Hannity’s Harangue Against The DOJ’s “Top Banana” (Maybe)

Yes I know, berating Sean Inanity for stupidity is like berating a zebra for its stripes, but I came across the following and felt compelled to respond (from here - and I also posted here).

Basically, the charge against Eric Holder (who was grilled today in the Senate for consideration as Obama’s Attorney General, of course), is that, after he left the Clinton Administration, he represented Chiquita Brands, which is…

…one of the world's most recognizable brands (that) exports more than 2.4 billion pounds of bananas from Colombia to North America each and every year, but in the highly competitive banana trade being one of the top producers comes with a price.

From 1997 to 2004 Chiquita funneled $1.7 million in protection money to the AUC (a Colombian terrorist organization, according to Inanity). These two groups (along with FARC) have been responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and account for a sizeable percentage of the country's cocaine exports.

On September 10, 2001, the AUC was designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.

(The story quotes an attorney “represent(ing) more than 600 families of murder and torture victims that seek damages against Chiquita for providing material support to a terrorist organization, the AUC,” by the way).

Well, as this prior post tells us, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez – remember him? – told a Senate panel that everything was just hunky dory in Alvaro Uribe land in October 2007 and was promptly slapped down for it by Dem Sherrod Brown of Ohio; linked to that post is more on how Roderick M. Hills of Chiquita sought a meeting with his former law colleague in 2003 over the payments to FARC and AUC (Inanity forgot about ELN, by the way) but was blown off by that colleague, a guy named Mike (“City of Louisiana”) Chertoff.

I’m not trying to absolve Hills of negligence necessarily, particularly since the whole thing is a legal matter at this point. I’m just trying to point out the following:

Chertoff, though assistant AG at the time, didn’t follow up at Hills’ request because of this administration’s notoriously cozy attitude towards the acts of corporate criminals, primarily multinationals, no doubt worried about creating a "burdensome" legal precedent for them south of the border.

If you want to prosecute U.S. companies, fine, go after Chiquita. But Drummond Coal and Coca-Cola also have to answer for “allegedly using paramilitaries to kill, threaten, kidnap and torture Colombian trade unionists” (in the case of Drummond, they were sued for hiring paramilitaries to assassinate three union leaders, noted here).

It is perfectly legal for Eric Holder to represent a likely corporate malefactor like Chiquita. It is also perfectly legal for a lawyer to represent anyone else who needs one, including Drummond, one of the parties I mentioned above (as noted here, they are represented by William Jeffress, Jr. of Baker Botts, the law firm of one James Baker – now really Sean, are you going to tangle with Poppy Bush’s oldest and dearest pal here?).

There apparently is also some minor furor raging over the “Holder Memorandum” and how it allegedly threatens the ability of corporations to obtain representation (I'll acknowledge that some of the provisions are controversial, but in the detailed writeup here, it is noted that the recent "McNulty Memorandum" is a step towards less "draconian" measures)...

The Holder Memorandum outlined eight factors for prosecutors to consider in deciding whether to hold corporations criminally accountable for the acts of their employees:

The nature and seriousness of the offense;

The pervasiveness of wrongdoing within the corporation, including complicity by corporate management;

The corporation’s history of similar conduct;

The corporation’s voluntary disclosure of the conduct and willingness to cooperate with investigators, including waiver of the attorney-client and work product privileges, whether the corporation advanced attorneys’ fees for culpable employees, and whether the corporation cooperated in a joint defense with other defense lawyers;

The adequacy of the corporation’s compliance program;

Any remedial actions taken;

Collateral consequences, including disproportionate harm to innocent shareholders or employees; and

The adequacy of civil or administrative enforcement actions.

I note this apparently because the Murdoch Street Journal is in high dudgeon over the memo, as noted here, with Snarlin’ Arlen taking his best shot along with Ronnie Baby’s mouthpiece, “Fast Eddie” Meese (he who conducted the “investigation” of Ollie North’s Iran-Contra document shredding…way to eliminate the paper trail, dude!).