WHO CONTROLS HALEY BARBOUR?
a special report by the yaller dog blog
We have heard all kinds of different stories from Haley Barbour about his ties to Barbour, Griffith & Rodgers, the Washington DC lobbying firm that still bears his name. Since this whole ordeal has confused everyone (including Haley himself, we might start to think), let's begin with the most glaring facts that we know about Haley's ties to his lobbying firm. Despite how often Barbour and his campaign have tried to claim that these facts are a product of those who are trying to smear him, there is hard proof that Barbour has selected his former clients and his family members to receive contracts that are funded by Mississippi taxpayers and Post-Katrina federal funds. When we follow the end of this twisted series of contradictions and cover-ups to the end, one thing becomes clear: Haley Barbour is beholden to his former clients at BG&R, so much that we should start to wonder whether we should even refer to them as his former clients.
WHO CONTROLS HALEY BARBOUR?
a special report by the yaller dog blog
[For All Sources, click here]
We have heard all kinds of different stories from Haley Barbour about his ties to Barbour, Griffith & Rodgers, the Washington DC lobbying firm that still bears his name. Barbour's dancing around the issue is starting to sound like this...
As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
[quote courtesy of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld]
Since this whole ordeal has confused everyone (including Haley himself, we might start to think), let's begin with the most glaring facts that we know about Haley's ties to his lobbying firm. Despite how often Barbour and his campaign have tried to claim that these facts are a product of those who are trying to smear him, there is hard proof that Barbour has selected his former clients and his family members to receive contracts that are funded by Mississippi taxpayers and Post-Katrina federal funds. When we follow the end of this twisted series of contradictions and cover-ups to the end, one thing becomes clear: Haley Barbour is beholden to his former clients at BG&R, so much that we should start to wonder whether we should even refer to them as his former clients.
AshBritt
On 9/27/2005, USA Today reported that
Another major item on the government's shopping list has been debris removal, largely handled through the Army Corps of Engineers. Among its contractors is the Florida company AshBritt, which was lined up on a contingency basis in 2002 to clear roads and clean up property. The longstanding contract was activated when Katrina struck, and AshBritt was authorized to do up to $500 million in work, with an option for another $500 million.
The company is a client of the lobbying firm founded by Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour. AshBritt paid the firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers $40,000 in the first half of this year for "assistance and guidance with regard to disaster mitigation issues," according to public records.
On 6/4/2006, MSNBC reported that
"Contractors were being paid two, three times what they should have been paid to get the job done," says Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. "And the job took in some cases two and three times as long as it would have."... Questions also have been raised about work done by AshBritt, the Pompano Beach, Fla., company which won a contract in September worth more than $500 million to remove debris in Mississippi for the Army Corps of Engineers. Within weeks the Corps had issued a "cure notice" threatening to terminate it due to poor quality of work... "There is no difference doing what we're doing for $12.90 (per cubic yard) and what they're getting $36 for," said James Necaise, vice president of Necaise Bros. Construction in Gulfport. "I mean, you compare apples to apples, and apples to freight trains, garbage is garbage. You pick it up, you put it in the dump, you get rid of it. There's no difference here"... AshBritt's [President Randal] Perkins said his company deserves a premium because it complies with a stricter set of regulations established well in advance of the storm. Critics of AshBritt are fond of pointing to the privately held — and highly secretive — company's powerful political connections, including contracts with lobbyists like Barbour Griffith & Rogers, the firm founded by Mississippi's Republican Gov. Haley Barbour. Perkins and his wife also have personally donated $50,000 to the Republican National Committee, according to a Miami Herald profile.
Other "Former" Clients
On 8/16/2007, Bloomberg reported that
On Feb. 9 of this year, the governor's two partners, Ed Rogers and Lanny Griffith, filed forms with the state of Mississippi disclosing lobbying they did last year for Leucadia National Corp., a New York-based buyout firm that acquired the Hard Rock Casino in Biloxi, which had been ravaged by Katrina just days before its scheduled grand opening. The lobbyists used their personal addresses instead of the business office that still bears Barbour's name. They faxed the forms from a FedEx Kinko's store in Washington. Rogers, 48, said in an e-mail that he and Griffith, 56, used their personal addresses because Mississippi asks lobbyists to file as individuals. The state form asks for a "physical address.'' Lobbyists such as Henry Barbour commonly use a business address. Leucadia paid Rogers and Griffith $80,000 each, according to state filings. Casino president Joe Billhimer said he believes Rogers helped Leucadia win state approval of its liquor license. Barbour's chief of staff, Charlie Williams, said "we encouraged'' the state Gaming Commission and alcoholic-beverage control division "to expedite'' the Hard Rock's approval process, "and they did.'' ... According to federal records, Barbour Griffith & Rogers also received $200,000 from USMP Group LLC, an Iuka, Mississippi, company incorporated five weeks after Katrina by an attorney in the Jackson office of Balch & Bingham, a Birmingham, Alabama, law firm where Rogers is of counsel.
On 8/16/2007, ABC News reported that
Finance company Government Consultants paid Henry Barbour's firm $65,000 from July 2005 through 2006, according to records reviewed by the news service. Bloomberg reported the company earned at least $400,000 in fees for issuing Katrina-related bonds for Mississippi -- issuances that were recommended by the Governor's Commission. The firm did not return a request for comment from ABCNews.com. Massachusetts-based engineering firm, Camp Dresser & McKee (CDM), paid Henry Barbour's firm $15,000 in lobbying fees, Bloomberg found. Later, the state chose it to work on a $3 million study of water management systems in six counties.
Another client of Henry's firm, Waggoner Engineering, also worked on the project, according to Bloomberg. Henry Barbour told Bloomberg he played no role with state bond issues, and his firm had decided not to accept new recovery-related clients after Katrina hit. A phone message left with his firm Thursday was not returned.
Henry Barbour managed his uncle's gubernatorial campaign in 2003. Senior executives at both Government Consultants and CDM contributed thousands of dollars to the governor's re-election campaign in 2006, the news service found.
Family Members
On 8/16/2007, Bloomberg reported that
Mississippi records show that Henry and Austin Barbour, sons of Haley's older brother Jeppie, registered as state lobbyists soon after their uncle was elected in 2003. In January 2004, Henry, who managed the gubernatorial campaign, and Austin joined Capitol Resources LLC in Jackson, located less than a block from the governor's mansion, which represented such big- name clients as Lorillard Tobacco Co. and Northrop Grumman Ship Systems. In July 2005, Capitol Resources signed on to represent Government Consultants Inc., a local firm that advises Mississippi and Louisiana on state bond issues. Deborah Phillips, president of Government Consultants, praises the work of Capitol Resources, saying Henry, 43, and Austin, 31, have "good resources.'' Haley Barbour is "naturally not going to be disinclined to help those boys when he can,'' said Ed Brunini Jr., the governor's lawyer ... All told, Henry Barbour's lobbying fees -- $150,000 in 2004, his uncle's first year in office -- rose to $183,000 in 2005, the year of the hurricane, and $379,000 last year.
Last Oct. 18, Henry Barbour registered to lobby for Camp Dresser & McKee Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based engineering firm that had also been a client of his uncle's firm in Washington. A week later, seven CDM officials each gave the governor's re-election campaign $1,000. One of the projects recommended by the governor's reconstruction commission was a $3 million study of water management systems in six Mississippi counties affected by Katrina. Camp Dresser and Waggoner Engineering, another client of Henry Barbour's firm, worked on that project. CDM paid Henry $15,000 for the final quarter of 2006, according to state lobbying records.
On 12/7/2005, The New York Times reported that
Rosemary Barbour happens to be married to a nephew of Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour. Since the Reagan administration, when Mrs. Barbour worked as a White House volunteer as a college student, she has been active in the Republican Party. She also happens to be one of the biggest Mississippi-based winners of federal contracts for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. ... the $6.4 million in contracts received by her company, Alcatec L.L.C., have also elicited questions about possible favoritism. Federal records show that the company has won at least 10 separate contracts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the General Services Administration to install and maintain showers for relief workers and evacuees, to deliver tents, and to provide laundry equipment. The most valuable were awarded in September and October without competitive bidding, the records show.
According to a review of federal contracts awarded since Hurricane Katrina, her company ranks seventh in total contracts out of 88 Mississippi-based concerns that have received deals worth $100,000 or more.
On 6/27/2007, The Jackson Free Press reported that
Gov. Haley Barbour’s niece continues to be the object of federal scrutiny over Hurricane Katrina contracts. Last Thursday, FBI agents raided the Mississippi office of Alcatec LLC, owned by Rosemary Barbour. Rosemary Barbour is married to Hinds County Superintendent Charles Barbour, who is Haley Barbour’s nephew. The FBI confirmed it had warrants to search Alcatec’s offices, in Brooklyn, Miss., but gave no details on their target. The U.S. Department of Labor has been investigating Alcatec since 2006, after former employees accused the company of violating labor laws by withholding wages and overtime pay for some employees. Alcatec won a five-year contract, worth more than $299 million, to maintain FEMA trailers following Hurricane Katrina.
On 6/22/2007, CBS News reported that
The FBI has raided the office of a company owned by the wife of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's nephew. ...The FEMA contracts are subject to annual renewal and Alcatec lost its contract in May when it was not renewed. The company was already under investigation by the Department of Labor, according to former employees, for reportedly breaking pay and overtime rules required under the FEMA contracts. Alcatec may not have been fulfilling other key aspects of its contracts as well.
"They were asking me to lie," Patrick Parker, a trailer maintenance technician, told CBS News. Parker said that in order to meet its contract, Alcatec required him to inspect and provide maintenance on 20 FEMA trailers per day. But Parker had a list of 300-400 trailers he had to maintain on a regular basis. Those trailers were spread out over many miles of Mississippi coastline and he said there were not enough hours in a day to get the job done. "(Rosemary) Barbour said you had to do 20 a day-or you would lose your contract if you don't." He added, "They asked us to turn in maintenance checklists like this one that were undated," he said. The awarding of FEMA contracts raised eyebrows in the months after Katrina hit because of the familial connection between Rosemary and her husband's uncle Haley Barbour.
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These facts make it clear that Haley Barbour has continued to give favors to his "former" clients and family members while he has been Governor of Mississippi - even while their failure to fulfill duties and their inordinate overcharging demonstrate just how these deals have not paid off for the people of Mississippi. This is clear and simpe corruption. Yet Barbour is not only using the Mississippi Governor's office to help out his friends and family through under-the-table, no-bid deals.
This is a two-way street because Barbour is getting paid to do it.
As the following chronicle of Barbour's conflicting statements will show, Haley Barbour has attempted to distract the public from these ethics violations with a flood of excuses. He has flip-flopped on this issue enough to confuse everyone but has left a lengthy paper trail of lie built upon lie. The paper trail logically leads to only one place: Governor Barbour unfairly gives his old clients contracts that are paid for by Mississippi tax dollars; Governor Barbour receives money from his old clients through his lobbying firm and through the money they give to his party and his election campaigns; Governor Barbour is controlled by Washington Lobbyists and he personally profits from the arrangement at the expense of Mississippians.
In Barbour We Blindly Trust?
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In January 2004, Barbour Says He Has No Participation In, No Severance Package From, And No Ownership Of The Blind Trust
On 8/16/2007, Bloomberg reported that
Unlike previous governors, Barbour hasn't released his income-tax returns. In January 2004, shortly after his inauguration, he told the Associated Press that "it's plain to everybody that I have nothing to do with the firm,'' adding, "They didn't give me a bunch of going-away cash.''
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In February 2004, Barbour Signed A Document Giving Him Profit Sharing Payments, Pension Payments, And Ownership Of BG&R
On 8/29/2007, Bloomberg reported that
When Haley Barbour was sworn in as governor of Mississippi in 2004, he set up a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest and said he had severed ties with the Washington lobbying firm he co-founded. The blind trust document he signed about six weeks later says that on Jan. 13, 2004, the day he took office, Barbour still had a stake worth $786,666 in the publicly traded parent company of Barbour Griffith & Rogers Inc., as well as pension and profit-sharing plan benefits from the lobby firm. A copy of the notarized trust agreement, obtained from an individual who requested anonymity, says Barbour receives $25,000 per month, or $300,000 a year, from it. He lists the trust in his annual Mississippi ethics filing as his only source of income outside his $122,160 salary as governor.
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In May 2004, Barbour Revealed That He Received Salary And Bonus Income From BG&R, Which He Would Not Have Known Without Being Aware Of The Contents Of The Blind Trust
On 8/29/2007, Bloomberg reported that
In a May 2004 financial disclosure statement covering 2003, Barbour reported that he received salary and bonus income from a lobbying firm. He wasn't required to list the 48,321 shares of New York-based Interpublic Group of Companies Inc., which bought Barbour Griffith in 1999, because he owned less than 10 percent of its shares. Since 2004, Barbour hasn't specified each "Type of Business'' that generates income for the trust. Barbour's former partners bought the company back from Interpublic on May 28, 2004, for about $6 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. Interpublic stock closed that day at $14.38, meaning the shares Barbour put in the blind trust were worth $694,856 if he still held them.
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In October 2005, Barbour's Former Partner At BG&R Claimed That Barbour Had No Ties To The Firm
On 10/24/2005, Roll Call reported that
When Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) returns to Washington, D.C. this week, he will receive a warm welcome from a large cast of K Street’s heaviest hitters...."All his assets are in a blind trust, and he has no involvement in the firm," says Ed Rodgers.
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In June 2007, Barbour Flew The State Plane To Washington And Goes Directly To BG&R Headquarters
On 9/24/2007, The New Republic reported that
So has Barbour really severed ties to his old lobbying outfit? There is one final detail worth contemplating before passing judgment. A little before 9 a.m. local time on the morning of June 19 of this year, a Cessna carrying Barbour departed Jackson-Evers airport in Mississippi for Washington, D.C. The flight touched down at Dulles airport a few minutes
after noon, marking the fifteenth time since January 1, 2007, that the governor’s plane had landed in the Washington area. Just under an hour later, tnr observed a hulking black GMC Yukon deposit Barbour outside a nondescript building at 1275 Pennsylvania Avenue, the site of the lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers. Barbour, wearing a dark suit and a sea-blue tie and identifiable by his nature-defying helmet of hair, strolled into the building alone, save for a laptop carrying-case and a cell phone. He stopped to exchange a few words with a receptionist, then disappeared from view. Roughly 90 minutes later, he exited the building with a red-headed man at his side. The two entered the Yukon and rode away down Pennsylvania Avenue. Just another day at that "little lobbyin’ firm up in Washington, D.C."
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In July 2007, Charlie Norquist Stated That He Could Not Comment On The Blind Trust
On 9/24/2007, The New Republic reported that
I had come to Yazoo for an unannounced visit with S. Griffin Norquist, the longtime friend who manages the governor's blind trust. Assuming the document we'd received was authentic, I wanted to ask him why Barbour had kept an interest in his old firm after publicly implying he no longer had one. The document raised other questions, too. For example, most blind trusts involve a transfer of assets from their owner to the trust. But this document explicitly said that several of Barbour's assets, including his interest in BG&R's parent company, would not be transferred. Instead, Norquist would simply assume "full control and dominion over" them. That meant that Barbour, rather than the trust, would pay taxes on these assets and would therefore know he owned them and how much they were worth. The trust would be anything but blind. There was also this: In May 2004, Interpublic had sold BG&R back to Barbour's former partners, Lanny Griffith and Ed Rogers (the "G" and the "R" in BG&R). Whether Barbour had also repurchased a stake in the firm had been the subject of much speculation. He had never entirely ruled out this possibility, telling reporters only that he wouldn't be involved in the buyback negotiations. I was hoping Norquist could shed light on the situation.
There was no way to know if Norquist had actually been in a staff meeting, or if the meeting was an excuse he had concocted in order to place a phone call. Either way, he wasn't inclined to say much about the trust. He did want me to know, apropos of nothing, that his "involvement with that has nothing to do with the bank. It has my home address on it, not the bank address. I don't even know what you've got there." I began reading from page one: "S. Griffin Norquist Jr., ... six hundred twenty-seven E. Broadway, Yazoo ..."
"Yeah, that's my home address," he said.
"Would you like to see the document?"
"No. I really can't comment on that."
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In August 2007, Barbour Said He Receives Retirement From BG&R
On 8/16/2007, Bloomberg reported that
On an Aug. 6 call-in show on American Family Radio, Barbour said that "they do pay me retirement. I don't want to act like they don't.'' His attorney, Brunini, said this could also be considered a buyout payment, and that a manager overseeing Barbour's assets may have made "a deal to cash that out and invest it in some other way."
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In August 2007, Barbour's Former Partner At BG&R Claimed That Barbour Had No Ties To The Firm ....And In March He Donated To Barbour's Campaign
On 8/16/2007, Bloomberg reported that
Rogers said last week that Barbour "gets nothing from the firm.'' The governor "earns no income from the firm and does not participate in the firm's governance or operations,'' he said. On March 20, Rogers gave Barbour's re-election campaign $25,000 and Griffith gave $5,000. Barbour has placed his personal holdings in a blind trust, a move critics say serves mostly to shield them from public and regulatory scrutiny.
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In August 2007, Rodgers Claimed That Barbour Earns No Income From BG&R But Refused To Say Whether He Is Involved With The Firm
On 8/29/2007, Bloomberg reported that
Barbour's former partners bought the company back from Interpublic on May 28, 2004, for about $6 million, according to a person familiar with the matter. Interpublic stock closed that day at $14.38, meaning the shares Barbour put in the blind trust were worth $694,856 if he still held them ... Ed Rogers, one of the founding partners, declined via e-mail to say whether Barbour participated in the buyback. Rogers didn't reply to an e-mailed question on the buyback price. He said Barbour "earns no income from" the lobbying firm.
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In August 2007, Barbour's Attorney Stated That Barbour Did Not Receive Retirement Payments And Barbour Did Not Know The Contents Of The Blind Trust
On 8/29/2007, Bloomberg reported that
[Barbour's attorney Ed] Brunini said in the Aug. 14 interview that after the trust was established, the governor had no idea what was in it and may have been incorrect when he said he was receiving payments from Barbour Griffith. "I'm not sure whether the trustee continues to take that money,'' Brunini said. "If I was the trustee, I might go into that company and make a deal to cash that out and invest it in some other way.''
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In September 2007, Barbour Stated That He Does Not Know The Contents Of The Blind Trust
On 9/20/2007, Barbour stated at the Issues+Answers Debate that
I took all my assets and put 'em in a blind trust. That is, put 'em in a trust where a trustee takes care of buying, selling, retaining, and is sworn not to tell me what he does. I appointed the best lawyers I could find: competent, respected people, the best trustee, competent, respected people, and they've done exactly what the trust agreement said. But three years after I was in office, Jim Hood, the Democratic Attorney General said that maybe this wasn't legal. I said, 'Well, fine. Let's give it all to the Mississippi Ethics Commission. Your brother runs it, so you ought to be able to trust the Mississippi Ethics Commission, and let's let them look at this and to say is it proper.' They said it was legal and being reported properly. And that's that.
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In October 2007, Barbour's Former Partner At BG&R Claimed That Barbour Received Retirement Payments But Had No Ownership In The Firm
On 10/4/2007, The NE Mississippi Daily Journal reported that
Lanny Griffith, chief executive officer of the Washington lobbying firm he started with Haley Barbour, [stated that] "Gov. Barbour is not an employee or officer of the firm and neither he nor his blind trust has an ownership interest in the firm ... Consistent with the terms of the firm's operating agreement for members withdrawing or retiring from the firm, an agreement was negotiated to include a monthly termination payment (to Barbour) in exchange for tangible and intangible assets left with the firm after his retirement. That payment is fixed and does not change regardless of the financial performance of the firm. Neither Gov. Barbour nor his blind trust has received any other payments from the firm since his retirement." Griffith did not indicate the amount of the fixed payment.
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Unlike other blind trust agreements, Haley Barbour specified that several of his assets would remain in his control and that he would pay taxes on them. Indeed, Barbour has paid taxes on stock received from his old lobbying firm, but then he claims that he doesn't know anything about these very holdings and that he has no connection to the firm. Barbour has admitted to receiving a retirement plan from the firm and he receives money from a profit-sharing plan from the firm. He has signed documents stating that he receives outside income and bonuses from the firm. Yet Barbour and those close to him continue to claim that they do not know the contents of the blind trust.
Unlike other blind trusts, which rely on an independent trustee to manage all assets, Haley Barbour appointed a childhood friend, Charlie Norquist, to administer his blind trust. Norquist has refused to answer any questions about the blind trust and Barbour has maintained that he does not know the contents of the blind trust, although he has paid taxes on his holdings.
While Haley Barbour was governor, his former partners bought back the firm they started together from Interpublic. Even though this would have impacted the source of his "retirement payments" from the firm - and he would have needed to purchase stake in the new firm in order to maintain his interest in it - Barbour's former partners refused to say whether he was involved with the deal. Barbour maintained that he did not know where the money was coming from during this time, even though the buyback would have required for him to work out a new payment plan, even to fund the fixed payments received from the firm.
Many questions remain unanswered, but the facts make it clear that Haley Barbour still has a stake in BG&R. He is still paid by BG&R through a "blind trust" that is administered by Barbour's childhood friend Charlie Norquist. Since Barbour personally pays taxes on his assets rather than the trust, and a firm buyback took place that would have necessitated the renegotiation of Barbour's share in the firm, the facts point to one logical conclusion: Haley Barbour must know the contents of his blind trust.
In a clear conflict of interest, Governor Barbour has given favors family members, friends, and BG&R clients. He receives money in exchange for his favoritism, and his corrupt dealings are funded by Mississippi tax dollars. Haley Barbour serves Washington Lobbyists.
His actions are immoral, illegal, and undeniable.
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