Hullabaloo

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

 
Tiny Tim's Inflated Past

by digby

Oh my goodness. It looks like our little friend Timothy Griffin, character assassin, dirty trickster and Karl Rove houseboy, may have embellished his resume. In fact, it would appear that Tiny Tim only prosecuted three cases as an assistant before he was installed in Hillary Clinton's backyard as a Patriot Act midnight appointee to be Arkansas US Attorney.

Little Rock’s interim U.S. Attorney J. Timothy Griffin – already at the center of a firestorm over whether the White House has put politics ahead of prosecutorial integrity – made claims about his experience as an Army lawyer that have been put in doubt by military records.
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The 38-year-old Griffin claims on his official Web site that he prosecuted 40 criminal cases while at Ft. Campbell, where he was stationed from September 2005 to May 2006. But Army authorities say Ft. Campbell’s records show Griffin only serving as assistant trial counsel on three cases, none of which went to trial.

Do read the whole thing. The article outlines the career of a young dirty trickster from his earliest years cutting his teeth on the longest running special counsel investigation ever: the earthshattering Henry Cisneros scandal. You remember that one don't you?

In March 1995, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno secured the appointment of an Independent Counsel, David Barrett to investigate allegations that Cisneros had lied to FBI investigators during background checks prior to being named Secretary of HUD. He had been asked about payments that he had made to former mistress Linda Medlar, also known as Linda Jones. The affair had been 'public knowledge' for a number of years - during the 1992 presidential campaign, U.S. Treasurer Catalina Vasquez Villalpando publicly referred to Cisneros and candidate Clinton as "two skirt-chasers" - but Cisneros lied about the amount of money he had paid to Medlar.

[...]

In September, 1999, Cisneros negotiated a plea agreement, under which he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of lying to the FBI, and was fined $10,000. He did not receive jail-time or probation. He was pardoned by President Bill Clinton in January 2001 ( See: List of people pardoned by Bill Clinton). The independent counsel investigation continued after the pardon focusing on alleged obstruction of justice. In May 2005, Senator Dorgan (D-ND) proposed ending funding for the investigation; negotiators refused to include the provision in a bill funding military operations in Afghanistan. The funding at that point for the investigation totaled $21 million.

When they finally closed up shop, the prosecutors were very upset that the judge overseeing the case would not allow them to air all the dirty suspicions to the public --- suspicions they spent 21 million dollars and over ten years investigating and were never able to get an indictment beyond Cisneros's misdemeanor and his mistress's unrelated scam. (Compare and contrast that with Patrick Fitzgerald's ethical position.)

This was the culture of the Clinton scandals, and it's what we will go back to if the democrat win the presidency and once GOP crooks like Tiny Tim have gotten tanned and rested and finish counting up all the money they looted from the taxpayers during their reign of error.

On a related note: Griffin pretty much embellishes everything, apparently, (which is really rich considering he was one of the prime movers behind the "Gore exaggerates" smear.) He was caught by local Arkansas media saying in one of those e-mails that his high school girlfriend worked in Senator Blanche Lincoln's office. The woman evidently didn't remember it that way at all.

They lie as easily as they breathe.

H/T to BB


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digby 4/03/2007 08:50:00 PM |