Here come the attack dogs(* BOMBSHELL – BARNES, KERRY CAMPAIGN VICE CHAIRMAN ADMITS PERJURY )

Worldnet Daily ^

[woodb01]

A new face on the horizon is Former Texas House Speaker Ben Barnes, who is garnering headlines by saying he helped Mr. Bush avoid service in Vietnam. But Mr. Barnes in 1999 said that no one from the Bush family asked for such assistance; he testified to the same fact under oath. Barnes, a Democrat, was defeated in Texas after he was implicated in a quick-profit stock scheme that was allegedly designed to win the passage of two banking bills. He is also a Kerry campaign vice chair.

[woodb01]

Plain and simple, if what Barnes says NOW is true, then he lied under oath and committed perjury!!

THIS IS ANOTHER MEDIA BOMBSHELL - BARNES IS THE KERRY CAMPAIGN VICE CHAIR!!

[Jet Jaguar]

Bump and ping.

[Steve_Stifler]

Your enthusiasm is good, but just slightly behind the news curve.

[intolerancewillNOTbetolerated]

"BARNES IS THE KERRY CAMPAIGN VICE CHAIR!!"

Hannity's been saying that since Thursday.

[sargon]

Excellent.

[orangelobster]

Jerry Falwell?? oh, please keep him out of the campaign or we're all sunk. Let him go back to investigating the teletubbies.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Sorry guys, this fact was outed in real time as soon as it became known Barnes was to be on the Blather's show.

[sdkhaki]

Just emerge from a coma? You're several news cycles out of the loop.

[Chunga]

Careful. Is Barnes stating that someone from the Bush family pressured him to help Dubya avoid service in Vietnam?

[Jeff Chandler]

>>Let him go back to investigating the teletubbies.
<<

Those damned evil teletubbies. I think one of them is gay.

[spyone]

Lord! This is the start of a GREAT day! Ha! Perjury! All of us on this site, FOR YEARS, have been waiting for some Clintonite(aside from his impeachness)to pay the price for lying. Hope they go after this guy. That's why the laws are on the books.

[Weirdad]

This seems like mostly 'old' news EXCEPT that I was not aware that Barnes' previous statement was made UNDER OATH. Where was he under oath, at some legislative committee investigation? Does anyone know or have copies of the transcript where he made his statement under oath?

[dead]

Worst.

Bombshell.

Ever.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

Bumps

[blondee123]

Just emerge from a coma? You're several news cycles out of the loop

Lighten up, maybe he had no power, like: living in Florida!

[Jet Jaguar]

Your post and tagline, both, just busted my spleen! LOL

[woodb01]

no one from the Bush family asked for such assistance; he testified to the same fact under oath

PLAIN AND SIMPLE, IF WHAT BARNES SAYS NOW IS TRUE, THEN HE COMMITTED PERJURY!!

PERJURY IS NOT JUST A FALSE STATEMENT, IT IS ALSO A MISLEADING STATEMENT, OR ANY STATEMENT UNDER OATH WHICH IS DESIGNED TO DECEIVE.  (Wish I had my Black's handy, I'd cite the page #'s)...

[MistyCA]

It's very pathetic. But Susan Estrich was the person who said right after the Convention that the democrats would be going after Bush's military files and record. She said the dems were put in a position of having to bring out all the artillery. She hasn't been heard from over the past few days, as far as I know. I am wondering what she must be thinking.

Carville was on the tube earlier this evening in an interview with I can't remember who. He said that if Kerry loses this election the dems are in major trouble because it will fracture them. Imagine that. And then he was asked if he thought Kerry would win. I am sure he said he didn't think so, but then he changed it to say he thought he would. I listened more intently and still heard him talk out of both sides of his mouth. He certainly conveyed a lot of reluctance to think Kerry would win. No enthusiasm about this campaign that I could see. He was asked if he would go to work for Hillary in the future bid for the WH and he said no. He said he is too old to put the time into it that it would require. After hearing him tonight I have to think we are right in thinking this campaign is being torpedoed for Hillary next time around.

[Casloy]

Democrats - Perjury? What's the news angle here?

[spyone]

God. Don't be so droll. It came out Thursday. It's only Sunday. A chief fundraiser for Kerry, and a "major" source of the CBS spin, has committed perjury! I didn't know he made those prior comments UNDER OATH, and I bet you 99% of the rest of the country, including media, doesn't either! Remember a certain X42 who was impeached and disbarred for perjury? It didn't happen in three days! FR is good, but not that good. This should be shouted from the rooftops.

[Mo1]

Yea .. but I think Danny could be in more trouble over the FORGED signatures issue

[OneTimeLurker]

On CBS, he said it was a Bush family friend who asked him. In the lawsuit it looks like he took great pains to say only an explicitly that no Bush family member asked him. I looked into it and that's what I found.

[fso301]

It depends on what the meaning of is is.

What Barnes said was that an intermediary approached him about getting W into the ANG. Barnes will say that does not contradict what he said in 1999 that nobody from the Bush family asked him.

[woodb01]

Fact is, the whole DNC, including their media affiliates need to be exposed in this election cycle.

That means, when CBS, ABC, the AP, GLOBE, NY Times, and all the other lefty loonies have to address this because alternative media is picking it up, and then it goes to still more media sources, there will be shrieking and wailing.

They'll try to dismiss or excuse the perjury, and the talking heads will make excuse after excuse because it's just too painful for them. And as they do, the American people are going to tune out of the DNC and Main Stream Media like they've never done before in the history of this country!

[spyone]

When its raining ten dollar bills, are you going to check the serial numbers you like best?

[dead]

Maybe I missed something, but where did Barnes ever contradict his statement that nobody from the Bush family ever asked him for assistance in getting GW Bush into the TANG?

Every statement I've read so far, he reiterates that nobody from the Bush family asked him for assistance.

Barnes is an idiot and a scumbag and an opportunist, but he (as far as I know) has never claimed that a member of the Bush family asked him to do anything.

I don't get the point of this entire thread.

[Cobra64]

Just emerge from a coma?

That's sort of a nasty comment to woodb01. In some parts of this country you don't get honest news reporting. Especially in hotels. They pretty much show the afternoon sitcoms during the day and the evening news shows the OJ, Kobi, Lacie soap operas. Lighten up.

[woodb01]

Perjury is not about just DIRECT false statements, unknown to most people who don't deal with the law, perjury ALSO INCLUDES STATEMENTS THAT ARE DESIGNED TO DECEIVE OR MISLEAD. THAT ALSO INCLUDES STATEMENTS THAT ARE EVASIVE WHEN YOU'RE UNDER OATH.

If the context of the question was one related to helping out Bush, and he's singing a different tune now, then the statement is perjured.

[An.American.Expatriate]

Please pardon the question, but just where, exactly is the claim in your title "BARNES, KERRY CAMPAIGN VICE CHAIRMAN ADMITS PERJURY ABOUT BUSH!!" contained in the acticle you linked??

[dead]

If the context of the question was one related to helping out Bush, and he's singing a different tune now, then the statement is perjured.

You are as wrong as wrong can be.

His statement under oath was that no member of the Bush family ever asked him for assistance in getting GWB into the TANG.

Can you please show me where he's contradicted that statement?

He hasn't. I really have no idea what you're trying to say here.

[MistyCA]

NO, he is not. And therefore it is not perjury. He is saying someone outside of the family asked him to do it.

No perjury here under those conditions. Sorry.

[Mach9]

We all know what we're reading right now; but none of us (to my knowledge) has read Barnes' actual deposition.

[woodb01]

*** Just emerge from a coma

No, just an epiphany. Until I saw that Barnes had made the statement UNDER OATH, it didn't click.

His statement now is inconsistent with his statement under oath. Clinton did NOT get off for his perjury, he ACTUALLY WAS IMPEACHED in the US House. And his law license was removed because of perjury as well. So just claiming that he didn't know the meaning of "is" doesn't get you off. That is actually an evasive answer that falls under the domain of perjury. That's why even with his "is" statement, he was still impeached by the House, and he still lost his law license.

[Chunga]

Your post reflects my understanding of Barnes' statements.

It is rash to accuse someone of perjury if the evidence suggests that he didn't. "Family friends" are by definition not members of the family with which they are friends.

Perjury is very difficult to prove.

Although I think he should have been found guilty of perjury, a perjury rap was never pinned on Slimeball Clinton. He was found to have "lied under oath."

So far, my understanding of this situation suggests that Barnes is guilty of neither.

[woodb01]

Give me the link so that I can see his testimony myself!! You say you've looked into it, that testimony would be invaluable. I've dealt a LOT with perjury, and in fact, am right in the middle of working with an attorney to have another attorney disbarred for perjury, AND to get a 2 year old Court order voided on perjury grounds.

I NEED THAT TESTIMONY LINK!! This could be another smoking gun.

What most people don't know about perjury is that it DOESN'T take a direct false statement. It takes a few elements:

1. Did deceive or mislead
2. Material to the issue
3. Knowledge of the falsity or reckless regard for the truth

Those are the primary elements. Some states add an additional threshold test that requires INTENT to Deceive or mislead, but there is generally a whole set of criteria for that which are usually not too difficult to prove.

[counterpunch]

Carville was on the tube earlier this evening in an interview with I can't remember who. He said that if Kerry loses this election the dems are in major trouble because it will fracture them. Imagine that. And then he was asked if he thought Kerry would win. I am sure he said he didn't think so, but then he changed it to say he thought he would.

I am about the last person to jump on the Clinton Conspiracy Bandwagon. I don't believe the Clintons hve their hands in everything that happens in the Democrat party. I don't believe the Clintons were involved in the document forgery (only in the pathetic CBS crisis management attempt that followed.) But...

I do think that as a loyal Clintonati, Carville is overjoyed with the coming Democrat meltdown. He is nervous with anticipation for the fracturing of his party. He wants them dispirited, confused, and directionless.

This way a broken and vulnerable party will desperately be looking for their saviour. A proven winner, someone tried and true, and Carville will be right there -- and you can watch it begin unfolding starting this November -- pushing Hillary as that person. A magnificent defeat of the Kerry/Edwards ticket will end any future aspirations of John Edwards. The field will be cleared and no one will dare challenge Hillary for the crown...

Of course Carville and the Clintonati -- in their reckless pursuit of personal power -- fail to see two small problems. 1) Rudy Guiliani destroying Hillary in her Senate re-election bid in 2006, and 2) the Democrats may find themselves without a voter base big enough left to elect one of them in a national election.

Of course the Clintonati may not actually care about that.
These are people who were drunk with power -- the perks, the fundraisers, the favors, the friends in high and glamorous places. They may not care about the annoying side-effect of actually having to govern that came with it. In fact, if they can have all that without the responsibility and long hours, they may very well welcome political defeat.

[GoLightly]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/19990927/aponline190140_000.htm

[chuckles]

Democrats are allowed a couple of perjuries per term. You know that after the previous 8 years of Klintoon.

Nothing to see here. Lets just move along to something we can do something about. If murder, treason, taking bribes, meeting with drug dealers,and pardoning Mr. Rich doesn't cause a flap, then why would a little perjury against a mean ole Republican?

Well, at least its not lying about sex. We know everybody does that!

[GoLightly]

If he is now saying he committed perjury, he's saying the truth is someone in the Bush asked him for his assistance. He's willing to face the perjury charge to promote his latest smear.

[MistyCA]

Good analysis. Thanks. Carville spoke of Hillary in 4 yrs. He said he would be 64 yrs old and would not be able to take care of his family and do what was required from a campaign. He threw in the fact that if Kerry won and stayed in for 8 years it would be even less likely. I was surprised by his lack of enthusiasm. And I believe you are right about Clinton or Carville not being behind the forgeries. I do not think they are. I do think, however, that they are giving advice that leads the Kerry camp to do something stupid like this. Not that they advised this. Kerry is perfectly capable of coming up with his own bag of dirty tricks. I just don't think he is very good at it. He is going to take the Clinton torpedoes and drive his little swift boat right in front of them. JMO.

[Todd]

But Hannity has not been pointing out that Barnes previously testified under oath that he did not help Bush.

On Friday night's show, he let Allen go on about how Barnes had made similar claims a *few* years ago (since he made them under oath) and never made mention of it.

I think he either didn't know or had forgotten?

[dandelion]

I appreciate it. The testimony part was something I was looking for - and no, not all of us are up on everything. Every little bit helps with me...

Thank you!!

[CyberAnt]

And .. the daughter of Barnes, interviewed by Kerry, has already said that she had a personal conversation with her dad and he told her, "no, I never helped the Bush family".

So which time was he lying. The damn dems are all alike .. everyday they change their story. These people are scum.

[Chunga]

Your post is misleading and ill-advised.

Barnes has not admitted to committing perjury as your headline reads, and you've misrepresented the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who wrote the article to which you've linked but who has not stated that Barnes has ever perjured himself.

Your conclusions are based on information you don't possess and haven't seen.

You're grasping at straws. This isn't the place for that.

[claudiustg]

Yes, because this is A CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY, it involves numerous CRIMINAL ACTS. In due time these people will be prosecuted, but first they must serve out their political roles. They just look so bad! :^)

Even about half the Dems can spot Barnes as a crook. Everything about the DNC and Kerry campaign just reeks. They've decided to be extra nasty and we just need to accept this gift and let hang themselves!

[Paleo Conservative]

I say bring it on. Barnes has a reputation as a crook in Texas after the Sharpstown scandle over 30 years ago. Dan Rather conveniently left out information about why Barnes left puplic office in 1973 never to hold elective offic again.

Here is some good dirt about Barnes' association with the Sharpstown scandal (probably the biggest political scandal in Texas history) in the '70s. He's not a credible witness.

SHARPSTOWN STOCK-FRAUD SCANDAL. Texas went through one of its traditional and periodic governmental scandals in 1971-72, when federal accusations and then a series of state charges were leveled against nearly two dozen state officials and former state officials. Before normalcy returned, Texas politics had taken a slight shift to the left and had undergone a thorough housecleaning: the incumbent governor was labeled an unindicted coconspirator in a bribery case and lost his bid for reelection; the incumbent speaker of the House of Representatives and two associates were convicted felons; a popular three-term attorney general lost his job; an aggressive lieutenant governor's career was shattered; and half of the legislature was either intimidated out or voted out of office. The scandal centered, initially, on charges that state officials had made profitable quick-turnover bank-financed stock purchases in return for the passage of legislation desired by the financier, Houston businessman Frank W. Sharp. By the time the stock fraud scandal died down, state officials also had been charged with numerous other offenses-including nepotism and use of state-owned stamps to buy a pickup truck.

In the 1972 electoral aftermath, incumbent Democrats were the big losers, although at the top level of officialdom it was a matter of conservative Democrats being replaced by less conservative Democrats. Using the scandal as a springboard, less conservative Democrats and Republicans carried the "reform" battle cry and also gained a stronger foothold in the legislature. Democrats, defensively, charged that the whole scandal atmosphere in Texas was a national Republican plot, originated in the Nixon administration's Department of Justice. But before the smoke cleared, Will Wilson, an ex-Democratic Texas attorney general, by then one of the top Texas Republicans in the federal government, was hounded from his position as chief of the criminal division of the Department of Justice because of his own business dealings with Sharp.

The political tumult that was to become known as the Sharpstown stock fraud scandal started out meekly, though symbolically, on the day Texas Democrats were gathering in Austin to celebrate their 1970 election victories and inaugurate their top officials. Attorneys for the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, late in the afternoon of January 18, 1971, filed a lawsuit in Dallas federal court alleging stock fraud against former Democratic state attorney general Waggoner Carr, former state insurance commissioner John Osorio, Frank Sharp, and a number of other defendants. The civil suit also was filed against Sharp's corporations, including the Sharpstown State Bank and National Bankers Life Insurance Corporation. But it was deep down in the supporting material of the suit that the SEC lawyers hid the political bombshells. There it was alleged that Governor Preston Smith, state Democratic chairman and state banking board member Elmer Baum, House Speaker Gus Mutscher, Jr., Representative Tommy Shannon of Fort Worth, Rush McGinty (an aide to Mutscher), and others-none of them charged in the SEC's suit-had, in effect, been bribed. The plot, according to the SEC, was hatched by Sharp himself, who wanted passage of new state bank deposit insurance legislation that would benefit his own financial empire. The SEC said the scheme was for Sharp to grant more than $600,000 in loans from Sharpstown State Bank to the state officials, with the money then used to buy National Bankers Life stock, which would later be resold at huge profits as Sharp artificially inflated the value of his insurance company's stock. The quarter-of-a-million-dollar profits were, in fact, made. But they weren't arranged by Sharp, the SEC said, until after Governor Smith made it possible for Sharp's bank bills to be considered at a special legislative session in September 1969, and Mutscher and Shannon then hurriedly pushed the bills through the legislature. (Smith later vetoed the bills on the advice of the state's top bank law experts, but not until he and Baum had made their profits on the bank loan-stock purchase deal.)

The state officials denied all the charges, asserting that they had obtained the bank loans and made the stock purchases purely as business transactions unrelated to the passage of Sharp's bank bills. But as the spring of 1971 droned into summer, political pressure mounted on Smith, Baum, Mutscher, and Shannon-even on Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes, who had been connected in several tangential ways to Frank Sharp, his companies, and the bank bills. By the fall of 1971, when Mutscher and his associates were indicted, the politics of 1972 had begun to take shape. Incumbents moved as far away as possible, politically, from the "old system" and the current state leaders. New candidates came forward, some of them literally with no governmental experience, under a "throw the rascals out" banner.

Mutscher, Shannon, and McGinty were tried in Abilene, on a change of venue from Austin because of adverse pretrial publicity, in February and March 1972. The indictment charged the three men with conspiracy to accept a bribe from Sharp, and District Attorney R. O. (Bob) Smith of Austin said during the trial that Governor Smith was an unindicted coconspirator. Prosecutors acknowledged from the start that the case would be based entirely on circumstantial evidence, which produced legal technicalities inexplicable to laymen. But the jury needed only 140 minutes on March 15, 1972, after exposure to hundreds of pounds and hours of evidence, to find the Mutscher group guilty. The next day, at the request of the defendants, Judge J. Neil Daniel assessed punishment at five years' probation.

The conviction of the Abilene Three dramatically advanced the momentum of the "reform" movement, coming less than three months before primary elections, at which more legislative seats were contested than in any year since World War II.^qv (Redistricting decisions by the federal courts added to the high percentage of electoral challenges, but the Sharpstown scandal generally was credited as the main factor.) In statewide races "reform" candidates also dominated. The Democratic governor's race saw two newcomers-liberal legislator Frances (Sissy) Farenthold of Corpus Christi and conservative rancher-banker Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde-run far ahead of Governor Smith, who was seeking a third term as governor, and Lieutenant Governor Barnes, whose seemingly inexorable rise to political prominence was ended when his reputation was tainted by the scandal. Briscoe defeated Farenthold in the runoff and later was elected governor; but Republican candidate Henry Grover of Houston and Raza Unida Party^qv candidate Ramsey Muñiz of Waco drew enough votes to make Briscoe Texas's first "minority" governor. For the state's second top executive branch job, voters chose moderate Houston newspaper executive William P. Hobby, Jr., over seven other Democratic candidates as lieutenant governor-also on a "reform" theme. Reform-minded moderate Democrat John Luke Hill of Houston, a former secretary of state, left a successful private law practice to defeat the popular three-term attorney general, Crawford C. Martin,^qv who had been criticized for his handling of the stock fraud scandal and for his own relationship with Frank Sharp. The Democratic primary and the general election of 1972 also produced a striking change in the legislature's membership, including a half-new House roster and a higher-than-normal turnover in the Senate. Most of the newcomers were committed to "reform" in some fashion, regardless of their ideological persuasion. The voters simultaneously indicated that their confidence in the legislature had been restored to some extent, because they approved in November 1972 an amendment allowing the legislature to sit as a constitutional convention in 1974. The convention failed by three votes on July 30, 1974, to approve a proposed new constitution for the voters to consider (see CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1974).

The final impact of the stock fraud scandal on Texas politics occurred during the regular session of the legislature in 1973. The lawmakers, led by new House Speaker Marion Price Daniel, Jr.,^qv of Liberty, a moderate and son of a former governor, with active support from Attorney General Hill and Lieutenant Governor Hobby and with verbal encouragement from Governor Briscoe, passed a series of far-reaching reform laws. Among other subjects, the legislation required state officials to disclose their sources of income, forced candidates to make public more details about their campaign finances, opened up most governmental records to citizen scrutiny, expanded the requirement for open meetings of governmental policy-making agencies, and imposed new disclosure regulations on paid lobbyists.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Charles Deaton, The Year They Threw the Rascals Out (Austin: Shoal Creek, 1973). Sam Kinch, Jr., and Ben Procter, Texas under a Cloud (Austin: Jenkins, 1972). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Tracy D. Wooten, "The Sharpstown Incident and Its Impact on the Political Careers of Preston Smith, Gus Mutscher and Ben Barnes," Touchstone 5 (1986).

Sam Kinch, Jr.

Recommended citation:

"SHARPSTOWN STOCK-FRAUD SCANDAL." The Handbook of Texas Online. <http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/ha ndbook/online/articles/view/SS/mqs1.html> [Accessed Wed Sep 8 23:21:34 US/Central 2004 ].

[weegee]

You know the talking points, "C'mon now, no one is ever prosecuted for perjury..."

[Smartaleck]

"Your enthusiasm is good, but just slightly behind the news curve."

ahhhh Just a tad. LOL

[Happy2BMe]

BARNES IS FULL OF BULL - PING.

(hehe .. a highly trusted individual here - the Chairperson of the Kerry Kampaign no less).

Plus, he swore under oath he did not have sex with that woman help Bush get into the Texas "Champagne" Air Guard Unit.

[Maria S]

Notice who, besides Barnes, was a BIG Kerry donor...Iranian American PAC Board of Trustees member Hassan Nemazee.


Kerry Keeping Eye On Big Donors

WASHINGTON, June 18, 2004
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/18/politics/main624711.shtml
(CBS) By Beth Lester,
CBS News Political Unit

(excerpt)
"As of last week, according to information received by CBS News, 20 donors have given and/or raised more than $250,000, enough to earn them the designation of Trustee. Of those, eight have actually raised more than $500K. Those half-millions include Texas lobbyist Ben Barnes, Wall Street financier Stan Shuman, Iranian American PAC Board of Trustees member Hassan Nemazee and Texas lawyer Mark Iola. Eventually, says a source inside the process, the over-$500K raisers will have a special name designation but no moniker has been chosen yet."


Ben Barnes in his own words:

Consider this quote from the September 2001 issue of Texas Monthly:
"I'm not really a lobbyist. I don't represent clients day to day on legislation. I'm more of a crisis manager. I get called when people have a big problem in Washington that they can't solve by passing a bill."

EXCLUSIVE: The Dirt on Ben Barnes Claims about Bush and the Air National Guard (Part 2)
The Blogspirator ^ | 8/29/04 | adam_az
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1202419/posts
Posted on 08/29/2004 12:37:39 PM CDT by adam_az