Sen. Trent Lott scarpers

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UPDATED BELOW

I love that word (noun or verb) “scarper.” Bummed it from the Brits, whose term of art it is for “nip outta town just ahead of the shurf.” And when someone completing his 20th year as a United States Senator up and resigns 15 minutes before midnight (his spokesman having said that would happen the following day or the next after) — well, “scarper” just comes to mind.

“U.S. Sen. Trent Lott has informed Vice President Dick Chaney [sic], the president of the U.S. Senate, that he is retiring as the U.S. Sen. for the state of Mississippi effective on the close of the Senate’s business today, Tuesday Dec. 18, 2007,” [spokesman Lee] Youngblood said.

Youngblood announced the resignation about 10:45 p.m. CDT. He said the resignation came so late because Lott had to resign the day before the Senate recesses, likely Wednesday, but he wanted to vote on important bills that were being considered well into the night.

Yes, I’m sure he did want to vote last night — after all, he hadda help George W. Bush get that $70 BILLION he wants to keep young Americans losing their legs, arms, and faces — oh, and our national honor — in a country that didn’t attack us and wasn’t about to. So I despise the helmet-haired bastard (and Harry Reid, who let 20 “Bush Dog” Democrats, including my own Sen. Bill Nelson, go along to ensure they get their pork AND their ‘08 issue, the disgusting, honor-free twits). They’ll all be home for Christmas, though. The troops? Yah, maybe if they’re very very lucky, some other year.

Oh right, that’s off topic, isn’t it? Excuse me.

Let us return to the prevailing focus here lately — the one I believe has much to do with Trent Lott’s scarper, his brother-in-law Dickie Scruggs. The Lott-Scruggs relatives have strong reason to fear the Ides of January, according to David Rossmiller.

If you’ve been around south Mississippi for long, or folo just recently, you’ll remember the Katrina case McIntosh v. State Farm, whose judge the other day ruled that Dickie and Zach Scruggs must give depositions under oath. Rossmiller now finds on PACER the notice (pdf) that on January 15, 2008, first Zach then Dickie — toting along all documents and any other stuff attached to their history with Cori and Kerri Rigsby, their momma, engineer Brian Ford, and various other people/companies involved in any Scruggs-Rigsby contacts – must present themselves for questioning by State Farm’s attorneys and stay put as-many-days-as-it-takes. Among the most pointed “requests” of the notice is:

Please produce any and all documents which were represented to [you] to have been downloaded or removed from State Farm’s system or removed from any State Farm office and include in your response any documents in any form evidencing any type of compensation paid or promised for such documents.

That refers to the up-to-15,000 case files that Ocean Springs-residents Cori and Kerri Rigsby kyped from their office at State Farm sub-contractor E.A. Renfroe to give (or was it sell?) to Dickie. And since the Rigsby sisters’ depositions aren’t scheduled until January 22, we can presume that Team State Farm plans to treat the Scruggses to a whole grueling week.

Rossmiller:

If you look at the list of documents State Farm requests [Dickie] produce for the deposition, they include [communications], dating to August 2005, to and from the Rigsby sisters, Mississippi AG Jim Hood, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office (one assumes this does not include inadvertent communications through wiretaps or body wires in the alleged bribery case) and various journalists and news organizations. Among the purposes of the deposition and the request for documents, it is evident, is to test Scruggs’ assertions that his relationship with the Rigsby sisters began in February 2006. State Farm suspects that the sisters were working for both Scruggs and Hood much earlier than that to covertly take State Farm claims documents. You say what of attorney-client privilege between the Rigsby sisters and Scruggs? Supposedly they did not form such a relationship until sometime in 2006, so communications before that would be non-privileged.

Why is Trent Lott sweating bullets? Because he knows that already in the public record are the notes Brian Ford made during his employment for another State Farm sub-contractor — notes that include (on page 7 of this pdf) a passage reading

9/25/06 TRENT LOTT CALLED
- CALLED TO THANK ME FOR MY HELP
- TRENT WANTED TO PUT A TEMPORARY PERSONAL TRAILER ON HIS LOT. CITY SAID - “RAISE 9′, PUT UP A RETAINING WALL, GET INSPECTIONS. VERY FRUSTRATING & RUNNING PEOPLE OFF. … SO THEY WILL JUST STAY IN DR. THOMPSON PLACE AFTER IT IS FIX UP. ONLY PROBLEM IS, DICKIE SCRUGGS STAYS THERE TOO.
- TRENT HAD JUST TALKED TO CARY [sic -- Kerri?] RIGSBY - STATE FARM WHISTLE BLOWER …
- FEDERAL LAW EXEMPTS INS. CARRIERS FROM ANTI TRUST LAWS (THEY CAN COLLUDE). THEY GET TAX BREAKS. AS CHAIR OF THE SENATE INSURANCE COMMITTEE, I AM GOING TO CHANGE THAT.
. . .
- TRENT WOULD FORGO HIS $ TO GET S.F.

Now remember the “Halloween deposition” (pdf) we looked at a couple of weeks ago, taken from Lee Harrell, Deputy Insurance Commissioner of Mississippi — and Rossmiller’s analysis of that conversation:

So, do you see what Harrell’s testimony says? That Hood worked with Scruggs and the Rigsby sisters to take documents from State Farm, without a warrant, for use in a criminal investigation and to assist Scruggs in his civil lawsuits, and then he not only worked on criminal investigations with a man who was also working for the Scruggs Katrina Group, he used the threat of criminal indictments that would culminate from this process as a means of coercing settlements in the civil cases he had help create.

Asshole though he be, Trent Lott is not totally stupid (though he may have been for a while stupified by rage at State Farm). He knows that, despite all his long years’ effort to the contrary, a large number of Mississippians can read and reason and see this trail he’s left, and where it’s heading. There he is down on paper conferring with the whistle-blower (or thief, depending on your standpoint) who worked with Dickie and Jim Hood to coerce a civil settlement via state-applied – possibly criminally state-applied – pressure. Is he the one who hooked them up to the FBI and U.S. Attorney? (If so, where does that leave the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi — the one, I presume, he would have called?)

Oh my yes, Trentie’s scarpering.

lotus

UPDATE: In this connection, you will want to see Rossmiller’s and Alan Lange’s new posts.