U.S. Prosecutors Want to Persuade Stewart's Broker to Give Testimony

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Thursday, June 27, 2002 | JERRY MARKON, CHARLES GASPARINO and SUSANNE CRAIG

[TroutStalker]

Federal prosecutors investigating Martha Stewart's stock trading now are looking to persuade her Merrill Lynch broker to provide testimony that they can use against her as part of a probe into whether she lied to federal authorities about her sale of ImClone Systems Inc. shares, a person familiar with the matter said.

[Dog Gone]

Perhaps Martha can make radish roses in the cafeteria of a Federal Penitentiary.

[blackdog]

Does anyone find this curious? As we have seen and heard over the past six months, lying, cheating, stealing, and evading has been the way the people in the know and in the drivers seat have been operating in this country. Martha Stewart is small potatoes. Besides, I noticed that "Super Morals Man" Mr. Ken Starr is in Martha's court. I want to see the CEO's and CFO's in jail that ran the "thousands of company's that cooked their books in the 90's."(That is a quote from the USA Today)

[blackdog]

Even if Martha is guilty of everything possible, including killing Chandra Levy for Gary, she will not ever, ever, ever spend one day in jail aside from aragnment.

[Cable225]

The biggest problem for Ms. Stewart, the person said, is "she's essentially handed the government a charge that everyone knows is a crime: lying to the prosecutors."

Not true, not true.

Martha's defenders can simply use the "Clinton model" and say "Everyone lies about money!" or "She was embarassed for her family, so she fibbed about money".

The press will eat it up and spew it out 5,000,000 times, and Martha will get a walk.

[Dog Gone]

I agree that she is small potatoes in terms of the magnitude of her crime. I think I read it was in the $250,000 range in terms of what that stock transaction saved her.

She's obviously lost far more than that now as her company's stock has been hammered. But it looks to me that what she did was clearly illegal, and the prosecution of a household name sends a strong deterrent message to others who are doing the same thing.

Unfortunately, the executives who were cooking their books to make the company look profitable may get away with it. I'm not sure we have the laws on the books that are sufficient to deal with the way that they did it. Even if they do exist, most of the penalties are civil, not criminal.

We face a serious challenge as a country. We have to toughen up enforcement of accounting practices so that we can have confidence in the numbers companies report. And we have to jail those who fraudulently circumvent them.

The danger is that we could go too far. We don't want the government to micromanage big business. It would inhibit the free market and put a serious burden on capitalism.

Finding the balance is going to be difficult.

[PBRSTREETGANG]

Martha's goose is cooked. (Allbeit at 350 degrees in a properly-preheated Viking oven.)

[an amused spectator]

The biggest problem for Ms. Stewart, the person said, is "she's essentially handed the government a charge that everyone knows is a crime: lying to the prosecutors."

Correct: "lying to the prosecutors while not being a Democrat president." ;-)

Equal Justice Under Law (And Some Are More Equal Than Others)