Want more coverage of the Scruggs scandal? Send Rossmiller to Mississippi
Don’t know that David Rosmiller asked for it, but just as Geraldo Rivera used to say his MSNBC program was the show of record on the OJ trial, David’s Insurance Coverage Law Blog has become the blog of record when it comes to State Farm’s handling of the Katrina claims and now, possibly, the high profile Dickie Skruggs trial.
Just today at <a href=”http://www.overlawyered.com/2007/12/
scruggs_indictment_ix.html”>Overlawyered David was described as being out in front of, as he so often is, new developments in the Skrugg case:
Yes, it seems there were wiretaps. Defendants will be seeing evidence from the prosecution momentarily which might (or might not) be the trigger for further flipping and early plea deals, if such there will be.
There is enormous curiosity (e.g.) about P.L. Blake, to whom Scruggs says he paid $10 million (and tens of millions more in future payments) for vaguely described intelligence services aimed at swaying political influentials during the tobacco caper. Per a 1997 account posted at Y’All Politics, ‘Blake pleaded ‘no contest’ in 1988 to a federal charge that he conspired to bribe officials of the now- defunct Mississippi Bank to secure favorable loan terms.’ The same article, citing reporting in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, reports that Blake was in close phone contact between 1994 and 1996 with eventually-disgraced state Auditor Steve Patterson, who after leaving office went into partnership with Timothy Balducci and is one of the five indicted in the current Scruggs affair. Per AP, ‘Patterson was a banker at Mississippi Bank before his 1984-1987 tenure as head of the Mississippi Democratic Party.’
David Rossmiller, as so often, is out front with a report filling in background on two other controversies involving Blake. One arose from a venture into the grain storage business which landed him in a Texas dispute in which his attorney was none other than Fred Thompson, later a Tennessee senator and presidential candidate. The other arose from his cordial dealings with a former chief of staff to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Mississippi). In David’s interview with the Wall Street Journal Law Blog last week regarding the Scruggs case, the Journal’s Ashby Jones posed a good question: why doesn’t David just pack his suitcase and leave Portland behind for a few days to see what’s going in Mississippi for himself? David seemed receptive to the idea.
I’d love to. These people in Mississippi have been really good to me, and I feel like a lot of them are family to me; that Mississippi is like a second home. But I have three kids and a day job! I can’t just up and go down there, even though I’d absolutely love to. Now, if someone offered me a book deal . . .
The media should jump all over this opportunity; David has been consistently on his game and seems the natural choice as a knowledgeable go-to guy on the Scruggs case. The only question is, who’s going to send him there? We’ve got some suggestions:
- Greta Van Susteren of Fox News On the Record and whose own blog, GretaWire is hitting the stratosphere. At least have David join the legal panel one night.
- CNN’s Anderson Cooper (get Jeffrey Toobin off the case, Anderson…David’s got it covered)
- Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Monthly
- MSNBC’s Dan Abrams, host of “Live with Dan Abrams”
Lawyers are becoming some our best reporters. Van Susteren, Toobin, Rivera, and Abrams are all lawyers. No different with blogging. Except the lawyers are reporting on niche subjects on which they’re uniquely qualified.