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Howard Dean, Extortion, Bribes and other problems DNC Chair Howard Dean’s problems with the Bill of Rights, the Law and Ethics. In 1997 Howard Dean announced his desire to appoint judges willing to subvert the Bill of Rights or in Howard Dean lingo “legal technicalities”. Two judges appointed within months of Dean infamous 1997 statement have been found guilty of civil rights violations by a federal court in Manhattan. (fn1) Dean’s top appointee and lawyer, Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell, was defense counsel for the corrupt government employees in this case where Sorrell has expended vast public funds to forward...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - More than two years after he left the governor's office to make his unsuccessful run for the presidency, the fight over public access to Howard Dean's gubernatorial records is coming before the Vermont Supreme Court. Today's hearing is on the state's appeal of a ruling that 86 boxes of records Mr. Dean sealed when he left office in 2003 are instead presumed to be open. Superior Court Judge Alan Cook ordered Mr. Dean and the state to identify each of the hundreds of thousands of documents in the boxes and say why each should be covered...

MONTPELIER, Vt. — More than two years after he left the governor's office to make his unsuccessful run for the presidency, the fight over public access to Howard Dean's (search) gubernatorial records is coming before the Vermont Supreme Court. Monday's hearing is on the state's appeal of a ruling that 86 boxes of records Dean sealed when he left office in 2003 are instead presumed to be open.

Dean Records Decision Burlington, Vermont - February 17, 2004 During Howard Dean's 11 years as Governor, he collected hundreds of boxes of correspondence. When he left office he signed a deal with the Secretary of State to seal 145 of those boxes for 10 years under executive privilege. "Governor Dean cannot avoid disclosure of these public records, by hiding behind his private agreement with the secretary of state, that's what he's tried to do, the court said, no that's not gonna fly," said Andrew Manitsky, Judicial Watch attorney. The conservative watchdog group sued to have the records opened last...

Vermont Court Rules Against Dean in Records Lawsuit (CNSNews.com) - A Vermont court Tuesday ruled against Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean and the State of Vermont in a lawsuit brought by a public interest group seeking access to Dean's gubernatorial records. The court ruled that a private agreement between Dean and Vermont could not be used to prevent the public access to Dean's records. Dean's attorneys had asked the court to summarily throw out Judicial Watch's lawsuit, rather than letting a judge decide. As a result of the ruling, Dean must detail the records he is seeking to keep secret...

<p>Dean cited executive privilege when he negotiated a private deal with the state of Vermont to deny public access to his records. The Washington-based public interest group Judicial Watch filed suit to force the documents' release.</p> <p>Washington County Superior Court Judge Alan Cook said state law prescribes a "restriction on use" of documents, such as Dean's, given to the secretary of state for safekeeping, but does not provide for a "prohibition on access."</p>

MONTPELIER, Vt. - A judge ruled Tuesday that neither former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean nor the secretary of state had authority to agree to a blanket seal covering 145 boxes of records from his 11 years as governor. Superior Court Judge Alan W. Cook said Dean and the state must identify the roughly 600,000 sealed documents and describe why each of them is protected by executive privilege. An appeal of the ruling to the state Supreme Court is likely. "Howard Dean is now getting a lesson in government openness," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, which last fall filed...

Clark Urges Rivals to Release RecordsNewsMax.com WiresFriday, Jan. 16, 2004MANCHESTER, N.H. – Wesley Clark on Friday challenged his rivals for the Democrat nomination for president to join him in releasing financial and other personal records, a clear prod at Howard Dean. "I challenge all Democrats in the race to follow suit," Clark told a news conference as he released military, voter registration and financial records. "Everybody ought to be open about what they've done in public office." Clark, along with several other candidates, has criticized Dean for not opening all of his records as Vermont governor. Clark also urged President...

Jan. 19 issue - When pressed on why he refuses to release a large chunk of his records as Vermont governor, Howard Dean has a standard response: he's being sued over the issue by a Washington watchdog group, so he's leaving the entire matter up to the Vermont courts, where a judge can decide which documents can be released. "Why can't a judge look at every single piece of paper and make that decision?" Dean asserted during a debate in Iowa. But Dean's explanation has drawn a demurral of sorts from a surprising source: his own lawyer in the case....

Dean's Sealed Records Thursday January 30, 2003 One hundred and 50 boxes of Democrat Howard Dean's records while governor of Vermont have been sealed for a decade. According to Green Mountain Democratic Secretary of State Deb Markowitz: "For the first time in Vermont's history, the governor asked for records to be closed for a decade." According to the secretary of state, that was negotiated down from 20 years. As indicated by Markowitz, the records of Governors Democrat Madeleine Kunin and Republican Richard Snelling were sealed for six years. As reported by WCAX-TV, Jan. 27, Dean was asked about the records...

<p>Howard Dean´s fellow Democrats are now in a feeding frenzy over the former governor´s efforts to shield details of past energy policy meetings. Mr. Dean, in turn, calls the criticism "laughable." It seems his only response to the understandable calls for openness regarding public records is to attack.</p>

Last January, as his presidential campaign was stirring to life, Howard Dean was asked why he had decided to keep nearly half of his records as governor of Vermont under seal until 2013. "Well, there are future political considerations," Dr. Dean told statehouse reporters. "We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor." Dr. Dean now says he was joking about why he invoked executive privilege to keep 145 boxes of his official records — about 47 percent of them — under a 10-year seal. But there is ample evidence in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vermont's attorney general says the state should dismiss a lawsuit seeking to open the gubernatorial records of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on grounds the former governor's papers are not subject to the state's public records law. The move by Attorney General William Sorrell came Tuesday in response to a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based group that wants to unseal the documents. Dean's rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination have used the issue of the sealed papers to criticize his calls for openness in government. "He's hiding behind executive privilege, which is exactly what (President) Bush...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - The state of Vermont will fight efforts to force open the gubernatorial records of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, Attorney General William Sorrell said Tuesday. The attorney general's office planned to respond late Tuesday to a lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Judicial Watch seeking to unseal the documents, which Dean's rivals for the Democratic nomination for president have used to criticize Dean's calls for openness in government.``We think we've got a strong case here,'' said Sorrell, an aide to Dean when he was governor. ``The Vermont Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged the validity of executive privilege.''At...

<p>EXETER, N.H. -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said yesterday that he would not file an answer -- due in Washington County Superior Court in Vermont today -- to a lawsuit against him demanding that he unseal papers from his governorship, and instead would leave the matter to his friend William Sorrell, the current attorney general in Vermont.</p>

Over in Deanland, the front-runner is starting to take some serious heat. The New York Times wins the award for today's most obvious headline with, "Some Democrats Uneasy About Dean as Nominee." That's some scoop. It's clear, however, the split in the seams of the Democratic party is growing wider by the day, and Howard Dean is the one who is doing the pulling. Yesterday he not only repeated his widely criticized remark that America is no safer after Saddam's capture, but he went one whopper further, saying the country is no safer today than it was on Sept. 10,...

ROCK HILL, S.C. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt demanded Saturday that front-runner Howard Dean release records of meetings and phone calls about tax breaks given to corporate villain Enron, which Dean denies he did. Visiting with local Democrats in this town near the North Carolina border, Gephardt alleged that Dean, while Vermont's governor, "met regularly with the corporate chiefs who benefited from the tax windfall he created for them. A chief beneficiary of his tax cuts for corporate special interests was Enron." Dean has faced questions about corporate tax breaks enacted during his 11 years as governor. Enron...

Late Final December 06, 2003Does Howard Dean Have An "Enron" Problem? Excerpts: Did then-Gov. Howard Dean's administration approve a $180 million sweetheart deal to the boys at Entergy, at the same time utility executives were pumping campaign contributions into his then-fledgling campaign for president? And did that deal wrongfully stick Vermont taxpayers with high electricity rates for ten years? They are questions Dean may find himself having to answer on the campaign trail, as he repeatedly invokes the Enron scandals in an effort to link the Bush Administration to "Ken Lay and the boys at Enron." The Dean Administration's Public...

CHALLENGING DEAN TO UNSEAL RECORDS, KERRY UNVEILS FOREHEAD Offers Iowa Voters First-ever Glimpse of Brow Daring his Democratic rival Howard Dean to unseal the records of his gubernatorial tenure in Vermont, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) unveiled his forehead today for the first time in the presidential campaign. "Unlike Howard Dean, I have nothing to hide," Senator Kerry said, dramatically combing his hair to the side and unveiling his brow to the audible gasps of his Davenport, Iowa audience. In a new wave of campaign ads in Iowa and New Hampshire, Senator Kerry is shown combing his hair off his forehead...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said Sunday he will let a judge determine which of his sealed records from Dean's years as Vermont's governor should be made public. Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Dean said he has decided to use a lawsuit by the government watchdog group Judicial Watch, suing to open the records, as a mechanism to determine which records should be released and which should be kept sealed. "What we think the best thing to do is to let the judge go through every single document and decide for himself what ought to be...