neljapäev, juuni 03, 2004
Bush's Lawyer
Via Froomkin, we find that Bush's lawyer represented one of the Iran/Contra defendants:
"Jim Sharp -- He's not part of the very high-profile group of Washington lawyers," Toobin said. "He is a well-known Washington lawyer, however. . . . I knew him because in the late '80s in the Iran/Contra investigation he represented Richard Secord. . . . He's had a successful white collar crime practice for a long time, very solid lawyer. Not flashy, not famous, but not a huge surprise that the president would hire someone like him."
Secord. How many of you remember that name? A retired Air Force general, Secord was the chief operative for then-Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver L. North, back when North, working out of the basement of Ronald Reagan's West Wing, engineered covert sales of arms to Iran, with some of the proceeds being covertly used to provide arms to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, and the rest covertly going into Swiss bank accounts.
Doesn't really mean anything. Just an interesting connection.
UPDATE: More on Sharp from the Center for American Progress: The Progress Report did its own unofficial search in an effort to uncover more details about the lawyer for the president. A search of the DC Bar website lists a James E. Sharp as an active member. A search of court documents shows an attorney named James E. Sharp represented his "good friend" Joe Harry Pegg who was indicted as "one of several individuals who conspired to import marijuana into the United States in 1988 and 1989." During James E. Sharp's representation of Pegg, one of Pegg's alleged co-conspirators said Sharp "helped him concoct a false story to help exculpate Pegg." After sentencing, Pegg appealed his conviction on the ground that "his attorney had a conflict of interest that deprived him of his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel." The 11th Circuit decision in the case reports that the government did "not deny that Sharp labored under an actual conflict of interest."
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Via Froomkin, we find that Bush's lawyer represented one of the Iran/Contra defendants:
"Jim Sharp -- He's not part of the very high-profile group of Washington lawyers," Toobin said. "He is a well-known Washington lawyer, however. . . . I knew him because in the late '80s in the Iran/Contra investigation he represented Richard Secord. . . . He's had a successful white collar crime practice for a long time, very solid lawyer. Not flashy, not famous, but not a huge surprise that the president would hire someone like him."
Secord. How many of you remember that name? A retired Air Force general, Secord was the chief operative for then-Marine lieutenant colonel Oliver L. North, back when North, working out of the basement of Ronald Reagan's West Wing, engineered covert sales of arms to Iran, with some of the proceeds being covertly used to provide arms to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, and the rest covertly going into Swiss bank accounts.
Doesn't really mean anything. Just an interesting connection.
UPDATE: More on Sharp from the Center for American Progress: The Progress Report did its own unofficial search in an effort to uncover more details about the lawyer for the president. A search of the DC Bar website lists a James E. Sharp as an active member. A search of court documents shows an attorney named James E. Sharp represented his "good friend" Joe Harry Pegg who was indicted as "one of several individuals who conspired to import marijuana into the United States in 1988 and 1989." During James E. Sharp's representation of Pegg, one of Pegg's alleged co-conspirators said Sharp "helped him concoct a false story to help exculpate Pegg." After sentencing, Pegg appealed his conviction on the ground that "his attorney had a conflict of interest that deprived him of his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel." The 11th Circuit decision in the case reports that the government did "not deny that Sharp labored under an actual conflict of interest."
