...and then DON'T apoligize. Davis refused to answer Bill Simon's question during the debate-- Davis would not deny fundraising on state property.
Unless someone turns states' evidence and squeals, the kickfront pattern is legal on its face. Nathanson did turn states' evidence. That's why Davis has fought for two years to keep the courts from releasing that document. Now that the US Supreme Court declined to act on that case on Monday of this week, the Nathanson letter will probably hit the papers before the Simon-Davis election.From the CFAC websiteIt might have a similar impact as the Chang Memorandum did on Senator Robert ("the Public Official") Torricelli. Governor Gray ("high public official") Davis should then be referred to that way, because that's the code phrase used for Davis in the Nathanson letter.
This Nathanson Letter might well be the antidote to the campaign staff screw-up over the COPS photo and then some. So when do we get to see it?Report: Sealed Letters from Convicted Bribe-Taker Mention Governor Gray Davis (2/11/00)
The Sacramento Bee has reported that letters from attorneys seeking a shortened prison sentence for Mark L. Nathanson, a former California Coastal Commissioner convicted for extorting bribes, name Gray Davis as one had who consulted with Nathanson on leads to potential campaign contributions. The letters were kept under federal court seal since 1994 and came to light only by accident, the Bee says.
The accident, according to the February 6 story by staff writers Denny Walsh and Sam Stanton, was the revelation in a recently filed court document that Nathanson had after all succeeded in having his sentence reduced by one year.
Nathanson was released from prison in January 1997 under several conditions, and last September his probation officer petitioned the court to have him explain why he should not be put back behind bars for failing to live up to one of the conditions -- paying back money extorted from one of his victims.
Attracting the Bee's attention in that petition was the first on-the-record disclosure that Nathanson had been released a year early. The reduction, the Bee learned, was upon motion by the government in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, with no reason stated on the record -- either in the motion itself or in the order of Judge Lawrence K. Karlton -- and with no hearing. The government now says it supported the reduction in exchange for Nathanson's cooperation in an unidentified civil case in Los Angeles, and also out of humanitarian concern for his affliction with a potentially deadly skin cancer.
But this disclosure only emerged after the Bee took legal action to demand access to three sequentially numbered documents which it had discovered missing from the Nathanson case file. These turned out to be two pieces of correspondence sent to federal prosecutors by Nathanson's lawyers at two junctures -- one just before he was sentenced to 57 months in prison and the second about a year later. Both sought the government's support for a sentence reduction, and both, when approved for release to the Bee December 7 in edited form, had names deleted at several points.
The first attorney's letter showed Nathanson alleging that (name deleted) had occasionally met with him at (name deleted) restaurant in Beverly Hills. This politician was interested in campaign contributions from people Nathanson had helped -- as Coastal Commissioner or otherwise. Nathanson and the politician, the letter said, "would make and go over lists of people that Nathanson had assisted with government approvals -- both at the Coastal Commission and elsewhere -- saying that he, (name deleted), 'needed to call' those individuals for campaign contributions.
"As Nathanson understood it," his attorney's letter continued, "in calling these people, (name deleted) was going to suggest a link between he (sic) and and the approvals Nathanson had helped to secure in order to solicit campaign contributions from the individuals on the lists."
The letter sent to prosecutors a year later -- August 1994 -- by another Nathanson attorney offered more allegations, according to the Bee, about linkage between the convicted extortionist and (name deleted).
Both letters were soon attached to a motion by Nathanson's counsel, filed with the court and formally seeking a sentence reduction. None of this paperwork was put in the court file, but instead consigned to the clerk's safe, under a sealing order issued by Judge Karlton but not signed.
When the Bee's court challenge persuaded Karlton that the letters were matters of public record, he released them with the name redactions, he explained, to preserve reputations from unfair harm.
He acknowledged that the exact identity of the politician mentioned by Nathanson was at least potentially newsworthy, "if not so much for the content as for the demonstration of how corrupted our criminal system has become by virtue of the system of bribing people to rat on others. The problem is that, and that is an important public issue, although I have no doubt that is not how the Bee would play the material which is sealed. And that's the problem."
The Bee story claims that "numerous sources who have seen unedited versions of the letters say that Nathanson leveled accusations...against Gray Davis, the Democratic career politician who then was state controller and now is governor of California."
The Bee quotes Davis press spokesman Michael Bustamante as declining "to dignify false and reckless 7-year-old accusations made by a convicted felon hoping to convince federal authorities to reduce his prison sentence." The story also quotes "federal sources close to the investigation" as calling Nathanson's allegations, even if true, too vague to support criminal prosecution.
But the Bee story notes one clear anomaly aside from the secrecy surrounding the sentence reduction and the letters seeking it. In the federal system, sentence reduction, even on motion of the prosecution, is not authorized for reasons of humanitarian concern or even assistance to the government in civil cases.
Under Rule 35 (b) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the court may, "on motion of the Government made within one year after the imposition of the sentence, ... reduce a sentence to reflect a defendant's subsequent, substantial assistance in the investigation or prosecution of another person who has committed an offense..."
COMMENT: Judge Karlton is right, so far as he goes. The real scandal is not that Gray Davis was served up to federal prosecutors as favor bait by a confessedly corrupt politician, and the real eye-opener is not that Davis is comprehensive in hoovering up campaign funds. The worst corruption -- and that's the judge's word -- is that prosecutors build so many cases on no proof better than a "rat's" word, bought with reduced sentence recommendations or other favors. But this case may illustrate even more than the judge cares to comment on, and that's the risk that when a rat starts to name big names, politically conscious prosecutors and judges may collude to grant favors to shut him up -- and then may have to cover their own tracks in having done so.