Welcome to a belatedly thrown together edition of Toussie Tuesday, the continuing series that asks the question:
How did a crooked real estate swindler get a high-powered fixer like Bradford Berenson to get his pardon onto the desk of White House Counsel Fred Fielding, outside of all standard operating procedure, shortly after his father made his first-ever political donated: big bucks to John McCain and the RNC, with approval coming shortly after additional last-minute contributions to Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith, and slavering-for-power Republican Majority Leader in Waiting Eric "The Rainmaker" Cantor -- and who chose those recipients for his father, anyway?
See this diary for context and this one for last week's follow-up.
My aim in this diary series has become simple: I want to induce Congress to squeeze information from Toussie's extremely effective and well-connected Republican attorney Bradford Berenson -- who, if he doesn't know an answer, can probably figure out how to get it -- about the answers to the following groups of questions:
- How did either Toussie eventually come to employ Bradford Berenson for this purpose? What was indicated to him about the specific services that Bradford Berenson could provide. (I know that much of this is privileged -- if no one ever broke confidentiality. So let people testify that no one else knows this information, if it's true, so that privilege stands. That assertion could turn out to have interesting consequences someday.)
- With whom is Robert Steinberg, who evidently suggested that Robert Toussie the McCain/RNC contributions, associated within the RNC, McCain campaign, or other groups? What other contributions has be solicited? With what understanding of the benefits of contributing? Was he involved in soliciting the later Senate and House contributions? Was he involved in setting up Robert Toussie's two meetings with President Bush? If not him, then who -- and how? Did that person know about the pardon?
- How did those later Gordo, Normo, and Rainmaker Cantor contributions come about? Whose idea were they? Did they have any effect on anyone's decisions that led to the pardon, including whoever passed the pardon file to Fielding?
- Why did the busy Mr. Fielding read the Toussie file at all? Was this a standing arrangement with Berenson? What else has Berenson been passing through this pipeline? Has it all been as equally well vetted?
There are other questions in the other diaries, to which I refer you. Essentially, this looks a lot like a pay for play scandal, involving (however innocently, and it will requires investigation to determine that) one of the absolutely top youngish Republican attorneys around -- one of, in fact, Barack Obama's conservative lieutenants at Harvard Law Review.
Next week's Toussie Tuesday is going to focus on last-minute Bush pardons, of course, and then I will get back to this beat. Meanwhile, we have the following developments to review:
(1) If you search "Bradford Berenson" through Google, last week's diary is the first hit. I need no greater motivation than that to keep this up as long as investigation is not forthcoming.
(2) The first column in this series may have led to a column by an established journalist. Dan Janison, a columnist at AM New York, wrote an excellent column that covered much of the ground (including things I had dug up myself) on Toussie four days previous. Click that link. This could be coincidence, but if my diary helped to prompt and inform that column, I am proud and grateful.
Charlie Savage is also on the case, but with fleeting reference so far to the full panoply of questions that Berenson's involvement raises. Follow the money, Charlie!
By the way, Savage and Newsday both make clear that Bereonson is not commenting on this affair. Not at all. Well, that doesn't seem like it's necessarily a permanent state of affairs, does it?
(3) Bradford Toussie continues to be a go-to Republican legal sources.
Despite the existence of what might well be called an ethical cloud -- and here I must reiterate that I don't know that Berenson has done anything wrong, although there is certainly cause to question him about his knowledge of any quid pro quo that led to a pay for play, capitalizing on his access to Fred Fielding -- the words "ethical cloud" do not appear attached to him in any of the articles in which he has been willing to comment in the past week.
Berenson was not apparently under an ethical cloud when interviewed by the New York Times about highly impressive incoming Office of Legal Counsel head Dawn Johnsen:
Bradford Berenson, who worked as a lawyer in the White House counsel’s office early in the Bush administration, said that under Ms. Johnsen, "the changes may be more marginal than the most rabid partisans might hope for."
"Whatever her academic views, inevitably when you’re wielding government authority and you’re forced to function in the system, your views get tempered and moderated," he said.
Mr. Berenson worked with Ms. Johnsen last year in drafting a Senate bill that would require the Justice Department to report to Congress when the counsel’s office issues an opinion finding that the executive branch is not bound by a Congressional statute. The Bush administration threatened to veto the bill, but Mr. Berenson said even if it did not make it into law, Ms. Johnsen would have the chance if confirmed to bring more openness to the office’s legal thinking.
Berenson was not depicted as in the vicinity of an ethical cloud when the Washington Post interviewed him about Obama's four new senior Justice Department hires"
Bradford Berenson, a Republican lawyer who has served under President Bush, said the four selections represented a "very solid, sober, responsible group."
"None of these individuals is on the fringes of the legal profession," added Berenson, who worked on the Harvard Law Review with Obama and has worked with Johnsen. "All of them are well-respected, pragmatic people who are very attuned to the institutional priorities of the Justice Department and the government as a whole."
Berenson was was not depicted at being able to spot an ethical cloud on the horizon when he was interviewed by the International Herald-Tribune about Obama's possible reluctance to investigate Bush Administration crimes:
"A new president doesn't want to look vengeful," said a former Bush White House lawyer, Bradford Berenson, who was a Harvard law classmate of Obama and has represented administration figures as a private lawyer, "and the last thing a new administration wants to do is spend its time and energy rehashing the perceived sins of the old one.
"No matter how much the Obama administration's most extreme supporters may be screaming for blood, the president himself doesn't seem to share that bloodlust."
Here's what things look like to me: there is ample reason to investigate the possibility of a quid pro quo in the Toussie pardon. Berenson's services (and his connection to Fielding) were apparently the quo for which Republican campaigns may have received lots of desperately needed quid. But, Bradford Berenson is also a very well-connected and respectable Republican attorney -- the sort of person that journalists and politicians will join together to protect. Bradford Berenson may (or may not! Investigate!) be one of the reasons that a guttersnipe like Rod Blagojevich feels persecuted when he gets flak while believing, as do most criminals, that "everyone does it."
Meet the netroots, Bradford Berenson. I won't say that we are the new President's "most extreme supporters ... screaming for blood," but we want answers, we have many fingers at our disposal, and there are many Toussie Tuesdays to come if we don't see answers. Let's hope that Congress will investigate this possible quid pro quo -- even if it does involve a Friend of Barack and a respectable, well-connected Washington DC power attorney at a top firm. The law applies equally to all.