Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Ray is a busy bee

It appears our mayor was conducting some interesting business on the side during his last trip to Washington, D.C.


That's right folks...another 15k of your tax dollars just went to contract a law firm from D.C. to help defend Ray. "Defend him from what", you may ask? I'm assuming a federal investigation. Is that even legal? I thought a public official was not allowed to use public funds to defend himself from criminal activity. Wasn't that established by the supreme court in Jones V. Clinton? Help me out here, lawfolk.

The firm is Kelley, Drye and Warren. Their website lists their fields of expertise including: government contracts, government relations, and white collar crime. That would pretty much sum up our mayor's tenure.

Interestingly enough K,D&W also represented American crawfish farmers in a 1 billion dollar lawsuit against insurance companies who created surety bonds allowing the Chinese to sell crawfish at below market prices. Maybe that's why Nagin was detained in China...just joking.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yep:

http://www.kelleydrye.com/attorneys/atty_data/05689

And Yep:

http://www.kelleydrye.com/attorneys/atty_data/05839

Or, maybe he was visiting tehse guys:
http://egov.cityofno.com/ECRS_ConView/DisplayContract.aspx?FID=0000000000000000000000000002875

Part 1b - "Document Review"; gee, what documents are they reviewing?

http://www.bdlaw.com/attorneys-125.html

Anonymous said...

The contract says these two folks will be doing the work:

David Laufman
http://www.kelleydrye.com/attorneys/atty_data/05839

Andrew Wein
http://www.kelleydrye.com/attorneys/atty_data/05689

"Mr. Laufman represents individuals and corporations in all phases of criminal proceedings, including grand jury investigations, trials, sentencings, appeals and other post-conviction proceedings. Drawing on his extensive investigative experience, he also conducts internal corporate investigations and represents individuals and corporations who are the subject of investigations by congressional oversight committees and Offices of Inspector General. In addition, he counsels corporations concerning compliance with applicable regulatory and criminal laws, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), export control and economic sanctions laws, the USA PATRIOT Act, money laundering statutes, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act."

"Andrew Wein is an associate in the firm's Washington, D.C. office. His practice focuses on litigation, mediation, and arbitration of complex civil cases, specializing in multi-party insurance disputes and consumer class actions, and has tried numerous cases to verdict before both juries and judges.

"Mr. Wein is a former Assistant District Attorney in the Investigations/Rackets Bureau of the Bronx County District Attorney’s Office, where he was awarded the Outstanding Community Service Award in 2001."

Neither Laufman's or Wein's bar admissions include Louisiana, but do include D.C.:

Laufman:
"Bar Admissions:
District of Columbia, 1989
Pennsylvania, 1988"

Wein:
"Bar Admissions:
New York
District of Columbia
U.S. District Court for the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York"

Civitch said...

At the rates these attorneys charge (averages about $400 an hour) along with the $15,000 cap, Ray and Co. will only get about a week's worth of work from these guys. That's barely enough time to get the lay of the land, much less mount any kind of defense (or do whatever it is that this firm has been hired to do).

My guess is that this contract will mushroom just like the camera contract.