Weekly Roundup: Courts, Personnel Decisions Dominate the Week
It was a week full of legal maneuverings, from a major ruling in the battle over the landmark health-care law passed last year to a series of controversies over attorneys leaving the attorney general’s office.
COMING AND GOING IN THE ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE
When the state’s attention wasn’t riveted on the outcome of the court case, it was instead focused on the lawyers who argued the cases. It was getting harder and harder to keep up with the organizational chart in Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office, or at least to track who was leaving and why.
Assistant Attorney General Andrew Spark quit Wednesday as Bondi was threatening to put him on administrative leave. Spark wrote a 16-page memo outlining what he saw as shortcomings in the office’s effort to go after fraud, and accused two fellow employees of trying to block his efforts to initiate investigations. But Bondi said the memo divulged information about ongoing investigations — and “failed to include that [Sparks] was the subject of an ongoing investigation for using the services of a business he was investigating.”
Or maybe it did. Spark wrote about a case in which he was investigating a health club chain of which he was a member.
But conflict-of-interest accusations surrounding AG employees were all too common. Joe Jacquot, who left the attorney general’s office earlier this year, defended his work at the office before he took a job with Jacksonville-based Lender Processing Services, which was under investigation during his time with the state. But Jacquot said he was careful to wall himself off from any discussions about the firm once he knew he might take a job there. (Incidentally, Jacquot spent much of his time working on the health-care lawsuit.)
Jacquot’s departure in May and his landing at LPS was scrutinized in part because Bondi has been under the microscope for the firing of two attorneys who worked in the economic crimes unit on the fraud cases. Critics alleged that the attorney general’s office has gone soft on the firms, and claimed also that there’s a revolving door culture between the agency and the firms.
And two other former McCollum attorneys have ties to firms that were under investigation — one who quit when Bondi took over and another who was fired by Bondi.
It wasn’t long before politicians entered the fray, with Reps. Darren Soto, D-Kissimmee and Ron Saunders, D-Key West, and Sen. Eleanor Sobel, D-Hollywood, announcing they were working on legislation to prevent lawyers who leave the attorney general’s office or certain other agencies from going to work for a company that had been under investigation while they were there.
“It is bad policy for the integrity of the investigation, and the perception,” Soto said Wednesday in an interview.
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ONE OF THE BIGGEST SIGNS OF CRIME IS A BIG TURN OVER OF STAFF!
… like membership in a health club is on par with accepting huge campaign donations from LPS and your staff
switching jobs to work for the heinous foreclosure mills.
— eyeroll —
Bondi is a loveable woman. She really is. But she is also crazy. She stepped into doggie do do when she fired the two girls over a bank complaining they were to hard on them. Oh my, the stink she tracked into her office. And it still smells. She obviously never heard of Mr. Clean. I mean she could take that do do smell out of her office if she could find Mr. Clean. And I do not meant Mr. Scott here. He is no Mr. Clean. Bondi is in trouble. She is in deep trouble. Her name is trashed. She is being questioned on many different levels. This poor woman must be pulling her hair out. She may been some pills for her anxiety. How will she resolve this when the do do is still all over the place? And she is not looking for Mr. Clean. Here is what I propose: she hire Matthew Weidner and Mark Stoppa as advisors. After all she has advisors on the bank’s side who keep lobbying her office. Or maybe she can can hire Lisa Epstein and Michael Redman to give her some real in-touch transparency. Hey Lisa and Mike, invite Bondi on your saturday morning radio show. Give the girl a chance to redeem her self. And bring some Mr. Clean and let her know what wonders it will do up there in the AGs compound.
Well said!
LOL
there is an old saying “YOU GOT INTO SOMETHING THAT YOU CANNOT WASH OFF” !
Bondi’s reputation & integrity stink worse than a skunk.