Posted on 02/05/2010 4:13:23 PM PST by American Dream 246
This week we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in the government takeover of insurance giant AIG. In the last several months, the US government has tried, unsuccessfully, to throw out plaintiff Kevin Murray’s case, alleging that the government’s takeover of AIG puts it in the position of supporting and promoting Islam and Shariah finance.
In the discovery process attorneys for Murray, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise (of the Thomas More Law Center), discovered that the takeover itself may have been illegal, and have attempted to get Treasury Secretary under oath to try and untangle this mess. Again, the Fed and the Treasury Department tried to stonewall.
This past Tuesday, Federal district court judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff rejected the Treasury Department’s and the Fed’s effort to prevent any further discovery while the government attempts to convince the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule Judge Zatkoff’s earlier ruling rejecting the government’s motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit challenging the government’s takeover of AIG on First Amendment-Establishment Clause grounds.
Tim Geithner: The “extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary”
The lawsuit, captioned Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought by attorneys David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, representing the plaintiff, Kevin Murray, a tax payer and former combat Marine who served in Iraq. The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government’s takeover and financial bailout of AIG was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Specifically, at the time of the government bailout (September-December 2008), AIG was (and still is) the world leader in promoting Shariah-compliant insurance products. Shariah is Islamic law, and it is the identical legal doctrine that demands capital punishment for apostasy and blasphemy and provides the legal and political mandates for global jihad followed religiously by the world’s Muslim terrorists. By propping up AIG with tax payer funds, the U.S. government is directly and indirectly promoting Islam and, more troubling, Shariah.
After the court rejected the government’s motion to dismiss the case and granted Plaintiff’s attorneys until May 2010 to conduct discovery into the AIG takeover, the government filed a motion asking Judge Zatkoff to certify the case for immediate appeal of his denial of the motion and to stay all further discovery. Today the government got its answer: No and no.
In what is an extremely well-written opinion, Judge Zatkoff scolded the government lawyers for filing the wrong motion at the wrong time and then proceeded to tell them they would have lost in any event because his earlier denial of the motion to dismiss was proper and well-considered.
The Court’s recent decision is especially timely and critical for Plaintiff Kevin Murray because his attorneys had previously filed a motion to compel Secretary Timothy Geithner to sit for a three-hour deposition. The basis for the “extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary” arose because Plaintiff’s counsel had earlier deposed the witnesses provided by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board and the government witnesses either testified inaccurately or feigned ignorance. The only one with all the answers turns out to be Secretary Geithner.
While forcing high government officials to sit for a deposition in civil litigation is extraordinary, federal rules allow a court to take this step when the government official has personal knowledge of a relevant element of the litigation and where the moving party has no reasonable alternative. In this case, attorneys Yerushalmi and Muise argued in their court papers that this exception fits their circumstances in spades.
“The witness designated by the government to testify on behalf of the Fed was less than forthright in his sworn testimony,” Plaintiff’s counsel Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law Center explained. “To his credit, he admitted he had prepared for his deposition by reading media reports and not actually reviewing the relevant documents. That might suggest that his lack of candor was willful blindness.”
David Yerushalmi, who is co-counsel with Robert Muise, laid out the grounds for the motion:
At the time of the takeover decision, Secretary Geithner was the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and he was the leading advocate of the AIG takeover.
Moreover, he designed how the U.S. government would not only bail out AIG with tax payer dollars, but how the government would illegally take control of 80% of the voting shares through what was patently an illegal and invalid trust arrangement. It is apparent from the discovery we’ve conducted to date that this was done purposefully and with an intent to conceal the illegal takeover with a fraudulent trust.
Attorneys Yerushalmi and Muise want to ask Secretary Geithner:
* Why he forced AIG to take on so much debt that AIG’s credit rating, already in peril, was sure to collapse without yet additional government funds, essentially guaranteeing AIG would remain a ward of the state?
* Why he imposed such Draconian terms on AIG that there was no way it could survive without additional billions from U.S. tax payers?
* Why he then used AIG to secretly funnel 100% payoffs to AIG’s counterparties, including his colleagues and friends at Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and the European giant, Société Générale. In other words, why did Geithner decide to destroy AIG’s chances of survival as a private entity while surreptitiously saving and preserving private ownership of other domestic and foreign financial companies? And,
* Why he took control of 80% of AIG’s voting shares without legal authority to do so and used a fraudulent trust arrangement to conceal the illegal takeover?
BREAKING NEWS:
The court just today granted plaintiff Murray’s motion for leave to amend the complaint to include yet additional TARP funds provided to AIG after the filing of the complaint. While the court did not allow the plaintiff to add AIG as a defendant as he had also requested, Murray’s attorneys tell us that they had accomplished enough discovery to know where to look for the skeletons in AIG’s closet in any event.
More coming soon.
Ooops, that should be militant islam.
I don’t find any problem with your language and I have younger children. A bigger problem is pre-teen kids who spend time on the PC reading these forums. Shouldn’t they be out playing baseball or building forts? Actually, I don’t blame the kids, it’s the parents.
Thomas Moore has done more to challenge obuma than most anyone in America.
How about JasonC outline all the legal challenges made by “JasonC” to question the AIG scam and ripoff and bring anyone to justice.
I’ll wait while you line up all your legal claims and present them.
I want to see a court number, Jason C...
Sometimes a man steps in a pile of crap and admits it...sometimes not.
I don’t like judicial activism, nor do I like the “establishment exception,” benefiting only the ACLU, to the general lack of standing of mere taxpayers (leaving aside the question of whether we should get rid of the exception or just let any taxpayer sue over any spending).
However, I’m glad to see the [deleted] hoisted on their own petard! This is genius! The case can be dismissed only after Geithner admits wrongdoing, or takes the Fifth...
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!
“p——boy” is not a derogatory inference to any portion of the human body. It is slang for “wimp”. I am certain that no vulgarity was intended by the poster.
>> You should hit abuse on yourself
Yeah, whatever.
See post #26.
Actually, if you consider “pussy-boy” to be profanity, maybe it’s you, not me, that has the dirty mind.
>> How about JasonC outline all the legal challenges made by “JasonC” to question the AIG scam and ripoff and bring anyone to justice.
You have to understand:
Jason C hearts Wall Street
Jason C hearts Hank Paulson
Jason C hearts Timmy Geithner
Jason C hearts Obama
Jason C hearts spending your dough to bail out crooked and incompetent financiers
and so forth.
Look him up on SeekingAlpha.
Once you understand where JasonC is coming from, you’ll understand his sycophantic, inane comments.
You won’t agree with them... but you’ll understand from whence JasonC comes. (that is, out of LEFT field.)
You’re right, but class is in short supply these days.
The Establishment Clause is the *only* option to allow this case to proceed. Courts have denied standing to citizens questioning the government on every other clause of late - but they can’t deny it on the Establishment Clause without screwing over all their other pet causes.
The more I read your crap reply, the more you piss me off.
Judge Zatkoff’s legal opinions have been upheld by the USSC many times, especially in Rapanos v US. Judge Zatkoff has been rightfully considered a nominee for supreme court justice.
When the case was filed, Judge Zatkoff found constitutional legal grounds to let the case proceed. But wait, the ultimate legal genuis “JasonC” finds that ‘”liquidationism in finance” trumps the complaint.
Okay...
How about you present “JasonC” opinions before the United States SC. Oh, crap, you can’t because you’ve never stood before the USSC and you’re a blowhard who’s spewing out crap.
You just blew years of personal credibility on FR in a single night. Congratulations.
I appreciate your revelation and analysis. Thank you.
...your little display pretty much tells the tale.
I appreciate your comment regarding the classless language. I didn’t like reading it either.
You are kidding right? Please tell me you're not one of Obomba's minions trying to manipulate people's opinions on the "One's" communist grab of all private industry in this country?
The shariah finance aspect was news to me.
Chilling. What IS going on in our country?
>> The bankers you despise are your moral, intellectual, and economic superiors in every respect,
Hey, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know how much *I* worship them...
;-)
I appreciate that picture. Is it:
1) a regretful obuma voter come to Damascus
2) some guy missing his peanut butter bar
3) the Martians have landed
4) I can’t find the ends of my shoelaces.
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