case, lawyers from Balch & Bingham suggested the single phone number that connects all the co-conspirators in the alleged conspiracy to target, arrest, and defame Burt Newsome was in fact from telemarketers. For heaven’s sake, some of these calls were for 18 or 19 minutes! Do we really think Balch’s partner was purchasing a set of non-stick frying pans…
-
We Were Wrong
Balch & Bingham’s manure lagoon is beginning to crack open. Since we began this effort to have Balch end alleged unscrupulous behavior and conduct a top-to-bottom review, we believed that Balch & Bingham’s alleged involvement in the Burt Newsome case may have been limited to professional misconduct and defamation, when a partner at Balch regularly emailed Newsome’s clients including sending them Newsome’s embarrassing mugshot from the false arrest. But we were wrong. Phone records in a new amended complaint appear to show how Balch’s partner may have been heavily involved in the conspiracy: the alleged set up and confrontation with…
-
“These People are Dangerous”
Although his knee jerk reaction was to call it “fake news, ” U.S. Senator Luther Strange (pictured) has been linked to the bribery scandal that has rocked the Alabama law firm Balch & Bingham, when the Alabama Political Reporter reported, that “[Alabama] State Rep. John Rogers told federal investigators that he was approached by executives from Drummond Coal and then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange and offered what Rogers considered a bribe if he would lead the State’s and Drummond’s efforts against the EPA’s cleanup of a superfund pollution site in north Birmingham, a source close to Rogers told APR. “Asked…
-
Balch Rocked by Politico Story; Hits Mute Button
NONPROFIT AIRS ADS ATTACKING LOBBYING FIRM: The Consejo de Latinos Unidos, a nonprofit that’s been waging a quixotic campaign against the lobbying firm Balch & Bingham for months, is going on up on the air with TV ads going after the firm. The ad’s narrator says that Balch “ought to be ashamed” after federal prosecutors charged a former Alabama state representative with accepting bribes from an unidentified former partner at the firm. The former state representative, Oliver Robinson, took a plea deal last month, according to AL.com. Watch the ad here. — The nonprofit has been fighting for months…
-
Uncategorized
The $360,000 Bribery Conspiracy Against Poor African-Americans
Amplifying their alleged unscrupulous conduct, a partner at the embattled law firm of Balch & Bingham was allegedly involved in a bribery scheme that funneled money to an alleged corrupt politician, Oliver Robinson, according to the AL.com (Alabama Media Group). Robinson, who entered a plea agreement on June 22, 2017 to federal bribery, conspiracy, fraud, and tax evasion charges, allegedly suppressed and discouraged African-Americans from testing their property for toxic and contaminated property. Balch funneled $360,000 to Robinson. From Columnist John Archibald of AL.com: “Conspiracy. Bribery. Fraud. “Three ugly words. And they aren’t even strong enough. Not nearly. What…
