Jepsen Skirts Statutory Obligations

The office of Attorney General in Connecticut evolved from the King’s Lawyer in the pre-Revolutionary period. It was the English attorney general who, after a hearing with Connecticut Governor John Winthrop, approved a bill for incorporation of the Connecticut Charter.

In Connecticut’s colonial period, the office of state’s attorney represented both the administrative and criminal interests of the crown. The office of Attorney General was established in 1898 to represent the civil interests of the state, the criminal interest to be retained by the chief state’s attorney. The office of Attorney General today retains its initial purpose in colonial law. The Attorney General’s office is statutorily obligated to represent the legal interests of the governor of the state and his administrators. While the nature of the chief executive in Connecticut has changed from king to governor, needs remain constant. Both king and governor operate politically within set legal constructs, and both need an office to advise the chief executive and to represent its interests and those of its agents in civil legal proceedings.

The principal duties and responsibilities of the state’s Attorney General are set forth in Conn. General Statute Section 3-125, which authorizes the Attorney General to “represent the interests of the people of the State of Connecticut in all civil legal matters involving the state to protect the public interest, and to serve as legal counsel to all state agencies.”

People in Connecticut may be forgiven for assuming that the principal duty of the office is to serve as a sort of consumer protection agency on steroids, the chief focus of two assertive and politically minded former Attorneys General, Joe Lieberman and Dick Blumenthal, both of whom used their time in office as springboards to the U.S. Senate. The first duty of the Attorney General, however, is to serve as lawyer representing the interests of the governor and state agencies.

When an Attorney General represents at any hearing a governor who has been sued by a non-governmental agency, he is fulfilling the statutory obligations of his office. When the Attorney General sues or threatens to sue an herb dealer on a complaint from a citizen that the vendor may have violated a questionable term in a contract, he is operating on the outer edge of his statutory authority. When such suits become the primary focus of the office of Attorney General – as was the case under former Attorney General Dick Blumenthal – the legislature should yank on the statutory reins that limit the authority of the Attorney General’s office.

Present Attorney General George Jepsen’s refusal to press a case involving former Governor John Rowland beyond an appellate court decision to the U.S. Supreme Court borders on a dereliction of duty. The most recent appellate court decision, which reversed an earlier decision in favor of Mr. Rowland and against a powerful, politically connected union, the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC), should be contested at the highest level, especially since the Attorney General’s office has spent considerable time and expense defending the ex-governor in a suit that claims Rowland abused his gubernatorial power by singling out state union workers for lay-offs.

The interests of the state do not disappear because the plaintiff at trial is a former governor who had been convicted of depriving the state of honest services, a charge to which Mr. Rowland pleaded guilty and for which he was sentence to a year in prison and four months of house arrest.

Both Mr. Malloy and Mr. Jepsen are union friendly government officials. Mr. Malloy has marched on the picket line with striking unions. His first budget – negotiated by the governor and SEBAC after Republican leaders in the General Assembly had been ejected from the negotiating table – was praised by union-friendly state Senator Edith Prague as too good to be true; she said at the time that union leaders would be crazy to reject a deal arranged by Mr. Malloy and SEBAC bargaining officials. Mr. Jepsen’s first job after graduating from college was as staff counsel for the carpenter’s union of Western Connecticut, UBC Local 210. For nearly ten years before entering the General Assembly, Jepsen negotiated contracts for wages and benefits, represented injured workers, ensured job safety, and advocated for different bidding practices.  Mr. Jepsen served in the General Assembly for 16 years, the last 6 as Senate Majority Leader.

Rather than press the reversal of the appellate court to the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Jepsen has decided to negotiate the case with SEBAC, which represents a significant step backward in the train of litigation. It is possible that Mr. Jepsen has traded in his statutory obligation to represent the state’s legal interests for a nostalgic turn at union negotiations? Given Mr. Jepsen's past close ties with unions, the trade is certainly understandable. And given his past close ties to the state Democratic Party and a union friendly governor, the Attorney General’s decision to forego further litigation in favor of a further bout of union negotiation is unsurprising, though some may think it highly political -- in the bad sense.

Who’s Minding the Store?

State auditors recently concluded an audit of the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). Their findings, both depressing and alarming, suggest no adults have been directing the agency. The audit covered only the fiscal years 2009 and 2010.

Among the findings were these:

Malloy the Progressive

According to Public Policy Polling, Governor Dannel Malloy “continues to be one of the most unpopular Governors in the country in our polling.”

Mr. Malloy’s approval-disapproval spread likely astonished most political actors in the state, with the possible exception of the phlegmatic Roy Occhiogrosso, the governor chief flack catcher, whose response to a reputable, non-partisan poll showing the governor with an approval rating of a slender 33 percent and a disapproval rating of 51 percent was a barely suppressed yawn.

“We generally don’t comment on polls,” said Mr. Occhiogrosso, “because what’s there to say? Polls come and go, numbers go up and down. The governor always tries to do what he thinks is in the best interests of the people of Connecticut, irrespective of the political consequences.”

Politicians also come and go, and their comings and goings are sometimes intimately connected with sliding approval ratings.

On previous occasions, Mr. Malloy has said that he is uninterested in popularity contests. His principle business lies in re-inventing Connecticut; in this ambition, he has patterned his political program after that of President Barack Obama, who has been during his first term in office busily re-inventing America.

Actually, it may be the other way around. It is always difficult in these circumstances to determine precisely which came first, the chicken or the egg. In his second campaign for the presidency, Mr. Obama – slipping in the polls, but not quite as precipitously as Mr. Malloy – has begun to chatter about millionaires paying their “fair share”; in Mr. Obama’s view, a millionaire is anyone who earns by the sweat of his brow more than $250,000 per year, well short of a million. With the Damoclean sword of a $15 trillion deficit hanging over their heads, most non-millionaire taxpayers in the country are beginning to brace themselves for a massive tax increase.  Mr. Malloy, it will be recalled, is the father of the largest tax increase in Connecticut history, compared to which his spending cuts have been indeterminate and modest.

The similarities between Mr. Obama and Mr. Malloy are telling. Both are young, and it is said that Mr. Obama has some Irish blood rolling his veins.

Both are ardent travelers. According to a recent story, Mr. Malloy will be on his way to China sometime in September, there to explore the possibility of persuading his equivalent in China’s fascist government to invest in Connecticut. The Chinese already are heavily invested in the foundering U.S. economy. Mr. Malloy possibly has more miles on his pedometer than any other Connecticut governor and has shown himself to be – the views of Jonathan Pelto notwithstanding – a faithful progressive.         

Support for unions was one of the identifying characteristics of the 1912 presidential campaign involving trust buster and former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, a convert to progressive causes, Republican President Howard Taft, a golfer whose real political ambitions would later be fulfilled when he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Democratic candidate and dilettante progressive Woodrow Wilson, and socialist candidate Eugene Debs, the real progressive deal. In the coming 2012 election, the United States will be reprising its 1912 counterpart, which some political scientists consider one of the most defining elections in U.S. History. The 1912 election, in which progressivism made its first and most lasting impression on American politics, introduced into the political mainstream the central tenants of a progressive program that reached its zenith during the administration of Franklin Roosevelt.

Mr. Roosevelt favored the unionization of private industry but drew a line in the sand concerning the unionization of government workers. Willing to help union workers obtain more of the profits they helped generate in the private sector, Mr. Roosevelt said “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government,” because government workers do not generate profits; they negotiate for more tax money. A union strike against taxpayers, Mr. Roosevelt said, would be “unthinkable and intolerable.”

In Connecticut, government workers have become the pampered pets of politicians like Mr. Malloy and Speaker of the State House of Representatives Chris Dovovan, both of whom were quite willing to exclude from budget deliberations Republican leaders who had not yet bowed their necks to union demands. Indeed, the Democratic dominated General Assembly pre-approved a budget that later was substantially changed by Mr. Malloy negotiating in concert with the very same union bargainers Mr. Roosevelt thought should never have a claim on public money.

Ah well, it is the nature of progressivism to progress. Accordingly, Connecticut has witnessed in recent days it’s governor andattorney general marching in a picket line in support of union workers against nursing home administrators, sounding for all the world like Mr. Debs accusing greedy administrators of the Pullman Company of buying the favors of politicians. Not one commentator has yet accused SEBAC of purchasing the favors of Mr. Malloy and Attorney General George Jepsen through donations and in-kind contributions to their campaigns, the nightmare that haunted Mr. Roosevelt’s otherwise placid nights.      

Donovan, Still Kicking

It may be a little early to bury the corpse, though moments after the finance director for state House Speaker Chris Donovan’s congressional campaign, Robert Braddock Jr., was arrested and charged with hiding contributions of about $20,000, Governor Dannel Malloy, a former prosecutor with a soft spot in his heart for multiple murderers, threw a spade full of dirt over the quivering body.

Said Mr. Malloy in a press release:

“I want to commend the US Attorney’s Office and the FBI for their diligence in the investigation and the speed in which they’ve taken action. Law enforcement is in many ways the first and last line of defense for our taxpayers, and when an announcement like this happens, we should all be grateful for their work.

“These allegations are despicable. While I am encouraged that the Speaker is cooperating with the investigation, his position requires that he give our residents a full explanation of what he knows.

“Allegations like this not only damage a campaign or a candidate, they also undermine citizen’s belief in their government’s ability to carry out its responsibilities.”

According to an affidavit written and sworn to by the FBI agent who facilitated the arrest of Mr. Braddock, the finance director ran afoul of a campaign financing statute that makes it illegal for a campaign to conceal the source of campaign funds. It is a violation of federal campaign finance law for any person to knowingly accept a contribution made by one person in another’s name. Mr. Braddock is alleged to have accepted roughly $20,000 from an investor in the tobacco industry, thereafter laundering the money as multiple campaign checks given to the Donovan for Congress campaign by dummy donors. The investor was an FBI plant who, for purposes of this column, we shall call Mr. Sting. The names in the affidavit, thinly disguised, have been changed to protect the case against Mr. Donovan’s finance director.

Were it not for the state’s insatiable thirst for more tax money to plug a hole in Connecticut’s budget, consistently in arrears, Mr. Donovan’s path to the U.S. House need not have been cluttered by unseemly charges in FBI affidavits.

To goose more tax dollars from tobacco connected businesses, the Democratic dominated legislature passed a bill months ago levying a tax on roll-your-own tobacco shops, the well having run dry after Mr. Malloy and the Democrats passed the largest tax increase in state history. On behalf of state Revenue Services Commissioner Kevin Sullivan, Attorney General George Jepsen sought an injunction against Tracey’s Smoke Shop and Tobacco LLC for the illegal manufacture of cigarettes at its stores in Norwalk and Orange.

In February, a Superior Court ruled that the shops were not tobacco manufacturers and therefore not taxable entities under the relevant law. This judgment was little more than an inconvenience to Democratic legislators, and state tax officials promptly sought to overcome the judicial impediment though the creation of yet another bill that would allow them accesses to the tobacco shops’ piggy banks. The new bill opened the door to aggressive lobbying. But, alas, the bill died at the end of the last session.

Increasingly in politics, bills that ought never to have been passed are used as instruments to generate campaign funds for politicians who, through excessive taxation and burdensome regulations, are able to obtain from government rent seekers transfers of campaign cash into their own coffers in return for political favors. In this game of thrones, everyone wins but taxpayers.

In the short time since Mr. Braddock was arrested, two newspapers have called upon Mr. Donovan to make himself available for questions. Good luck with that. One paper has urged Mr. Donovan to quit the General Assembly, and most Democratic legislators connected in any way with the now toxic bill that would pile additional taxes on roll-your-own tobacco shops have assumed defensive crouches. Mr. Donovan has announced he has turned over to Brendan Sharkey, a House member in line for the Speaker’s post, his responsibilities as Speaker, at the same time announcing he does not intend to withdraw his candidacy for the U.S. House.

Mr. Malloy has pronounced the “allegations” in the affidavit used to secure Mr. Braddock arrest “despicable.” It is, of course, not the allegations that are despicable, but rather the tax and regulatory environment that opens a hundred doors to political corruption. The crony capitalist is the natural ally of the corruptible money grubbing politician. Politicians and their staffs rush into temptations of this kind much in the way a young boy with two stomachs rushes into the candy store. Hell itself will freeze over before despicable money seeking politicians condemn equally despicable quasi-socialist, faux capitalist rent seekers.

The Skeletons In Blumenthal’s Closet

Very quietly – much too quietly – Attorney General George Jepsen has closed “513 of the 699 whistleblower cases he inherited from his predecessor, former Attorney general Richard Blumenthal, according to a storycirculated by The Associated Press (AP) and published in the Washington Post.

During his campaign for Attorney General, Mr. Jepsen was pressed by Republican candidate for attorney general Martha Dean quickly dispose of cases handled by Mr. Blumenthal during his 20 year tenure. Mrs. Dean ran for attorney general twice, once against the popular Mr. Blumenthal in 2002 and again in 2010. In the course of the Jepsen-Dean debates, Mr. Jepsen seemed particularly sensitive to delays in resolving such cases, and Mrs. Dean was insistent that, should she be selected as attorney general, she would immediately institute a review of Mr. Blumenthal’s crippling backlog and close cases that never should have been prosecuted, tendering apologies to those of Mr. Blumenthal’s litigation victims who were left for years to hang on hooks in the attorney general’s own private torture chambers. A good many of Mr. Blumenthal’s suits against persons and companies were left unresolved after more than four years of litigation.

 

In virtually all his prosecutions, Mr. Blumenthal sent out press releases to most, if not all, Connecticut media outlets. The recipient of one of Mr. Blumenthal’s press releases dutifully would advertise the prosecution, occasionally printing the releases almost verbatim, as well as subsequent releases relating to the case at most stages of a long and tortuous litigation process. National outlets were also inundated with media releases that, we now discover, were unnecessarily destructive to 513 of Mr. Blumenthal’s targets.

Unfortunately, not as many news outlets as have printed press releases relating to the cases closed by Mr. Jepsen will print follow up stories concerning the vindication of the victims of Mr. Blumenthal’s unnecessary prosecutions.

Mr. Jepsen, who told the AP in an interview that many of the probes he dismissed “lacked merit,” is to be congratulated for having acted so expeditiously in his review. The number of cases dismissed in which “something meaningfully wrong is going on,” Mr. Jepsen told the AP, was small.

Matt O’Connor of SEBAC, a coalition of state employee unions, remarked that he could not recall “such a large number of whistleblower cases being closed. But because allegations of fraud or shoddy work by government agencies and contractors are protected from public release, he said there’s no way to know why Jepsen acted.”

Jepsen said he terminated several probes of companies and organizations, according to the AP report, “because he and the companies settled the dispute ‘or it may be that there’s not very much there.’”

 

Mr. Jepsen warned that public officials should tread carefully in those cases in which the regulation of business and job creation was at stake and invited a comparison between himself and Mr. Blumenthal. He said of himself, “I’m a pretty low-key person. I like to see all sides of an issue before I jump in. My background academically and professionally and politically is non-confrontational. We do plenty of litigation here but I just generally view litigation ought to be as a last resort.”

Jepsen noted that he “has been a political ally of Blumenthal’s for decades, even working as an intern for Blumenthal in 1979, and that any contrast between the two is ‘really more my own style and background’than it is about policy differences,” according to the AP report.

Mr. Blumenthal responded to the implied charges of incompetence in the AOP story with a mixture of injured innocence and chutzpah.

Refusing to comment decision made by his successor, Mr. Blumenthal said he kept cases open even though they were not active because, according to the AOP story, “important information could always develop later. He said he had no knowledge of which cases were closed and declined to comment on differences between his and Jepsen’s approaches to the job.”

Mr. Blumenthal -- who used his accomplishments as attorney general as a springboard to higher office as a Democratic U.S. Senator – told the AP “I would say very emphatically my record speaks for itself, for my aggressive and proactive approach to law enforcement to protect business people, consumers, all the people of Connecticut.”

The AP, the recipient of thousands of Blumenthal press releases over the years, noted in its story that Mr. Jepsen’s approach “is a marked contrast to Blumenthal, who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year after 20 years as attorney general. Blumenthal sued numerous companies over allegations of consumer rip-offs, illegal dumping and violations of workers’ rights in the name of agencies such as the Department of Consumer Protection and Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.”

At some point – one hopes against hope – Mr. Jepsen will post on the attorney general’s website a list of the 315 cases Mr. Blumenthal improperly prosecuted as attorney general by case name and docket number so that journalists in the state may review then in the light of Mr. Jepsen’s review and dismissals.

In connection with one case settled after much litigation, Connecticut Commentary noted that Mr. Blumenthal had been much in the habit of hanging his victims on litigation hooks for long periods of time, during which they became progressively poorer as their reputation were battered by Mr. Blumenthal’s artfully worded press releases. Those who relied on Mr. Blumenthal’s many releases, one likes to think, have some obligation in restoring the reputation and public standing of those who – in 513 of the 699 whistleblower cases Mr. Blumenthal litigated – were innocent as charged. A legislative review of the cases dismissed by Mr. Jepsen, with a view to establishing a less personalized method of prosecuting cases in the attorney general's office, would not be out of order.

Yankee Institute vs SEBAC, Final Round

Attorney General George Jepsen having investigated a charge made to his office by SEBAC, a coalition of unions the membership of which soon will be voting either to adopt or reject Plan A 2, that the Yankee Institute had used state the state’s e-mail system to communicate with union workers, the attorney general found that the charges against the institute were false. The comprehensive investigation by two state agencies, the attorney general’s office and the state Auditors of Public Account, Mr. Jepsen wrote in his finding, “did not show that the state e-mail system was improperly accessed or compromised in violation of state laws or policies.”

“As part of our inquiry,” Mr. Jepsen wrote, “we reviewed the e-mails sent to state employees and provided by SEBAC. The first e-mail, containing the subject line 'VOTE No twice on concessions… pass it on' was sent on May 24, 2011 at 8:07 pm from 'Lawrence Jones' to a state employee. The second e-mail, containing the subject line ‘http//votenotoconcessions.com,’ was sent to a state employee on June 13, 2011 at 8:07 pm from 'Daniel Luciano.' Neither Lawrence Jones nor Daniel Luciano is listed on the state’s central financial and administrative computer system (CORE-CT) as a state employee. Neither of these two e-mails originated from State of Connecticut internet protocol (IP) addresses. Each originated outside the state e-mail system and reflected a Yahoo e-mail address. The e-mails were sent to IP addresses leased by the State of Connecticut. State information systems security personnel informed us that the e-mails were not sent from within the state system, and there was no evidence that the safeguards in place to protect the state’s network from hackers or other intrusions were compromised or altered to permit or facilitate the transmission of these e-mails.”

Mr. Jepsen is to be lauded for not having allowed the leaders of SEBAC to use his office as a political tool for the purpose of discrediting the institute on false charges that, had they been sustained, might have succeeded in drawing public attention away from SEBAC’s botched attempt to convince rank and file union members to vote in favor of Governor Dannel Malloy’s doomed Plan A.

The same union leaders who falsely accused the institute of illegalities recently unilaterally changed union by-laws so that a previous vote on Plan A would once again be voted upon under circumstances more favorable both to Mr. Malloy and SEBAC negotiators, causing one commentator – yours truly – to note that SEBAC, having found it impossible under the old by-laws to fix a vote, had discovered a way to fix the voting process to its advantage. This kind of transparent attempt to fix a vote could only succeed if union leaders were to spew out a cloud of skunk scent to distract public attention from their own dramatic failings. The Yankee Institute, and more especially Zach Janowski, the institute’s investigative reporter, were convenient scapegoats upon which SEBAC leaders sought unsuccessfully to pin their own too obvious failings.

SEBAC’s objections to Mr. Jepsen’s finding were amusingly predictable. Leaping over the results of Mr. Jepsen’s exhautive examination, SEBAC lamented that the architecture of the state’s e-mail system “is apparently arranged so that outside groups can get around inadequate software restrictions and distribute emails through the system without being in violation of computer hacking laws -- and apparently without even being subject to detection” – and never mind that Mr. Jepsen found no instance of the state’s email having been hacked by the institute. SEBAC then noted that the institute’s political interests include “producing painful job cuts and ‘downsizing’ state government, which is really just code for privatizing public services.” In fact, Mr. Cullen has noted that the institute favored Plan A  – the very same plan promoted by SEBAC union leaders – over Plan B, which recently has been implemented by Mr. Malloy and includes painful cuts. No doubt the institute, along with many governors and legislators, favors the privatizing of public services as a means of controlling unsustainable costs. SEBAC’s objection to the institute’s view on privatization might have been more justly urged in a letter to the editor; SEBAC thought it rose to the level of a crime and engaged the attorney general as an instrument to harass and punish an organization for having taken advantage of its constitutional right disagree with the leaders of SEBAC.

Yankee Institute Director Fergus Cullen commented following Mr. Jepsen’s finding, “Making reckless accusations without a shred of evidence damaged the union's credibility. Rank-and-file state employees deserve better for their dues than the stunning incompetence of union staff throughout the concessions ratification process."

Mr. Cullen made his comment but a few hours before he had been told by Trinity College that the institute was being given the boot or, as Mr. Cullen, whose sense of humor is unfailing even in trying circumstances, preferred to put it – being expelled – from the Trinity College campus in Hartford where, for the past 13 years, the institute has stoutly defended educational institutions, private enterprise and constitutional rights more often miss-cited than observed by its detractors. It is not known what part SEBAC or union friendly legislators may have played in the institute’s unexpected expulsion from Trinity.

SEBAC Says News Media, Managers Sources Of Inaccurate Information

In a message to all its rank and file members, SEBAC, the coalition of union leaders authorized to dicker with the Malloy administration on contractual matters, reported:

“At the request of State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) union leaders, the Malloy Administration has moved to address conflicting information disseminated to some workers who recently received notice of layoff.”

Some members, according to the notice, have received inaccurate information spread – not by the Yankee Institute, which SEBAC reported to the attorney general’s office for having compromised it’s e-mail system – but “by news media sources and by some agency managers.” Attorney General George Jepsen a few days ago released a report finding that the SEBAC complaint was without merit.
“The directive was necessary,” SEBAC reported on its propaganda site, “because not only have some state managers disseminated inaccuracies about rescinding layoffs, many in the news media have reported myths and distortions about state employees and the tentative agreement.”

Mr. Malloy obliged by supplying a clarifying statement sent by SEBAC to rank and file members who will shortly be voting on Plan A2.

Although the SEBAC site still carries the item reporting its request to the attorney general that the Yankee Institute be prosecuted for having illegally commandeered the state’s e-mail system in order to ventilate its views, the site does not include in full Attorney General George Jepsen’s finding, but then propaganda sheets are not bound by the constraints of responsible journalism.

Attorney General Clears Yankee Institute of SEBAC Charges

Attorney General George Jepsen’s statement concerning a complaint filed with his office claiming falsely that the Yankee Institute obtained improper access to the state e-mail system to disseminate false information related to the tentative SEBAC agreement is here printed in full:

STATEMENT BY ATTORNEY GENERAL GEORGE JEPSEN

REGARDING SEBAC COMPLAINT ABOUT E MAILS

By letter dated June 17, 2011, representatives of the State Employees Bargaining Agent Coalition (SEBAC) requested that my office investigate possible violations of state law by the Yankee Institute. The letter alleged that the Yankee Institute obtained improper access to the state e-mail system to disseminate false information related to the tentative SEBAC agreement. We have now, in conjunction with the Auditors of Public Accounts, concluded our inquiry of this matter. We have found no evidence that the state e-mail system was improperly accessed or hacked.

As part of the inquiry, we met twice with representatives of SEBAC. We reviewed the e-mails brought to our attention by SEBAC, and certain other e-mails critical of the proposed settlement brought to our attention by others. We also worked with the former state Department of Information Technology (now a part of the Department of Administrative Services) to determine whether any of these e-mails had been transmitted to the state e-mail system through a breach or violation of that system, and whether there was any other evidence of a breach of the state e-mail system in connection with communications to state employees regarding the proposed settlement.

As part of our inquiry, we reviewed the e-mails sent to state employees and provided by SEBAC. The first e-mail, containing the subject line “VOTE No twice on concessions..pass it on” was sent on May 24, 2011 at 8:07 pm from “Lawrence Jones” to a state employee. The second e-mail, containing the subject line “http//votenotoconcessions.com,” was sent to a state employee on June 13, 2011 at 8:07 pm from “Daniel Luciano.” Neither Lawrence Jones nor Daniel Luciano is listed on the state’s central financial and administrative computer system (CORE-CT) as a state employee. Neither of these two e-mails originated from State of Connecticut internet protocol (IP) addresses. Each originated outside the state e-mail system and reflected a Yahoo e-mail address. The e-mails were sent to IP addresses leased by the State of Connecticut. State information systems security personnel informed us that the e-mails were not sent from within the state system, and there was no evidence that the safeguards in place to protect the state’s network from hackers or other intrusions were compromised or altered to permit or facilitate the transmission of these e-mails.

In the course of the investigation, we uncovered information about additional e-mails that were critical of the proposed union agreement and sent to state employees. Some of these e-mails originated from IP addresses outside the State of Connecticut system; other e-mails were sent by state employees from their state computers and addressed to other state employees. We found no evidence that these e-mails were transmitted in circumvention of the safeguards in place to protect the integrity of the state e-mail system.

SEBAC complained that negative information about the tentative agreement was sent to state employees through “blast” e-mails, suggesting state software settings were circumvented. State information systems security personnel found no evidence that anyone sent “blast” e-mails concerning the tentative SEBAC agreement from outside the state e-mail system to hundreds or thousands of state employees in a single mailing and no evidence that security measures were bypassed.

With some limitations, individuals outside state government have the right to e-mail state employees. Here, because there was no evidence that state laws or policies were violated, i.e., no evidence to substantiate that the state e-mail system was compromised, hacked, or used without authority, we did not pursue the investigation further to attempt to determine the identity of the outside senders or consider the allegations that the e-mails contained false information.

In the course of our investigation, we noted that some individual state employees had used the state e-mail system to broadcast opinions about the proposed settlement in possible violation of state and agency policies about acceptable use of the state e-mail system. The relevant state agencies promptly addressed the conduct. Generally, state agencies, in accordance with their personnel policies, can and should continue to address any alleged misuse of the state e-mail system by state employees.

Our review of the e-mails provided by SEBAC, and other selected e-mails that originated from IP addresses outside the state system, did not show that the state e-mail system was improperly accessed or compromised in violation of state laws or policies. Therefore, based on the evidence to date, and with the agreement of the State Auditors, I am closing the investigation.

###

(Note: The Attorney General will not be commenting beyond the statement.)

Three Notes On The Current Crisis

The unilateral changes in by-laws


It may be noted that what has been done unilaterally by the union leadership may be undone unilaterally by a different leadership.

Despite a desperate attempt by SEBAC negotiators Dan Livingston and Matt O’Connor to pin on such convenient scapegoats as the Yankee Institute  their dramatic failure to sell plan A to union rank and file members, some unions, dissatisfied with SEBAC representation, are now shopping around for other unions with which they might affiliate. In mid-June SEBAC leaders charged the Yankee Institute had improperly used the state’s e-mail system to communicate with union members and referred their dark suspicions to Attorney General George Jepsen, Connecticut’s version, under the state’s previous Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, of poet Francis Thompson’s “The Hound Of Heaven.”

SEBAC leaders, working in tandem with Plan A salesmen in the administration of Governor Dannel Malloy, unilaterally changed union by-laws to reduce to 50 percent the votes necessary to pass Plan A after it had been rejected under previous inconvenient by-laws.

This change, since it entailed a re-do of a previous vote rejecting Plan A, has not gone down well with many rank and file union members. The re-do vote under altered by-laws rankled the 43 percent of union members who initially voted against Plan A.

Passage of Plan A is virtually assured under the new by-laws unilaterally adopted by SEBAC leaders following the first unsuccessful vote. The re-do vote and by-laws change also have alienated the affections of some union members who initially voted affirmatively to adopt Plan A and regard the by-laws change as an undemocratic attempt to void a legitimate voting process without seeking to affirm the changes though a rank and file membership vote. If you can’t fix a vote, the next best thing is to fix the process that governs the vote. The unilateral change in by laws is viewed by many union members as an attempt to fix a vote by other means and, as such, it is likely to have lasting repercussions.

In the next three weeks, according to a story in the Hartford Courant, members of the 15 unions comprising SEBAC will be voting on re-drafted barely revised Plan A. But just as some pigs are more equal than other pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, so here some votes are more equal than others.

While the new tentative agreement will be presented to the full membership of some unions, some union leaders, Mr. O’Connor wrote on the union’s website, “are planning to have elected leadership cast their union’s vote because there are no negative changes in the revised TA as compared to the previous agreement.” In this tortured sentence, Mr. O’Connor appears to be saying that if a union voted to affirm Plan A, individual members of such unions will not, on a redo vote, be given the opportunity to change their vote from affirmative to negative.


The Closed Doors Of A Putative “Transparent” Administration

Candidate for Governor Dan Malloy promised voters a transparent administration. The budget process this year falls far short of transparency. In previous administrations, the budget shuttle cock was batted in public between two parties, one of which, the Republican Party, controlled the executive office first under Governor John Rowland and later under Governor Jodi Rell.

The political tension between Republican governors and the Democratic controlled General Assembly insured a certain degree of transparency. While it is true that Republican governors often stiffed Republican leaders in the General Assembly while making private deals behind closed doors with Democratic leaders, the party bifurcation nevertheless allowed budget negotiations between the two parties to be ventilated in Connecticut’s left of center media.

With the election of Dannel Malloy as governor, the crack in the door was permanently sealed shut. When reporters during the current budget negotiations asked their usual sources within Republican Party ranks what was going on behind the caucus closed doors, they replied, truthfully, that they knew no more than had been reported in the press. And the press knew nothing.

Negotiations between Malloy administration officials and SEBAC were just as impenetrable. Following Mr. Malloy’s elevation to the governor’s office, an iron curtain had been rung down on what the media in other administrations had denominated “the public’s business.” But this is how the one party state operates; closed doors give the current administration an insuperable propaganda advantage.

Union resistance to the autocratic rule of the union-administration-media-complex is but a crack in the concrete through which, given time enough, a blade of grass may sprout. The blade, one may be certain, will be reported to the attorney general’s office.

Malloy As Prometheus

Prometheus was the god in Greek mythology punished by Zeus for having brought the gift of enlightenment to men. Similarly, Mr. Malloy brought the gift of Plan A to state unions – breathes there a commentator who has not said, multiple times, that Plan A was a boon to unions? – and this gift was rejected, Mr. Malloy having been stretched on a rock outside the portals of heaven, his liver to be torn by the sharp beaks of eagles. Now he has been saved. Mankind’s tears have been turned to shouts of joy. Such is the narrative we can expect to see piped by successfully propagandized media adepts in the next few weeks – when, in fact, it is the state itself stretched on the rock waiting for a ravenous eagle to drink its wise blood.

The Aftermath

Following the rejection by state unions of a deal thought to be too good to be true, left of center columnists in the state were grievously disappointed

A columnist watching “Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's union concession plan fall into a death spiral” wondered “what decade some state employees think they live in,” and a Hartford paper mused that state union selfishness would cost unions “support in Connecticut.” Translation: The union’s resistance to a fait accompli firmly established by union leaders and Mr. Malloy will be noted in a few stinging editorials.

But there is something more amazing still than the rejection of Plan A, a budget scheme thought to be less painful for everyone than Mr. Malloy’s alternative Plan B: The state for some time has been permitting a few unelected union negotiators veto power over budgets passed by the legislature, and we have become so used to the ritual we hardly notice that extraordinary powers, constitutionally reserved for governors or legislators, has been delegated to a handful of union budget negotiators. Unions have become a fourth branch of government in Connecticut. And because the union vote is dispositive, it may be argued that unions are more powerful than any of the three branches.

It is through the thoughtless surrender of constitutional powers belonging by right to the three legitimate branches of government that states, at first obliging, ultimately become wards of unions.

So certain was the Malloy administration that Plan A -- pre-approved by dominant Democrats in the legislature -- would not be rejected by the union rank and file, that Mr. Malloy allowed himself to travel to Washington D.C. when the fatal vote was in process, an assurance that came crashing to the ground on bloody Friday when the final vote was tallied.

Just before the roof fell in on Plan A, one of the principle negotiators, sensing the need of a scapegoat, petitioned Attorney General George Jepsen to sink his teeth into the Yankee Institute. Jepsen adroitly passed that political poison pill to state auditors.

Plan A did not fail because its critics were shuttling incorrect assessments to rank and file union members. The union members who voted down Plan A had been fully propagandized by union leaders who, seemingly, wanted them to approve the lesser of two evils. They voted against the plan because they felt, implausible as it may seem, that the plan was not in their best interest. And in the end it was the interest of a narrow – one might almost say narrow-minded -- political faction that determined the general interest, a turn of events that will continue until the legislature reasserts its authority and finds some means of readjusting the horse and cart so that the horse leads and the cart is pulled in a direction that benefits the general interest of the whole state. The union voting system, badly in need of reform, is a Rube Goldberg contraption that only a rocket scientist could pretend to understand.

Speaker of the House Chris Donovan’s political ambition was one of the temporary casualties of the collapse of Plan A.

Mr. Donovan, once a labor and community organizer, had intended to announce his intension to run for the U.S. House in the 5th District but patriotically put off the announcement when some units of AFSCME voted against Mr. Malloy’s attempt at shared sacrifice. When it was feared Plan A was doomed, Mr. Donovan said he felt his proper place was in the General Assembly. Until that moment, many suppose, Mr. Donovan had been careful to keep his fingerprints off union negotiations, a posture he likely will abandon in the near future.

Mr. Malloy’s “shared sacrifice” has taken an inordinate bite out of taxpayer wallets. The bite taken from state workers, mild by most accounts, has diminished during the negotiation process, relieved in part by an artificial “surplus” tucked into the budget. A re-negotiation led by Mr. Donovan in the House and Speaker of the Senate Don Williams, the unions may hope, will reduce it further.

Garber Retained By Republicans To Examine Bridgeport Pile

Ross Garber, a partner in the Hartford, CT and Washington, D.C. offices of Shipman & Goodwin LLP and an attorney familiar with state prosecutions, has been engaged by the state Republican Party “to conduct a preliminary inquiry into widespread reports of Election Day issues in Bridgeport.” according to a media release issued by Republican Party Chairman Chris Healy.

Citing a preliminary inquiry, Mr. Garber today sent letters to the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, David Fein, and the Chief States Attorney for the State of Connecticut, Kevin Kane, pointing to evidence that the voting process in Bridgeport was riddled with “significant deficiencies, irregularities and improprieties, most notably in connection with the creation and distribution of ballots; the counting of votes; and the tabulation of election results.” The letter indicates that these issues “may have led to the disenfranchisement of those qualified to vote in the November 2 election and the violation of the rights of citizens of Connecticut under the state and federal Constitutions.”

In addition, Republican state Sen. Kevin Witkos has called upon both Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane to investigate the improper use of reverse 9-1-1 on Election Day to notify select Bridgeport voters of extended voting hours.

“State law is very clear that reverse 9-1-1 is an emergency notification system only,” Witkos said. “As a matter of fact, the law very clearly states that the system is to be used ‘only in case of life-threatening emergencies.’ Not by any stretch of the imagination can notifying Bridgeport voters that they had an extra two hours to vote be considered a life-threatening emergency, or really any kind of an emergency.

“Since some people got the reverse 9-1-1 message and some did not, I have to ask if we are to assume that being notified about the extended voting hours rose to the level of a ‘life threatening emergency’ for residents of some parts of the city but not others. On its face, this is appalling.”

Democratic senator-elect Blumenthal shortly will be leaving his post as attorney general to assume his responsibilities in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Blumenthal, known for issuing florid press releases, may be able to respond to Senator Witkos before he leaves to take command in Washington of U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd’s soon to be vacant seat. But if Mr. Blumenthal should not be up to the task, a rapid response may be forthcoming from attorney general-elect George Jepsen, whose prior affiliation with the Democratic Party – Jepsen was at one time Democratic Party Chairman in Connecticut – certainly will not impair his judgment or his findings, for Jepsen is an honorable man.

Post Mortems and Prophecies

It’s usual after elections to see a flurry of post mortems and prophecies in the media.

On one point, Connecticut’s media is almost in universal agreement: Money talks, but it cannot alone win elections. This perception was trotted out during the Linda McMahon campaign almost from its inception. The Republican convention, it has been asserted dozens of times, went for money over good sense. The convention might have chosen the superior senatorial candidate, Rob Simmons, over McMahon, but the glitter of gold bewitched Republicans. McMahon had vowed to spend as much as $50 million on her campaign. Her money, spend mostly on TV advertising and campaign staff, reduced Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s early lead from 40 to 9 points. But in the end, the sainted Blumenthal survived handsomely and now will go on in the U.S. Congress to assault businesses with much rhetorical brio as he deployed as attorney general. His replacement as attorney general, George Jepsen, has said often enough during his own campaign that he would be more discrete in chasing businesses out of Connecticut, and there were broad hints in his campaign that the new attorney general would seriously address a backlog of cases now being litigated.

The analysis supposes that Simmons, whose service record is unimpeachable and honorable, might have had a better chance at assaulting Blumenthal’s assertion, made several times in various venues, that he had served in Vietnam while, as a matter of record, he first successfully avoided the draft through a series of deferments and then served stateside during the war out of harm’s way.

Blumenthal’s lapses in this regard, measured against his record as attorney general, more or less balanced out. The voting public simply weighed mitigating factors against aggravating factors and concluded that Blumenthal was innocent as charged. It’s doubtful that Simmons could have exploited the several “lapses in judgments” made by Blumenthal any better than McMahon, who was seriously wounded by video clips of wrestlers being wrestlers.

Simmons would not have had sufficient funds to counteract millionaire Blumenthal’s well funded campaign. It may seem counterintuitive, but state Republicans are unable to marshal funding as successfully as Democrats. When one considers money actually spent in state campaigns, Republicans are, relatively speaking, dressed in rags compared to their richly appointed opponents. In his congressional campaign, John Larson, who might have won in the gerrymandered 1st District on a dime, had raised $2.7 million by the end of September; Brickley had on hand about $250,000. Oddly, few voices were raised in the press claiming that the well heeled Larson was attempting to "buy the election." Republicans were vastly outspent by Democrats across the board, except in the case of McMahon, an exception that proved the rule. Connecticut’s constitutionally questionable Campaign Finance Reform Bill was supposed to restore integrity to elections and level the political playing field, but the spirit of the bill was subverted by a last minute decision on the part of the Democratic dominated legislature to supply the state’s future governor, Dan Malloy, with an additional $3 million, and the recent vote counting follies in Bridgeport very likely could not have been prevented through any legislation conceived in what has now become a one party Democratic run state.

Following the messy vote count in Bridgeport, the Hartford Courant, for whose editorial writers the glass is always half full, shot a pea across the bow of the next governor.

The paper has detected warning signs “that a new ethos of sacrifice and austerity is needed in the corridors of power. There can be no business as usual. The state's perilous fiscal condition and its barren record of producing jobs won't allow it.” Malloy’s campaign stumbled on the death penalty – over the opposition of a majority of Connecticut voters, the Democratic dominated legislature will push through yet another bill abolishing the death penalty, and this time it will be signed by Malloy, the previous abolition bill having been vetoed by outgoing Governor Jodi Rell – however, “the main reason the election was so close was the fear by many voters that Mr. Malloy wouldn't be tough enough in challenging the legislature and the unions to shrink the size and cost of government.”

Of course, any shrinkage in either spending or the cost of government in the new one party state will be temporary. Tax increases will be permanent. But the Courant, as well as other left of center publications in the state, knew this when they threw their editorial support to Democrats. In a democracy, people always get the kind of government they deserve. In a left of center media monopoly, they get what’s good for them.

Malloy will have the same problem as Rell with the union controlled leadership in the General Assembly. The Democratic caucus in the legislature will no doubt be amused by both the pea shooters and the peas lobbed at them across the editorial desks at those papers where half empty glasses are always half full.

Dean vs. Courant

The Hartford Courant, where ink stained wretch Colin McEnroe parks his pen mightier than the sword, spiked his Sunday column on Martha Dean.

McEnroe understands completely. The Courant bars opinion pieces that appear after the first Sunday before an election, mostly for reasons of fairness. A target of an opinion printed a mere two days before election, in this case Dean, would not have sufficient time to answer any manifestly unjust criticisms within such a short time frame.

While McEnroe missed the bell, other political writers at the Courant, not one of whom has during the entire campaign written a commentary that might be considered favorable to Dean, were not so unfortunate, and there are some, Dean among them, who have reason to suspect that all opinions pouring fourth from the Courant concerning Dean are manifestly partisan.

In any case, McEnroe’s column very likely would have been redundant: The Courant already had endorsed Dean’s opponent, George Jepsen, and launched a broadside against a matter of some moment: A few days ago, after the Supreme Court had issued its written opinion on Susan Bysiewicz’s eligibility for the office of attorney general, Dean had filed a motion with the court contesting the eligibility of Jepsen.

Before I proceed, I must insert here a brief confession. I have written columns and blogs myself protesting the Bysiewicz decision. Connecticut’s Supreme Court may have been wrong when it ruled in the Bysiewicz case that a statute requiring prospective attorneys general to be an "attorney at law of at least ten years' active practice at the bar of this state" trumps the state constitution itself, which provides only an age qualification for the position. But the court has ruled, and that’s that.

The court in its recently published decision interpreted the statute, which specifies that prospective attorneys general must be “attorneys at law of at least ten years active practice at the bar of this state,” as indicating that the attorneys mentioned in the statute should be attorneys “with at least some experience litigating cases in court.” This line of interpretation alone is unclear on two points: The decision does not tell us how much experience is “some” nor what kind of experience would qualify a lawyer to be attorney general. The Bysiewicz ruling is fuzzy around the edges and soft in the middle – which means, the court and Connecticut could only benefit by yet another suit forcing it to clarify the inherent ambiguities in its decision.

Such a suit is precisely the one brought by Dean. And for that reason the suit should have been welcomed by all friends of justice who think laws and Supreme Court rulings should be general, clear and fair. The Hartford Courant, to judge by its editorial reproving Dean for bringing the suit, falls outside this category.

“Ms. Dean says Mr. Jepsen lacks experience as a litigator. She has asked that his name be removed from the ballot and that the secretary of the state be prohibited from certifying the attorney general's race until her lawsuit is resolved.” The editorial, printed four days before election and therefore within its own parameters, asks “Does she [Dean] have a case or is her lawsuit a desperate 11th-hour stunt?” And the paper, much before a decision is due from the court, precipitately decides that the suit is an 11th hour stunt.

McEnroe, incidentally, disagreed with the obiter dictum of his paper in an earlier blog post, placing much of the blame for Dean’s “precipitous” suit on the court: “I agree, by the way, that much of the fault lies with the Connecticut Supreme Court. The Court ruled from the bench in May in the case of Bysiewicz v. Dinardo. Then it waited an inexplicable five months to issue a full decision, which finally came Oct. 22, less than two weeks before the election. Come on, guys, get your homework in on time! The decision itself was so muddy as to make it at least understandable that Dean saw it as a potential wedge to game into Jepsen's candidacy.”

The paper raises two easily answered objections: 1) Dean was precipitate in bringing the suit so close to the election (see McEnroe above); 2) By so doing she has revealed herself as being motivated principally by politics.

It is impossible to shake this last charge. Both Dean and Jepsen are engaged in a political campaign, and it is at least reasonable to suppose that politicians so engaged do things for political reasons – in addition to other perhaps more compelling reasons. But the question opinion makers should be considering is not “Do politicians do things for political reasons,” but rather, “Is Dean’s suit necessary?

It is.

The Endorsements

There have been very few unexpected endorsements from Connecticut’s media, and the almost universal endorsements of Attorney General Richard Blumenthal by the state’s opinion makers were entirely predictable. The status quo media likes status quo candidates.

The status quo candidate will always stress his experience over that of his opponent who, of course, may have little direct experience in politics. Such was the case with Ann Brickley, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate running against Sen. John Larson, a Beltway familiar. The proposition that voters should choose experience in office over inexperience is, of course, fatal to good government. The very existence of an election process argues against cradle to grave politicians. But the settled opinion among many editorial writers in the state is that political experience should be determinative.

For this reason it was a little unsettling, in a positive sense, to read the Register Citizen’s endorsement of Brickley over Larson. The paper reasoned that Mr. Larson had been swallowed up by the Washington whale. His attention, which should have been directed toward his failing state, the paper argued, had been too often directed towards Beltway status.

“We are in the midst of a huge national backlash against Pelosi’s management of taxing and spending policies that affect the economy,” the paper said, “and against the federal health care reform bill that Pelosi and Larson shepherded through Congress… We feel she [Brickley] would bring the 1st District seat back around to being about Connecticut’s interests, after years of having a congressman who long ago got caught up as a key lieutenant in an inside-the-Beltway partisan war that has very little to do with what is good for Torrington, Winsted, New Hartford and our state.”

The paper also noted that Brickley has devoted her efforts in private enterprise to helping companies become more prosperous, not a bad resume line at a time when many Connecticut companies have for years been moving to greener pastures elsewhere. Endorsements of this kind, however, are the exception to the rule.

Mr. Blumenthal has no direct experience as a U.S. Senator, but he has had considerable practice in stroking the media, which had not looked closely at some of the cases he prosecuted in Connecticut. Mr. Blumenthal has been taken mostly at his word, as reflected in those ubiquitous press releases that, for 20 years, have rained down on Connecticut’s media like confetti at a wedding. The indespensible critical attitude one expects in a healthy adversarial media never showed up at the wedding. Many people suspect this is the case because Mr. Blumenthal’s world view, iterated endlessly in his ideologically partisan press releases, dovetails with that of Connecticut’s left of center media.

Mr. Blumenthal’s harrying of businesses, sometimes justified, has been a boon to unions and editorial writers advocating left of center views. It simply is not true that Mr. Blumenthal has directed the bulk of his fire at Big Business. It is not true that his office is capable of representing adequately both the interests of state agencies -- a statutory requirement he labors under, except in those cases in which he declines to do so for ideological reasons – AND the interests of whistleblowers employed in the agencies he is charged with representing. The Dickman case throws this discordant representation into bold relief, a point that should have been an issue in Mr. Blumenthal’s senatorial campaign. It wasn’t.

Throughout his campaign, Mr. Blumenthal continued to pelt the media with attorney general releases touting his own moral rectitude. In one of those releases, he advised that he would continue to harry an ADVERTISER – unless the advertiser withdrew from its site notices that might have been placed by prostitutes disguised as masseuses, an obvious First Amendment issue Mr. Blumenthal was successful in forcing the California company to adjust its advertising in such a way that it would become more difficult for police to monitor prostitution activity. Significantly, Mr. Blumenthal reached all the way to California in his effort, leaving similar Connecticut advertisers free to ply their ads unmolested.

The suppression of First Amendment rights by an attorney general not authorized by statute to engage in criminal cases should have alarmed the state’s media, if only because all media has a dog in every First Amendment legal tousle. It didn’t. And Mr. Blumenthal’s assault on the First Amendment succeeded, in large part, because Connecticut’s timid pro-Blumenthal media was unwilling to defend an issue that had been a tar baby since the days of Chautauqua and Temperance societies.

Mr. Blumenthal carefully chooses his targets to comport with liberal orthodoxy. His attorney’s general media releases, far more numerous over a 20 year period than his competitor’s campaign ad brochures, were sent out while Mr. Blumenthal was running for the U.S. Senate. Indeed, his role as attorney general was, oddly, the central pillar of his senatorial campaign. Mr. Blumenthal had chosen his marks well. His successor, possibly George Jepsen, the preferred candidate of the state’s media, will not be able to resist the temptation to follow in his predecessors footsteps. Jepsen, politically and emotionally attached to unions and the traditional Democratic Party agenda, has said he would do so, though in a lower key. The attorney general office will be impervious to media criticism that never arrives at its doorstep.

And the absence of such criticism certainly was no bar to media endorsements of Mr. Blumenthal.

Blumenthal, Affidavits And Court Fraud

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s latest media release announcing his plans to lead an investigation into “allegedly defective legal documents filed by banks in thousands of foreclosures nationwide” is written, as usual, in the heroic mode.

Although the legal documents are “allegedly” defective, the banks, according to Mr. Blumenthal, “broke the law, papering the courts with defective documents to railroad consumers into fast, possibly fraudulent foreclosures.” Mr. Blumenthal’s summary judgment – the banks broke the law – precedes a careful investigation that may or may not support his prejudgment.

According to the press release, Mr. Blumenthal’s “powerful multi-state investigation will hold big banks accountable, determining how and why they broke the law.”

There is a certain dissonance in Mr. Blumenthal’s media releases that those in the media who receive them – this one was sent to over 40 recipients and media outlets – have grown used to over the years. If the investigation into “allegedly defective legal documents” is yet pending, it cannot be possible for Mr. Blumenthal to have determined so far in advance of his “powerful multi-state investigation” that the banks “broke the law, papering the courts with defective documents to railroad consumers into fast, possibly fraudulent foreclosures (emphasis mine).”

At the center of Mr. Blumenthal’s pending investigation are “robo-signers” at some banks “who allegedly failed to verify the accuracy of foreclosure affidavits and have documents properly notarized, as required by law.” In his media release, Blumenthal warned that “Filing defective foreclosure documents is potentially a fraud on the court, which can result in dismissal of foreclosure cases and underlying mortgages.”

Some of Mr. Blumenthal’s business targets might find the attorney general’s concern for accurate affidavits – filed by others – particularly touching. In the New England Pellet (NEP) case, Mr. Blumenthal’s “investigator,” since retired for medical reasons, supplied to a judge an affidavit in which he swore under oath he had reason to believe that the principles of New England Pellet either had or were about to fraudulently transfer assets. On the strength of that sworn assertion alone, the judge, in an ex parte proceeding – one in which the party accused in the affidavit is not present before the judge to answer the charge – authorized Mr. Blumenthal to impound NEP’s business assets. Such impoundments have two immediate effects: First, the business is effectively shut down, leaving in its wake all customers the business can no longer service; and second, the targets of prosecution are deprived of the means of obtaining an adequate defense to challenge the untried charges in court.

From Mr. Blumenthal’s point of view, the greater the number of dissatisfied customers a targeted company leaves behind as it disappears beneath seemingly endless waves of litigation the better. Complainants are worth thousands of dollars per head in fines that Mr. Blumenthal is able to collect, enabling him to boast that his office pays for itself through its prosecutorial zeal.

"If you are a small business owner,” NEP lawyer Jim Oliver told a reporter for the Connecticut Post, “and he [Mr. Blumenthal] sues you for $70,000, and wants $1 million in penalties, life as you know it is over. Your bank accounts are seized. Liens are placed on property and assets. Even if you win, the state will appeal and you will wait another year. You are out if business. You are dead.”

In the NEP case, one of the principals in the business was in such distress that he attempted suicide. NEP’s lawyer deposed the then retired “investigator” who admitted in his sworn deposition that he was unfamiliar with Connecticut’s Fraudulent Transfer Act; that he had not check bank records to verify the charge made in his sworn affidavit that NEP’s principals either had or were about to fraudulently transfer assets; and finally, the retired investigator acknowledged that he never had sufficient reason to believe that the principals of the business either had or were about to fraudulently transfer assets when he signed his affidavit. The assertions made in the sworn deposition under oath strongly suggested perjury. But before the perjury issue could go to trial, Mr. Blumenthal settled the then two year old case.

In the now notorious Computer Plus Center of East Hartford case, the principal of the company Mr. Blumenthal drove out of business, Gina Malapanis, was arrested at her home and led off in handcuffs. A jury that got a gander at one of Mr. Blumenthal’s affidavits in that case, awarded Malapanis $18 million, later reduced by an understanding trial court judge to $1.83 million. If Malapanis wants to rest contentedly in the assurance that justice had been served in a case she had won months ago, she’ll just have to wait in line. Mr. Blumenthal is appealing the ruling.

One of the Assistant Attorneys General who lost the Malapanis case is now the campaign director for Democratic attorney general nominee George Jepsen, formerly a campaign chairman of the Democratic Party. In two debates with Republican attorney general nominee Martha Dean, Jepsen allowed that Mr. Blumenthal had done a marvelous job as attorney general, and he cited the usual big marquee cases. But it is the little guy who is crushed under the wheels of Mr. Blumenthal’s litigatory juggernaut – not Big Tobacco or Big Banking or Big Business. Large business entities can easily afford gold plated lawyers to support their interests or, when appropriate, make cash settlements they pass on to their customers in the form of higher prices. When large suit-proof companies targeted by Mr. Blumenthal continue in business, the costs of such settlements come from the pockets of customers whose consumer interests Mr. Blumenthal purportedly represents.

Concerning the inaccurate affidavits the banks are said to have used, Mr. Blumenthal writes sternly in his press release, doffing his hat to the rule of law: “Bankers routinely invoke the rule of law to demand repayment of predatory mortgages they peddled to consumers. The rule of law – requiring proper legal procedure and documentation -- must apply equally to bankers. Bankers created this monstrous mess, threatening to unfairly force consumers from their homes and undermine their property rights. We will demand accountability and corrective action to resolve this injustice.”

In the interest of reforming possible frauds on courts in his own office, Mr. Blumenthal should copy to his assistant attorneys general the sharp reproofs in his press release.