Mark Fuller, an Alabama judge appointed by George Bush as been accused of pension fraud, misuse of his office, perjury, criminal conspiracy and obstruction of the FBI's background check for the Federal Judiciary. These charges were made well before Fuller was assigned to prosecute Don Siegelman, former Democratic governor of Alabama.
The charges were submitted to the DOJ's public integrity section by a respected defense attorney who conducted a routine investigation prior to trying a major case. The charges were sufficiently credible to get judge Fuller removed from that case. However, he was allowed to preside over the Siegelman case. These charges of criminal activity were corroborated by signed documents by public officials involved in exposing the alleged pension fraud by Judge Fuller.
Scott Horton breaks open another can of Republican worms in Alabama.
I have received a copy of an affidavit (8.7Mb PDF) filed by a Missouri attorney in 2003 which details a number of charges of unethical and criminal conduct against Judge Mark Fuller. The attorney sought Fuller’s removal from a high-profile litigation which related to a prominent Republican who was close to both the current President Bush and his father.
The attorney, Paul Benton Weeks, had been involved as counsel for plaintiffs in a civil action called Murray v. Scott & Sevier, which had originally been filed in Kansas and was later transferred to Montgomery and assigned to Judge Fuller. Weeks, reached by telephone this morning, advised me that he did a routine background check to discover what kind of judge he was up before. "I was astonished by what I found," Weeks said. Immediately after the papers were filed, Weeks said that Fuller was removed as the judge handling the case.
In the affidavit, Weeks accuses Fuller of engaging in criminal conduct both before and after he came on to the bench. The charges include perjury, criminal conspiracy, a criminal attempt to defraud the Retirement System of Alabama, misuse of office as a District Attorney, and an obstruction of his background check by the FBI in connection with the review of his appointment by President Bush to the bench.
What is astonishing about these documents is the signed statements by pension fund officials that accuse Fuller of fraud and perjury. This is not the work of one partisan lawyer.
...not one single board member believed Mark Fuller was not lying. I state under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
Signed Gary McAliley
Yet, the DOJ never responded in any way to Weeks' complaint about Fuller.
This means that at the time that Fuller was presiding over the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman, a prosecution brought by Noel Hillman’s Public Integrity Section, he was or should have been the subject of an investigation by the Public Integrity Section. This presents a further appearance of serious impropriety both by Judge Fuller and by the prosecutors handling the case. Our earlier study of Fuller showed that he had three disqualifying conflicts: his undisclosed service on the Executive Committee of the Alabama G.O.P. at the time that it was running campaigns against Siegelman; his suggestion that Siegelman was responsible for "politically motivated" attacks on him in connection with his bookkeeping practices as a district attorney; and his business interests which are tied up almost entirely with U.S. government contracts.
Weeks’s allegations are focused on Fuller’s conduct in connection with "salary spiking" involving two of his employees in the District Attorney’s office. Fuller’s testimony, which Weeks says was contradictory and which changed materially in the course of the matter, was disbelieved both by the RSA and by an Alabama court handling the matter. Weeks calls Fuller’s statements under oath perjured. In an interview today, Weeks noted that Fuller was an "absentee district attorney." "Many of the people I interviewed in the district attorney’s office insisted that Fuller was simply never around. He was constantly out of the state, most often in Colorado, pursuing the business of DOSS Aviation, a company that Fuller controls."
Weeks’s affidavit reflects interviews with Fuller’s successor in the district attorney’s office and with senior officials at the RSA, who confirm the allegations against Fuller. "Judge McAliley then said that he had met with RSA officials and that every member on the RSA board believed Mark Fuller had lied and that Fuller had lied under oath."
Weeks notes that after the affidavit was transmitted to the Justice Department, no individual from Noel Hillman’s group ever contacted him to follow up on any of the allegations or to request any of the documentation that was cited in the affidavit.
Material used with permission from Scott Horton.
The PDF submitted by Weeks is very interesting because it not only ties to the Siegelman case but brings in another huge fraud case that ties to a friend of the Bush family.
To be continued.