The U.S. Chamber of Commerce:
Assault on Justice
by Rebecca M. Abrahams
It's no secret that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the chief lobbying firm for big business and the Republican Party, pouring millions of dollars into advertising to debunk climate change and oppose national healthcare reform. But the U.S. Chamber's biggest and less known area of influence is its involvement in state and federal elections. According to SourceWatch, the Chamber has an aggressive strategy to rein in "activist judges and attorneys general," and challenge anti-business measures in court, taking a lead role in tort reform and supporting pro-tort reform candidates.
The Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. Chamber of Commerce "spent nearly $35 million on the 2008 election in support of pro-business candidates, almost exclusively Republicans."
Attorney and Columbia Law School Professor Scott Horton chronicled the Chamber's involvement in elections and in a November 2007 article wrote:
"The Chamber's representatives, led by its powerhouse president, Thomas Donohue, solicited major corporate funders who were plagued by class-action suits, tort liability and high damage awards, and asked them to fund a significant election effort designed to defeat attorneys general and judges they viewed as friendly to the trial court bar. Not only would the corporations be anonymous in this endeavor, but the Chamber would do its best even to obscure its own identity and involvement."
In 2006, Public Citizen, a non-partisan legal watchdog group, called on the IRS to investigate the Chamber's failure to report millions in taxable spending from 2000-2004. These monies, Public Citizen maintains, were intended to influence state attorneys general, state Supreme Court and federal races across the country. Public Citizen President Robert Weissman says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has appointed itself the guardian of the most extremist positions held by big business:
"Its modus operandi is to adopt the sectarian stance of particular companies or industries, and then represent them as the interest of all business -- through lobbying and issue advocacy campaigns, litigation and expenditures in election campaigns. The Chamber's views rarely advance the legitimate interests of small business people, and it quite often positions itself in opposition to the positions of giant corporations (as in the all-important case of climate change). Giant corporations go along with this because they know they can count on the Chamber to play the role of attack dog on the issues of most concern to them, whether it is defending polluters, enabling financial rip-off artists, preventing manufacturers from being held accountable for those they injure, ensuring drug companies can price gouge, or denying workers the right to organize."
On January 8, 2008, The Los Angeles Times wrote:
"Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business. 'We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,' Chamber President Tom Donohue said."
Nowhere is the Chamber's campaign to defeat anti-business candidates better exemplified than in the state of Mississippi. Its strategy -- take down plaintiff attorneys who fund Democratic campaigns with tobacco litigation settlement awards.
In Mississippi, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce led this war against Judge Oliver Diaz and attorney Paul Minor.
Caught in the Crossfire
Republican Judge Oliver Diaz had his first dealings with the U.S. Chamber in 2000 shortly after Democrat Governor Ronnie Musgrove appointed him to fill an unexpired term on the Mississippi Supreme Court. Upon completion of the term, Diaz was eligible for election for the seat. The vacancy occurred in March so immediately after his appointment, Diaz began running for the November election. Diaz says in late October 2000, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce began running vicious television ads against him saying he favored "drug dealers and baby killers" and that he should not be elected to the position. Diaz recalls his team had to scramble to combat the campaign.
"Right at the end of the election after we'd already budgeted for our ad campaign, the U.S. Chamber came in with well over a million dollars in the final weeks of the campaign. It was the first time they came into Mississippi so we didn't know it was going to happen. Nobody had ever seen this type of operation."
Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark filed a lawsuit against the Chamber, charging its failure to file financial disclosures violated of state election laws. The case went to a federal district judge who ruled against the Chamber. But the powerful association appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which overturned the district judge's decision, arguing the Chamber had a right to exercise free speech, noting it was not subject to Mississippi election laws because they were "education ads" not election ads.
In addition to Clark's lawsuit, four other candidates running for different seats on the state Supreme Court who were also targeted by the Chamber, joined Diaz to file an injunction against the television station running the ads. A local judge granted the injunction. But the Chamber quickly acted to secure an emergency order signed by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who overturned the district judge's decision banning the ads.
Diaz was stunned by the ruling:
"The local judge granted those motions and within a very short period of time, nearly 48 hours of the judge granting an injunction banning the Chamber of running the ads, an order was signed by Antonin Scalia vacating the local State rulings. So a direct order from the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the local state court judge and it hadn't even gone through an appellate court! Who are these people that they can walk into U.S. Supreme Court and get a signed order?"
Trial attorney Mike Papantonio has received numerous multi-million dollar verdicts on behalf of victims of corporate malfeasance and says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce routinely relies on Justice Scalia for muscle:
"Scalia is the primary henchman. When you're out of plays and you've exhausted all of the efforts you go to a guy like Scalia. People don't understand what Scalia is all about. Look at his history - his father ran the American fascist party in New York. Not only that he attended the same schools those people attended. He is their man whenever they're in trouble. For example, you always see Scalia, the guy for emergency relief. I've got a verdict in West Virginia that Bobby (Kennedy Jr) and I tried, (an environmental class action case) against Dupont that received a $400 million jury verdict. If the State Supreme court doesn't take it away from Dupont, Dupont will try to get in some form a federal judge or emergency writ to a guy like Scalia. He is their last vestige of protection and he makes no bones about what his politics are and that's what you saw with the Diaz case in Mississippi."
Blind Justice Weeps
Despite the Chamber's aggressive attempts to tarnish Diaz's reputation, he was able to beat judicial opponent Keith Starrett, primarily because he had friends who were willing to additionally finance his campaign to combat the Chamber ads. Some of the donors went to local banks and cosigned loans for him. Such campaign loans are completely legal and a common, routine occurrence in Mississippi politics as many campaigns take out loans. Little did Diaz know that those loans would be used to prosecute him and take down his close friend, Mississippi trial lawyer Paul Minor. At the time, Minor was one of the largest individual Democratic campaign donors, using awards from tobacco settlement damages to back anti-big business candidates.
Minor's troubles began in the 2000 Congressional election between District Attorney Dunnica Lampton and Democrat Ronnie Shows. Minor heavily financed Shows who defeated Lampton. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he named Lampton U.S. Attorney for the Southern District in Mississippi, who in turn, immediately began investigating Diaz, Paul Minor, Judge John Whitfield and Judge Wes Teel for bribery and mail fraud. Diaz recalls:
"I was investigated for several years before being handed an indictment for bribery and mail fraud related to Paul Minor's loan guarantee. But their theory was flawed. I never voted on a single case that he (Minor) or his firm brought to court. So they had him financing my campaign and were looking for me to repay it in some way. But I had recused myself every time he brought cases to court. We were very close friends for years so when they brought bribery charges, we raised our defenses. They realized they didn't have substance to the allegations although they continued to prosecute."
Both Diaz and Minor were acquitted but within days of the ruling, Lampton
unsealed a second set of indictments, alleging tax evasion by both Diaz and his wife Jennifer.
Immediately, prosecutors went to Jennifer, who was Diaz's campaign manager and tried to work a deal with her, saying if she plead guilty to one income tax charge, all other charges would be dismissed and she would not serve jail time. However, she would have to cooperate with the investigation against her husband. Diaz recalls this particularly low-point is his life:
"They were using our children against us. If she cooperated, she could be there for our children while I was in prison. We talked about it and I said, 'tell them everything you know about me.' So she walked in and said, 'okay, if you guarantee me no prison time, I'll cooperate.' You can imagine the heart wrenching moments you have to go through, looking at your kids and wondering whether you're going to be there for them, not to mention the extreme financial toll."
Jennifer Diaz pleaded guilty to a crime she didn't commit. During the sentencing phase the government admitted she didn't owe taxes yet to this day Jennifer Diaz is branded as a convicted felon.
Paul Minor was also indicted on a second set of bribery charges.
The indictments coincided with the Mississippi gubernatorial election between Republican Haley Barbour and Democrat Ronnie Musgrove. Immediately the Chamber began running attack ads against Musgrove in favor of Barbour, claiming Musgrove appointed corrupt judges including Oliver Diaz. Malicious ads targeting other judges emerged - only this time sponsored by the Law Enforcement Association of America (LEAA), an organization sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Barbour's campaign used the indictments against Musgrove as a means to sully his reputation as Minor was one of Musgrove's largest contributors and Diaz had been tapped by Musgrove to fill the vacancy on the State Supreme Court.
Coincidentally, Barbour's lobbying firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, (BGR) lists Phillip Morris as one of their top clients and in 1997 alone, BGR was paid $1.7 million from the "big four" tobacco companies.
Although Diaz was exonerated, his colleagues were not as fortunate. Paul Minor, Judge John Whitfield and Judge Wes Teel were convicted of federal bribery and honest services fraud in 2007 and sentenced to federal prisons. But like the Diaz case, the prosecution failed to prove Judges Teel and Whitfield received any personal benefit from Minor's campaign contributions, nor did they accept bribes to throw any cases Minor brought to their benches. Yet all three men remain in prison. This past December the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned their convictions, throwing out bribery charges, arguing that prosecutors changed jury instructions to skew the definition of an exchange of services for corruption despite the fact that there was no real evidence of quid pro quo between Minor and the judges.
Attorney Mike Papantonio says these cases are a grim example of a broken judicial system and the U.S. Chamber's control over it:
"People miss the idea that all the Chamber wants is a Supreme Court not really - the Chamber starts from the ground up to replace trial judges with political hacks.
If you were to take all the issues that the Chamber holds near and dear to them, this is the most important -- to close the courthouse door. They tried with Diaz. Diaz was one of many targets all over the country for god sakes. His case exemplifies their methodology. Even the effort to convict him wasn't as bad as was the process to convict.
Diaz didn't favor anybody but he at least gave the average person a chance at trial. He wasn't bought and paid for by the Chamber and the Chamber hated him for that.
He was willing to hold corporate America accountable when other Mississippi judges would not. He understood there was some semblance of justice that should be there when a corporation makes a product that kills people even though they make more money. That's not the case with most judges in the Deep South. They've been commandeered by the Chamber."
Papantonio warns if the GOP run Chamber is able to control the courts, Americans will have little recourse against corporations that commit tortuous acts. He says if victims could hold corporate wrongdoers accountable, litigation would be unnecessary.
"Any time you have industrialists that have an agenda - there's a strategy to completely scrap the judicial process that allows average people to fight back. I would love to say to corporate America and the Chamber, we don't need judges like Diaz if you'd at least be the middle of road. We don't need that if we can throw people in jail. But we're all keeping our eye on who's being elected to Congress while these
s.o.b's have been working day and night on who's going to be trial judges, appellate judges and appointed to Supreme Court. But people don't understand the judiciary. It's no big deal until it's your child or your son who's horribly injured or you file a claim for discrimination. We don't care about the U.S. Chamber. The community is decimated with environmental problems and people just aren't connected on this kind of level. We still have the ability to turn this around but Obama needs to wake up."
Papantonio suggests President Obama follow Franklin Delano Roosevelt's 1937 lead and wage war on the U.S. Supreme Court. One thing is clear, the High Court's unprecedented decision to kill the McCain Feingold Act and overturn political campaign finance limits paves the way for big corporations and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to control elections and the entire judiciary system.
