Yahoo is running a story out of Texas by the
AP about abnormally high legal fees Harriet Miers' firm received during W's second run for Governor. It raises some interesting questions. See below
As the AP has it,
George W. Bush's rising political fortunes provided a windfall for Harriet Miers' law firm.
Campaign records show Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president's 1998 re-election bid.
Some senators are planning to explore Miers' legal work for Bush during her confirmation process to be the newest Supreme Court justice, but the White House says it won't release any memos detailing that work.
"I think people across the country recognize the importance of attorney-client privilege," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that two payments of $70,000 were made to Miers' Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell firm in Dallas within a month of each other during the 1998 campaign. Another $16,000 in payments were made between March and December 1999.
The 1998 totals dwarfed the $7,000 Bush paid Miers' firm during his first run for governor in 1994, and are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.
Business as usual? Hardly.
"I'm baffled," said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. "I've never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It's unprecedented."
The amount received by Locke, Purnell for the 1998 Texas race approaches the national tab for the 2004 Bush presidential re-election campaign, when at least $191,000 was spent on lawyers, Federal Election Commission records show.
MSM has not picked up sufficiently on the fact that Harry was one of those in charge of protecting Flyboy George's somewhat questionable record of military service. But never fear:
Presidential aides declined to say whether Miers ever worked on researching Bush's past, such as his military record.
A spokeswoman for Locke, Liddell & Sapp -- the firm created when Miers' office merged with another Dallas law firm -- said it wouldn't provide details on the payments, citing attorney-client privilege.
We can only speculate, as does the guy George trounced in that election.
Former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, a Democrat who was defeated handily by Bush in the 1998 campaign, said both the amount and the timing of the payments are curious. In late September, when Miers' firm received the first of two $70,000 payments, Mauro said he trailed Bush in the polls by 35 points.
"If they're spending that kind of money," said Mauro, now an Austin attorney who estimates he spent less than $20,000 on legal fees during the campaign, "they're spending it to protect themselves from something."
Of course, one hopes the Judiciary Committee will explore this. Two points: In many jurisdictions, legal bills are not covered by the attorney-client privilege. Remeber The Rose Firm's billing records in Watergate? Turning up in the White House living quarters notwithstanding, they were not protected. These records should not be either.
Finally, this is just what Alexander Hamilton was afraid of, pointing out in the Federalist Papers that a crony is exactly what we don't want on the Supreme Court, to protect our system of checks and balances. Harry is not only a crony of W's, but in his pay. And is she helping him hide something?
Try this link for the AP Story. The other one doesn't seem to be working.