Friday, January 17, 2014

DHECC - The 2nd Freeh Report - Yaaawwwnnn.......

Here it is.

But don't waste 30 minutes out of your Friday night reading it....trust me it's not worth the time.

The unnamed PSC firm continues to remain unnamed and the rest of it is yawn inspiring.  I think somebody needs to pay me 3 million dollars a month to do this job...my posts are much more revealing and I can add and subtract at least to a 12th grade level.

I'm working for the next 42 hours for about .003% of his monthly pull so I don't have a lot of time right now to comment on it and I've only browsed it.  I'll get back to you over the weekend.

UPDATE:  In the meantime it looks like David Hammer and WWLTV have picked up the scent on this story...that makes me happy:

More alleged misconduct in BP oil spill settlement program

I want to draw your attention to the comments made by Blaine "Much Ado About Nothing" LeCesne:
Freeh acknowledged to Barbier that he has ties to law firms representing BP, including Kirkland and Ellis and Williams & Connolly.  He also disclosed that his former law partner, Stanley Sporkin, was serving as BP America's ombudsman. 
But in each case, Freeh has definitively stated there was no conflict of interest.  LeCesne said it shouldn't be Freeh's place to conclude that. 
"I think there's at least a specter of a potential conflict and I hope something is done rather than to simply accept Mr. Freeh's unilateral conclusion, without explanation, that he's not biased," LeCesne said. 

Now don't get me wrong, I think LeCesne is as full of shite as a Christmas goose when it comes to his role as an apologist for the PSC attorneys that pull his strings....most notably Fayard (not Stuart Smith as BP claimed)....but I completely agree with him on this issue of Freeh having the capacity to absolve himself of any conflict of interest and there's a good reason why.

I was going to wait to write about this in another post but since Hammer brought it up I want to air it out now.

Freeh cleared himself of any conflict of interest with Williams & Connolly business in this letter:

Williams & Connoly Freeh conflict letter to Barbier

Here's the issue...if Kirkland and Ellis (BP's attorneys) or even BP themselves are referring business to The Freeh Group and/or Pepper Hamilton (Freeh has financial interest in both companies) then a quid pro quo scenario could be present in respect to what Freeh is doing in the claims office.

Remember, the whole reason Feinberg's GCCF was shut down and the DHECC was opened to supplant it was because Judge Barbier ruled that Feinberg was not an unbiased party after it was discovered he was being paid on a commission basis by BP, among other issues.

Now we have a guy in Freeh who was hired to investigate fraud that has systematically picked off the top five people in the claims office while sliding in over 40 of his own employees to do...what?  Nobody's sure.

One thing we do know is that he's clawing back claims.  If he is being rewarded by BP or Kirkland and Ellis through new business referrals there is a clear quid pro quo.  I don't understand how in billy hell Judge Barbier could justify collapsing the GCCF and now allow Freeh to take over the claims office under these circumstances.  And I especially do not understand how Barbier is allowing Freeh to absolve himself as LeCesne pointed out.

More later.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow when Freeh was announced BP and the media believed The Big Bad Wolf was coming to uncover all the little piggies in the bayou.
Geoff Morrell, Vice President & Head of US Communications, issued the following statement: We are very pleased that the Court has appointed Judge Louis Freeh as Special Master to lead an independent investigation of the Court Supervised Settlement Program. We believe that Judge Freeh's experience on the federal bench and as Director of the FBI make him ideally suited to conduct a thorough investigation into the recent allegations of unethical and potentially criminal behavior within the program. In addition, Judge Freeh has been granted wide latitude to look for "other possible ethical violations or misconduct within the CSSP." Judge Freeh’s investigation of the facility is an essential step in assuring public confidence in the integrity of the claims process.
Now that the alleged corruption was unfounded destroying a few people named in his first report and protected the unnamed firm I wonder if BP will bless his second report. What a disappointment I guess after huffing and puffing as he blew the door in he was offered room inside the command center with a nice monthly expense account. Funny how that now appears he converted in to a real Powerpuff Girl what a letdown. We waited 6 months for this juicy tell all and this is all he came up with, personally I’m disappointed. http://www.cartoonnetwork.com/tv_shows/ppg/video/bad-hair-day-clip.html
In-Hale

Kevin said...

I agree that this Freeh report amounts to a fart in a hurricane. But, there are a couple of details that are interesting:

"Judge Shushan instructed Berwick Duval to treat the email as an inadvertent disclosure, and instructed him to make no use of the information or reveal the receipt of the email."

Don't reveal the receipt of the email? Don't reveal it to whom?

Why did Berwick Duval call Magistrate Shushan instead of Judge Barbier?

What did Kirk Fisher say to David Duval in those texts after Freeh instructed him not to contact Duval? What's troubling Fisher?

Personally, I think there's more to the Fisher/Odom story than Freeh put into this report.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like "much ado about nothing," wouldn't you say?

Kevin said...

You know I'm not a BP or Freeh apologist. I just like to bring ALL available details in this situation out into the open.

The update to this psrticular blog points to comments by LOYOLA Law Professor Blaine LeCesne.

Judge Carl Barbier is a member of the Board of Directors for the Loyola Law Alumni Association, and he is a member and past-president of the St. Thoma More Inn of Court at Loyola Law School.

LeCesne would never find anything wrong with what Judge Barbier, Fayard (whose daughter was some kind of instructor at Loyola Law School) or Pat Juneau does.

Now, there is a very detailed disclosure made by Freeh to the court, the PSC and BP's lawyers before Freeh was appointed as Special Master. In that disclosure, he identifies the Pepper Hamilton work with Kirkland Ellis.

BUT, but, but, Freeh also disclosed that Pepper Hamilton was directly ADVERSE (on the opposite side) to BP in several legal proceedings.

I have yet to see ANY written disclosure by Pat Juneau, much less a disclosure that his law firm ALSO REPRESENTED BP prior to his appointment as the Special Master of the CAO/DHECC.

I'm sure Calvin Fayard and Joe Rice disclosed all of Juneau's personal relationships - duck hunting, private parties, maybe some travel overseas, etc. - with Fayard to BP when they convinced Mark Holstein of BP that Juneau would be a good Special Master.

All you CAO employees - how often did Juneau or David Duval visit/chat/communicate with Fayard or his daughter Caroline?

Who is/was Pat Juneau's secretary at the CAO office? Maybe she knows something?

Anonymous said...

Maybe it was Judge Shushan that instructed Juneau to hire David Duval in the first place. Maybe Stanwood and David regularly spoke to her about many things. Maybe Stanwood was a little more concerned about Freeh's witch hunt than she was.

Kevin said...

Anonymous at January 18, 2014 at 11:19:00 AM CST:

Now you're talking! Let's hear some more.

"Stanwood" the cousin, or "Stanwood" the judge?

Anonymous said...

Sorry. I was answering your question about Berwick, but if I did mean Stanwood, I would have meant the Judge.

Kevin said...

Thank you for the clarification.

It's not too surprising to me that David Duval would have reason to have SOME communications with the magistrate given his position as appeals coordinator, an official position with a court-appointed special master.

Did he (David) regularly speak to her about many things that were of a personal or family nature?

Was Berwick Duval speaking to the magistrate about personal/firm BP claims?

Anonymous said...

Maybe the magistrate was the one that instructed Juneau to hire Duval in the first place. You have to draw your own conclusion as to why.

Kevin said...

Do you know if Berwick and/or David spoke with the magistrate about the "District Attorney" suits brought by the Duval firm and Fayard and other against BP (2:10-cv-01759 is one)?