February 5, 2010

Heh - Federal Courts on a roll

Back on February 2nd, I posted this: Now this is interesting... It is basically a tale of how when the US government bailed out AIG, it asked for and recieved 77.9% of its shares and voting rights. Something patently illegal. This information and a lot more were uncovered during the discovery phase of a trial. Today, a bit more gets uncovered. From Frank Gaffney writing at Breitbart's Big Government:
Federal Court: No, the Government May Not Prevent Further Discovery of the Takeover of AIG
This week we broke the story of possible criminal wrongdoing in the government takeover of insurance giant AIG. In the last several months, the US government has tried, unsuccessfully, to throw out plaintiff Kevin Murray�s case, alleging that the government�s takeover of AIG puts it in the position of supporting and promoting Islam and Shariah finance.

In the discovery process attorneys for Murray, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise (of the Thomas More Law Center), discovered that the takeover itself may have been illegal, and have attempted to get Treasury Secretary under oath to try and untangle this mess. Again, the Fed and the Treasury Department tried to stonewall.

This past Tuesday, Federal district court judge Lawrence P. Zatkoff rejected the Treasury Department�s and the Fed�s effort to prevent any further discovery while the government attempts to convince the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to overrule Judge Zatkoff�s earlier ruling rejecting the government�s motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit challenging the government�s takeover of AIG on First Amendment-Establishment Clause grounds.

The lawsuit, captioned Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought by attorneys David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, representing the plaintiff, Kevin Murray, a tax payer and former combat Marine who served in Iraq. The federal lawsuit alleges that the U.S. government�s takeover and financial bailout of AIG was in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Specifically, at the time of the government bailout (September-December 2008), AIG was (and still is) the world leader in promoting Shariah-compliant insurance products. Shariah is Islamic law, and it is the identical legal doctrine that demands capital punishment for apostasy and blasphemy and provides the legal and political mandates for global jihad followed religiously by the world�s Muslim terrorists. By propping up AIG with tax payer funds, the U.S. government is directly and indirectly promoting Islam and, more troubling, Shariah.

After the court rejected the government�s motion to dismiss the case and granted Plaintiff�s attorneys until May 2010 to conduct discovery into the AIG takeover, the government filed a motion asking Judge Zatkoff to certify the case for immediate appeal of his denial of the motion and to stay all further discovery. Today the government got its answer: No and no.

In what is an extremely well-written opinion, Judge Zatkoff scolded the government lawyers for filing the wrong motion at the wrong time and then proceeded to tell them they would have lost in any event because his earlier denial of the motion to dismiss was proper and well-considered.

The Court�s recent decision is especially timely and critical for Plaintiff Kevin Murray because his attorneys had previously filed a motion to compel Secretary Timothy Geithner to sit for a three-hour deposition. The basis for the �extraordinary move to depose a sitting Treasury Secretary� arose because Plaintiff�s counsel had earlier deposed the witnesses provided by the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve Board and the government witnesses either testified inaccurately or feigned ignorance. The only one with all the answers turns out to be Secretary Geithner.
Emphasis from the original. This is going to get real interesting real fast in the classic what do you know and when did you know it... Posted by DaveH at February 5, 2010 6:31 PM
Comments
Post a comment









Remember personal info?