Update 2: Friends Raise $2 Million for Libby Defense

[Nutmegger]

Friends and supporters of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby have raised $2 million to help him pay his legal bills.

~~Snippy-Snip~~

The Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust hopes to raise $5 million to $6 million, or more, said Barbara Comstock, a Republican strategist who is helping the fund's steering committee.

~~Snippy-Snip~~

Comstock said contributions have been made by hundreds of people across the country in amounts up to $11,000 or $12,000, the threshold to avoid tax liability for the donors. (:crazy:)

~~Snippy-Snip~~

Comstock said the fund does not have to reveal the identities of its donors under law. But she described the donors as Libby's "friends or friends of friends, colleagues at various jobs he's had over the years and just people who admire his service" to government.

Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2006/02/03/ap2499573.html

[CatWoman]

1. gotta spend their tax cuts some kind of way, I suppose

[phoebe]

2. some info. on Ms. Comstock - ex-communications strategist for Ashcroft

http://www.blankromegovernmentrelations.com/bios/comstock.html

Barbara Comstock, former Director of the Office of Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of Justice, serves clients both as a lobbyist and strategic communications specialist. At the Justice Department, Ms. Comstock was the chief spokesperson and communications strategist for Attorney General John Ashcroft, as well as the spokesperson for the entire Department with responsibility for all public affairs and communications matters. Ms. Comstock also oversaw the public affairs offices of the Justice Department components including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Prisons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the U.S. Marshals Service.

Before joining the Department of Justice, Ms. Comstock served as Director of Research and Strategic Planning at the Republican National Committee and was responsible for developing and managing the research operations utilized for the Bush 2000 campaign. In 2001, she developed the RNC’s “Winning Women” communications initiative and Web site to promote the Bush Administration’s policies to women voters. Her experience on Capitol Hill includes the positions of Chief Counsel/Chief Investigative Counsel and Senior Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform. Ms. Comstock also served as Appropriations Aide/Senior Aide for Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.), responsible for Appropriations Committee matters, Ways and Means issues and health care and welfare policy.

She fits right in with ex-CIA director. Talk about "thick as thieves"..Jeez

[phoebe]

4. Comstock statement (via Ashcroft) on Sibel Edmonds case

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/10/doj101802.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2002
WWW.USDOJ.GOV
AG
[phone]
TDD [phone]


STATEMENT OF BARBARA COMSTOCK, DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS,
REGARDING TODAY’S FILING IN SIBEL EDMONDS V. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE:


“To prevent disclosure of certain classified and sensitive national security information, Attorney General Ashcroft today asserted the state secrets privilege in Sibel Edmonds v. Department of Justice. This assertion was made at the request of FBI Director Robert Mueller in papers filed today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Department of Justice also filed a motion to dismiss the case, because the litigation creates substantial risks of disclosing classified and sensitive national security information that could cause serious damage to our country’s security.

“The state secrets privilege is well-established in federal law. It has been recognized by U.S. courts as far back as the 19th century, and allows the Executive Branch to safeguard vital information regarding the nation’s security or diplomatic relations. In the past, this privilege has been applied many times to protect our nation’s secrets from disclosure, and to require dismissal of cases when other litigation mechanisms would be inadequate. It is an absolute privilege that renders the information unavailable in litigation.”

[phoebe]

5. more on Blank Rome where she works - Tom Ridge, 2000 vote count, * Ranger

BTW she lobbies for Koch Industries. Bush's sister just happens to be married to the owner. Doro Bush Koch anyone? So you can just imagine who's paying to protect Scooters ass ..as well as their own...

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1090180437594 - Hard to know where to snip on this article - it's ALL good..

snip

The groundwork was first laid in Pennsylvania, when Tom Ridge, then the state's governor, looked to Girard-diCarlo, one of his longtime political boosters, to help him bring the 2000 Republican Convention to Philadelphia.

Since then, Blank Rome lawyers and lobbyists have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for President George W. Bush, worked for free on the Florida vote recount, and poured more than a half-million dollars into Republican state and nationwide campaigns, rivaling the donations of far larger firms.

snip

Indeed, the firm's growth in Washington coincided with Ridge's move to the newly created White House Office of Homeland Security in 2001. (The office was made a Cabinet-level agency in 2002.) Some of the firm's top lobbyists have worked for Ridge both at Homeland Security and previously in Pennsylvania.

snip

Girard-diCarlo, who gave $5,000 to the Republican legal fund for the presidential vote recount in 2000, showed that championing Bush wasn't only about donating money. He responded to a Bush campaign request and agreed to allow 10 Blank Rome lawyers to work without pay on behalf of Bush in the legal case surrounding the Florida vote-counting dispute.

you get the picture..

[emulatorloo]

9. "all-nighters at a West Palm Beach hotel assisting GOP operatives" in FL

From the WaPo profile I linked below

<snip>

After the election, her team spent a month pulling virtual all-nighters at a West Palm Beach hotel assisting GOP operatives in the Florida vote recount. They then wrote the GOP playbook defending Bush nominees such as John D. Ashcroft, for attorney general.

<snip>

[Nutmegger]

8. Jay-sus - thanks for sharing this. [nt]

[Todd B]

3. Hm, that's a novel idea...

..supporting traitors and criminals. Well, birds of a feather, I suppose.

[emulatorloo]

6. Comstock profile, WaPo - Created RNC "Gore File" (liar) (flip-flopper)

One-Woman Wrecking Crew Targets Democratic Leaders
Meticulous Comstock Helps RNC Skewer the Opposition
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 22, 2001; Page A17


Barbara Comstock, a daughter of Massachusetts Democrats and the only kid in her eighth-grade class for George McGovern in 1972, recalls her moment of political revelation:

She was a college intern in Washington for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), and her roommate handed her a copy of a magazine she had never heard of -- National Review. Soon, she said, "I'd be at hearings and think, 'I agree with Orrin Hatch , not Ted Kennedy.' "

Democrats everywhere should bewail that that conservative magazine ever changed hands.

Since joining the GOP, Comstock has become a kind of one-woman wrecking crew targeting Democratic leaders. As a onetime senior aide to Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) who directed numerous investigations of Clinton-era scandals, and now as head of research for the Republican National Committee, Comstock has perhaps done more than any other GOP operative to skewer Bill Clinton, Al Gore and their congressional allies.

<snip>

Drawing on a massive RNC computer data base and video library she built, Comstock compiled a foot-high binder and CD-ROM called "The Gore File," which became a bible of sorts for GOP publicists and ad-makers. When Democratic presidential contender Bill Bradley alleged in primary season debates that Gore had flip-flopped on abortion, he was relying on this Comstock lode, political sources said.

<snip>

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43033-2001Aug21?language=printer

[emulatorloo]

7. Barbara Comstock linked to Swift Boat Vets

Same law and lobbying firm, Blank Rome, as Rear Admiral William L. Schachte Jr,

http://elandslide.org/preview.cfm?term=John%20Kerry%20Critics
-------
Swift Boat Vet Got $40M Contract From Bush
31-Aug-04
John Kerry Critics
"Rear Admiral William L. Schachte Jr., the man who claims Kerry was not under fire when he received his first Purple Heart, is a top lobbyist for a defense contractor that recently won a $40 million grant from the Bush administration. According to a March 18 legal filing by Schachte's firm, Blank Rome, Schachte was one of the lobbyists working for FastShip's effort to secure federal contracts. On Feb. 2, FastShip announced the Bush administration had awarded it $40 million. Schachte has other connections to the Bush administration. The Washington Post notes David Norcross, Schachte's colleague in the Washington office of Blank Rome, is chairman of this week's Republican convention in New York. Schachte gave $1,000 to Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns. Additionally, Schachte helped organize veterans' efforts against Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and for Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary."
-------------------

Joe Conason - Sinking fast

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/09/10/schachte/index.html

<snip>

In his Aug. 27 exclusive interview with Lisa Myers of NBC News, Schachte carefully portrayed himself as an independent voter who had even voted for Bill Clinton. He acknowledged donating a couple of thousand dollars to George W. Bush but indignantly denied any contact with the president's campaign.

"I don't know that I know anybody in his campaign," Schachte told Myers.

His protestation of innocence suggests that Schachte knows nobody of consequence at Blank Rome, the powerhouse law and lobbying firm where he is presently "of counsel."

<snip>

Perhaps Schachte has yet to become acquainted with Barbara Comstock -- his most notoriously partisan colleague -- who left her job as an assistant to Attorney General John Ashcroft last year to join Blank Rome's Washington office. A few years ago, the Washington Post immortalized Comstock with a profile headlined "One-Woman Wrecking Crew Targets Democratic Leaders." That was back in 2001, when Comstock was still running opposition research for the Republican National Committee. Prior to that, she worked as an investigator for Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., the excitable Clinton opponent known for firing his gun at a watermelon to emphasize his suspicions about the Vince Foster case. While usually calm in demeanor, she was responsible for promoting various over-hyped "scandals" of the Clinton era -- and more recently for the "Gore file" used by conservatives to tarnish the vice president as a liar and exaggerator during the 2000 campaign.

<snip>

[emulatorloo]

10. Joe Conason on Libby Defence Fund, Barbara Comstock

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2005/11/15/libby_defense/

Libby's secret defense fund

How much of the money given to Cheney's former aide will come from Halliburton et al.? The public now has no way to know.

By Joe Conason

<snip>

Her name is Barbara Comstock, a minor figure from the Whitewater era, when she served as "chief investigator" for Rep. Dan Burton, the wigged-out Indiana congressman who once executed a watermelon to demonstrate his sinister theory concerning the fate of Vince Foster, the White House counsel who committed suicide in 1993. During those glory years, she joined David Brock and the rest of the Republican pack in the hunting of Bill and Hillary Clinton. In his memoir, "Blinded by the Right," Brock described Comstock as almost unhinged in her passion to bring down the Clintons.

<snip>

Meanwhile, the emergence of Comstock, a corporate lobbyist and Bush loyalist bearing checks with Libby's name on them, is troubling. Unlike the Clinton defense trust, the Libby fund is under no obligation to report the names of donors or the amounts they give. And the public has no way of knowing how much money might be funneled to the Libby defense by the vice president's friends at Halliburton, ExxonMobil and the myriad other corporations and lobbying firms that have fattened themselves on Iraq, Hurricane Katrina and the other disasters of the Bush era.

No way, that is, unless Fitzgerald finds probable cause to subpoena the records of the Libby defense fund. Certainly his investigation should continue until the special prosecutor can be certain that the coverup and the obstruction of justice have ended.

<snip>

[phoebe]

11. more on Blank Rome - Enron, FEMA contracts, Katrina

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2040066

w.judicialwatch.org/corrchron/archives/2005/11/the_90000_porta.html - Katrina stuff

The latest no-bid contract awarded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as part of the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort, involves 450 portable classrooms in Mississippi at a whopping $90,000 each (New York Times).

The politically-connected Alaskan company that got the very profitable contract is called Akima and the cost to taxpayers was nearly 60% higher than the price offered by two small Mississippi businesses that were dropped from the deal.

Why would FEMA, already under tremendous scrutiny for incompetence and awarding billions of dollars in no-bid contracts, do it again? Perhaps it is because Akima's majority owner is represented in Washington by a lobbying firm (Blank Rome Government Relations) with close ties to the Bush administration and particularly Tom Ridge, the former head of the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA's parent agency.

Then again there is the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 that makes Akima (see co. web site detailing law) one of several native-owned businesses eligible for no-bid contracts.

[emulatorloo]

12. Blank Rome Clients receive 336 million in no bid Katrina contracts

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/8952492/looting_homeland_security/

<snip>

Mark Holman, a former adviser to Tom Ridge and a Bush "Pioneer" who raised more than $100,000 for the president's 2004 campaign, is now a senior partner at Blank Rome Government Relations, which represents Carnival Cruise Lines, the company that won a staggering $236 million contract to provide the government with three luxury liners for six months. Blank Rome also represents CH2M Hill, an engineering firm that bagged a $100 million no-bid contract.

<snip>

I always wondered why Katrina victims were being housed on cruise ships. . .now I know.

[phoebe]

13. nest of vipers..protecting *

n/t

[emulatorloo]

14. Apparently Ms. Comstock gets the message out as a commentator too!

I'm editing to add quotes:

http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/search_results?qstring=comstock

<snip>

Results: for comstock

Media repeat anti-Soros propaganda by DeLay defenders
Tuesday, April 19, 2005 2:48PM

Barbara Comstock, former Bush Justice Department spokesperson and a current consultant in the DeLay defense effort, stated on CNN's Crossfire that "Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have gone up because they have no ideas ... they don't want anyone in the ethics committee to address it because you will lose your entire campaign plans and all your George Soros money."

Conservative media echoed RNC attack on Gore and MoveOn.org
Friday, May 28, 2004 12:59PM

Barbara Comstock -- former director of the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Justice under Attorney General John Ashcroft and former director of research and strategic planning at the RNC -- seems to have taken a cue from her former employer, writing in a May 27 National Review Online commentary, in reference to MoveOn.org executive director Eli Pariser, "His group has promoted ads comparing Bush to Hitler." Comstock also echoed another part of the RNC release that described MoveOn.org's call for peaceful anti-terrorism responses following the September 11 terrorist attacks, writing, "Gore's top speaking destination of choice not only opposes the war in Iraq, they opposed the war in Afghanistan, too. Just days after September 11, MoveOn.org put out a statement saying, 'We recognize that we are now in a world where indiscriminate military actions can make us less safe....'"

Right-wing pundits play doctor; diagnose Gore as "insane"
Friday, May 28, 2004 10:41AM

Barbara Comstock, in a column published on National Review Online on May 27:

Columnist Charles Krauthammer observed, "Looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again."

<...>

Outside of MoveOn.org, the biggest cheers for Gore must have been coming from caves in Afghanistan and diehards in Fallujah.

<snip>

[phoebe]

15. Comstock + Progress for America + Alito + Roberts confirmations

w.judicialwatch.org/corrchron/archives/2005/11/the_90000_porta.html

http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1881
snip

By GLEN JUSTICE and ARON PILHOFER
14 November 2005
The New York Times
When President Bush named Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. as his Supreme Court pick, it took Progress for America just 39 minutes to introduce a slick Web site and begin lobbying for his confirmation. And that was slow.

The group had taken 11 minutes to do the same for Harriet E. Miers and only 7 minutes for John G. Roberts Jr. before that. Knowing it would support whomever Mr. Bush chose, Progress for America started working months ago to create more than two dozen Web sites promoting various potential candidates. When the announcements came, it was prepared.

"We get out of the box quickly," Brian McCabe, the group's president, said in an interview.

snip

During the ill-fated effort to have Ms. Miers confirmed, Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, even referred questions to the group, directing reporters to "check with Progress for America" for details on part of the campaign.

ENTIRE article worth reading


more on Progress for America
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Progress_for_America

snip

As the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill began working its way toward its eventual passage in Congress in 2002, long-time Republican strategists were already scheming how to get around the law’s ban on soft-money contributions. They found an answer in Progress for America (PFA).

PFA was registered as a 501c4 group in February 2001 by Tony Feather, a political director of the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign and partner at DCI Group as well as at the affiliated telemarketing and fundraising firm of Feather Larson Synhorst-DCI (FLS-DCI). Feather set up PFA as a “grassroots organization that mobilizes the public to contact their members of Congress about pending legislation and to write local newspapers to publicize the White House’s agenda,” the Center for Public Integrity wrote in 2002. During the first part of the George W. Bush administration, it led campaigns to support tax cuts, conservative judicial appointments and energy legislation.

snip

Progress for America and its Voter Fund reveal only as much as legally required about their leadership and membership. The group’s directors, advisors and chairs are not listed on their websites. But the Washington Post has identified a few of the groups’ principal figures. In addition to FLS-DCI’s Tom Synhorst, who is reported to have served as a key strategic adviser to PFA, other figures include James C. Cicconi, AT&T General Counsel; C. Boyden Gray, a prominent figure in many conservative groups, including Citizens for a Sound Economy (now called Freedom Works); and Marilyn Ware, chairman of American Water in Pennsylvania and a Bush Pioneer (meaning that she personally raised at least $100,000 for his campaign).

snip

The Chonicle raised the question whether investment firms, "which are trying to keep a low profile in the current debate, will quietly contribute to a number of groups promoting Social Security overhaul because private accounts will increase their business." PFA's McCabe denies "his group would serve as a front for investment firms." But PFA "will be soliciting from donors who have helped the organization in the past." The head of the prominent investment firm Charles Schwab contributed $50,000 to the group's political arm in 2004. Schwab also gave $75,000 to the Club for Growth, which is also lobbying for Social Security privatization.<7> (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/politics/3038264)

[sattahipdeep]

16. What is this behind closed door stuff?

Libby, who faces perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

Is it the republican way of life? Taking from others to benifit yourself?


fritz hasn't shown me he is doing the job he was hired to do.
No one has been really charged with crimes they have committed.

I have seen nothing to make me believe he is the one to bring anything against
the current administration.