Nikki Haley Could Be Indicted
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley could be in severe legal jeopardy.
The Palmetto Public Record (“Haley indictment imminent? Stay tuned…“)
Two well-placed legal experts have independently told Palmetto Public Record they expect the U.S. Department of Justice to issue an indictment against South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on charges of tax fraud as early as this week.
A highly ranked federal official has also privately confirmed rumblings of an investigation and possible indictment of the governor, though the official was not aware of the specific timeframe.
Yesterday, Palmetto Public Record exclusively reported that the Internal Revenue Service has been investigating since March of 2011 the Sikh worship center run by Gov. Haley’s father. At least five lawsuits have been filed against the Sikh Society of South Carolina since 2010, alleging that the group bilked contractors out of nearly $130,000 for the construction of a new temple.
The Feds don’t indict sitting governors unless they’ve got a rock solid case. Stay tuned, indeed.
What a shock. Is there a Tea Party favorite who doesn’t turn out to be a cheap, sleazy crook? Well, I guess we could exclude the governor of Florida, since the TP knew he was a cheap, sleazy crook before they elected him. But now you’ve got the governor of Wisconsin watching as his former aides are indicted and undoubtedly lead the Feds to him. Can’t wait to see who’s next.
Still, who would have thought that politicians who r.an claiming that the definition of “liberty” is the transfer of wealth from the middle class to their multi-billionaire campaign contributors would turn out to be dirty?
@WR:
Not even indicted and you’ve already tried and convicted her?
Or unless the DOJ Public Integrity Section can manufacture and conceal evidence like they did with Alaska Senator Ted Stevens.
The Schuelke Chronicles
Here’s to hoping this turns out to be nothing at all. Haley is one of the conservatives I actually don’t hate.
Oh how I miss Mark Sanford…
Very interesting. . .
Two governors in a row? Apparently South Carolina wants to be the GOP Illinois.
@Doug Mataconis: Hmm, what was it the founder of this blog said just moments ago? Oh, yes:
“The Feds don’t indict sitting governors unless they’ve got a rock solid case. ”
Maybe you should take up your complaint with JJ.
WR,
And I don’t necessarily disagree with that assesment. Though I will note that there have been several high profile cases where the Federal case ended up being weaker at trial than it first appeared. Raymond Donovan and Ted Stevens come to mind, as does the tax fraud case that they tried against Indy Car Champion Helio Castroneves a few years back.
The Feds don’t indict sitting governors unless they’ve got a rock solid case.
I’m not sure about that one, Chief. Don’t you remember the Ted Stevens fiasco? A false and ultimately what was proven to be an illegal prosecution, both designed and timed to help get the Democrats to a filibuster-proof Senate majority?
Also, what do you suppose the demographic breakdown of a federal grand jury in South Carolina would look like? What percentage would have voted for Haley’s opponent and will be voting for Obama in November? Let’s not be so naive as to ignore the obvious.
That all said, the M.O. for the Feds in pretty much every instance is not to pursue an indictment unless they’ve got the goods. Ergo if Haley is named in a true bill alleging tax fraud I’ll presume there’s a lot of truth to it, but I’ll retain the healthy level of skepticism that’s befitting of a criminal prosecution against a southern Republican female governor in what just so happens to be an election year for the nation’s first half-white president.
@Stormy Dragon:
Actually governor wise Illinois is strictly an equal opportunity corruption state.
@Tsar Nicholas:
Nick maintains his Olympic level record for contradicting himself in successive paras.
Oh, I see others already brought up Stevens.
Incidentally, I’m not saying it was proven that they timed and designed the prosecution to help out the Dems in the Senate. It was proven to be an illegal prosecution, in that the prosecutors violated the most basic tenets of being prosecutors. They withheld exculpatory evidence, along with various other prosecutorial maladies. It also was a false prosecution. The timing and design comment merely is my opinion.
@Tsar Nicholas:
Wow…the Bush DOJ was trying to ensure a filibuster proof Democratic senate majority. I know the Bush admin were fairly incompetent but I didn’t realise they were this incompetent……LOL
Joe, did you not take your meds today? Certainly you couldn’t possibly be either so young and naive or so old and senile as to think that any administration controls the street-level prosecutors who actually prosecute criminal cases. Even the U.S. Attorneys in charge of said prosecutors can’t entirely ferret out the real from the fake. It’s not as if Mukasey, Clement and Filip all flew off to Alaska to prosecute Stevens. Those were local prosecutors. They had an agenda. Clue in, man. In that thread on military audacity you were so sentient and well informed. Did you fracture your skull in the interim?
One final point about Haley. It’s so obvious I nearly missed it. James Clyburn has had it in for Haley since the get-go. The new U.S. Attorney for South Carolina, Bill Nettles, was nominated by Obama upon the recommendation of, yeah, you guessed it, Rep. Clyburn. Take that with a grain of salt or take it straight up.
@Tsar Nicholas:
The charges were brought against Stevens in 2008 after lengthy FBI and IRS investigations. And you’d have to be unbelievably naive or stupid to believe that the longest serving Republican senator in US history has criminal charges brought against him without the case being reviewed at the highest levels of the FBI and DOJ. The suggestion that these charges were brought by a Republican DOJ to in your own words…
A false and ultimately what was proven to be an illegal prosecution, both designed and timed to help get the Democrats to a filibuster-proof Senate majority
is certainly well up to your standards when it comes to creating bizarre fantasies but other than it’s humorous potential it’s totally worthless.
@Tsar Nicholas: Are you saying that the U.S. Attorney appointed by Bush didn’t look into the fine details before anything was initiated against a sitting United State Senator? Seriously?
@Tsar Nicholas: “I’m not sure about that one, Chief. Don’t you remember the Ted Stevens fiasco? A false and ultimately what was proven to be an illegal prosecution, both designed and timed to help get the Democrats to a filibuster-proof Senate majority? ”
Designed and timed by the Bush justice department? You’ve really got an active little imagination there, don’t you, big guy?
Joe, you’re clinging. Let it go. Don’t you realize there was no way in Hades that the Bush Admin. was going to review those charges at the “highest levels,” as you suggest? What if they had seen the problems with the case and then decided to nix the prosecution? What would that have looked like? On the flip side of that coin, do you think Holder reviewed the case against Blago? Of course not.
Concerning Stevens, look at the timing. Everyone knew the Dems had a shot that election cycle to get to 60 seats, but that it was going to be close. That the pre-indictment investigation might have been legit doesn’t change the fact the prosecution itself was not legit. Realize that those local prosecutors were dirty. That’s been proven. It’s not subject to dispute. They withheld all sorts of exculpatory evidence. They violated so many laws of being prosecutors it’s amazing they themselves haven’t been prosecuted. Ultimately it was a trumped-up charge. In a fair trial Stevens easily would have been aquited, assuming the trial judge didn’t direct a verdict or dismiss the case outright. Connect the dots. I know you despise Republicans. But you’re not stupid. Free your mind, Joe, and reality will follow.
David, yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. U.S. Attorneys very much are like state district attorneys. In large part they’re figureheads. The street-level prosecutors often will push a case towards where they want it to go. When you combine a weak U.S. Attorney with corrupt prosecutors you easily can wind up with a Stevens-style fiasco.
oops, acquitted, that is.
@Brummagem Joe:
That is not what the the DOJ higher ups claim to excuse themselves from blame just like with Fast and Furious.
William Welch and Brenda Morris claim the misconduct in the Ted Stevens case is the fault of the line prosecutors.
The line prosecutors Joseph Bottini and James Goeke who “willfully concealed exculpatory evidence from the defense” blame the lack of leadership.
@Tsar Nicholas: “U.S. Attorneys very much are like state district attorneys. In large part they’re figureheads. ”
Let me guess — you know this because you were a US Attorney for 17 years.
Excellent…a Fast and Furious reference.
Jordana Brewster is hot, hot, hot.
http://www.wallpaperati.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/jordana-brewster-wallpaper-3.jpg
Don’t get angry, Captain, this isn’t a contest. We’re just killing time. I’ve been a civil litigation attorney for 17 years. I have friends and colleagues from my halcyon days in law school who’ve been state prosecutors, federal prosecutors, state public defenders and federal defenders. It’s common knowledge in the legal community that often the head of a prosecutor’s office is just that: a figurehead. Do you think Terence Hallinan in San Francisco, for example, actually ran that office? Of course not. Hallinan was just a walking press quote. The felony prosecutors ran that office. Do you think Gil Garcetti in L.A. knew the details of the Menendez Bros. trial strategy? Of course not. Garcetti was more worried about an eventual run for higher political office and his hobby of being a photographer on the weekends.
I’ll make one final comment about Stevens. In order to believe that the timing and design of that prosecution was not related to the Nov. 2008 election cycle, here’s what you’d also have to believe: That it purely is coincidental that in an election year in which everyone knew the Dems would either get to or fall just short of 60 seats in the Senate there was what ultimately was proven to be an illegal prosecution against a Republican Senator in which the local prosecutors pushed just hard enough to obtain a guilty verdict the week before election day, after which said Republican Senator lost by an extremely-narrow margin, thereby helping to seal the deal on the Dems obtaining their sought-after filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. All that had to be coincidence. The timing. The bogus prosecution. The stepped-up trial ending the week before election day. All coincidence. Uh, huh. Riiiight.
So much for that VP talk…
@Tsar Nicholas:
One who thinks QE is spending. Yeah right.
Clinging? LOL. I see six mainly lengthy posts here from you as you try to dig yourself out of your latest fantasy.
Joe, how is the Fed’s quantitative easing program at all relevant to a discussion about indictments and prosecutions of Republican politicians? You’re not trying to change the subject, now, are you, Comrade? That would be a tacit but clear admission that the Tsar has defeated you and then sent you back to the commune with your tail between your legs. It’s beneath you, Joe. I expect better from you.
In any case, how would you describe Uncle Ben’s QE program? Do you believe that the money the Fed uses to purchase Treasury debt materializes out of thin air? That magic unicorns from Planet Kleptocracy bring those T-Notes to the Fed’s offices and leave them there, like a stork leaving a baby in a bonnet? That when the Fed books the acquired debt onto its balance sheet as an asset that there’s not a corresponding entry onto the liability side of the equation? Maybe Enron would have tried that, but let’s give the Fed a little more credit, now, shall we?
Joe, when the Fed buys Treasury debt as part of a QE program it simultaneously creates an equivalent sum of base money. That’s how the transaction works. Money supply up. T-Notes purchased. T-Notes become Fed asset. The higher relative demand for those T-Notes pushes interest rates down.
That’s a spending program, Chief.
Lastly, getting back to the Ted Stevens kerfuffle, it appears the Tsar has defeated all of his Bolshevik rivals, slaying them once again with facts and logic. With that I will take my leave of the battlefield and retire for the evening. Until tomorrow, of course, when new battles will be joined.
@Tsar Nicholas: “I’ve been a civil litigation attorney for 17 years.”
Now matter how hard you try to parody him, the Tsar always outdoes you.
If that were really the case he obviously learned well from you…
@Tsar Nicholas:
Boy….you’re clingin here Nicko. QE ain’t spendin brother….look it up….LOL
Oh, my goodness. The Bolsheviks have regrouped and still have some fight left in them.
WR, I’m not entirely picking up on the jib of your jab. How pray tell is that statement of mine parody? Would it make you feel better if I said that I’m a corporate attorney who for 17 years has litigated civil cases (FYI, that means non-criminal litigation) in federal and state courts throughout California? Is that better? Then again, I have in the past handled criminal cases too. I also handle large-scale transactions having nothing to do with litigation. Ergo how about from now on I’ll just say that I’m a “lawyer?” Does that work? Is that OK with you, Chief? Your approval is so important to me. I can’t live without it.
IP, yes, that’s my secret strategy that I’ve developed in secret.
When arguing with people on the anonymous Internet, knowing full well, mind you, that around one fifth of said people still have yet to graduate, on blogs with far smaller audiences than the number of blokes quaffing beers in bars in North Beach, I shrewdly and cynically change the subject. That’s the essence of my plan for world domination through engaging liberals on Internet comment threads. First OTB. Then earth itself shall be mine!
Joe, the only things to which the Tsar has clung in recent years are the Tsar’s wife and the Tsar’s money. You catch my drift, right?
Getting back to Stevens, check again the timing of it all, Chomsky, Jr. They didn’t push to get that conviction six months before the election. It was the week prior to the election. One – week – prior – to – election – day. Turns out the entire prosecution was faulty and dirty. Do you honestly believe that was a coincidence? Really??
I’ll be interested in seeing how the dots from an enterprise of some sort run by her father connect to Nikki Haley being guilty of tax fraud. That will be a picture to behold, yes indeedie. At this point, however, the connection between the first sentences in the article and the subsequent ones is not readily apparent.
Seriously?
Jordana Brewster got an “Unhelpful”?
http://education.makemeheal.com/index.php/Image:Jordana-brewster-ps.jpg
Gee, what a surprise. It turns out the story was complete and utter BS, and Governor Haley is under NO suspicion whatsoever.
This will have no effect on WR, who will repeat for at least several months that Haley is about to be/has been indicted on tax fraud. And the rest who convicted her above will pretend this never happened.
In the meantime, I’ll personally go out on a limb and say that the same Justice Department won’t indict either leading Democrats Charlie Rangel or Jon Corzine for their financial crimes… and I won’t even bother to talk about how the New Black Panther Party will once again get a bye from the Obama/Holder Justice Department for their flagrantly illegal and quasi-terrorist actions.