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HOUSTON - Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling instigated a massive fraud before the company collapsed in one of the biggest corporate scandals in U.S. history, a federal prosecutor said on Monday. Lay and Skilling committed crimes "through accounting tricks, fiction, hocus-pocus, trickery, misleading statements, half-truths, omissions and outright lies," prosecutor Kathryn Ruemmler told jurors and a packed courtroom in closing arguments. "In this courtroom, ladies and gentlemen, the cover stories have been blown. Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling are still clinging to the cover stories," she said. On a large screen, Ruemmler displayed for...

HOUSTON - Federal prosecutors sought Thursday to torpedo Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay's image as a company champion, trying to show he used the ailing energy giant to bail himself out of personal financial woes in 2001. Lay obtained more than $70 million in loans from Enron throughout 2001 and repaid most with company stock, even as he encouraged employees to buy more shares. Lay didn't disclose those stock sales publicly because regulations required that sales of shares back to a company be reported only in the year after they occur. Unlike his co-defendant in his fraud and conspiracy trial,...

A prosecutor said he plans to file tax evasion charges against some 200 doctors in Los Angeles County who allegedly bilked insurers and the state out of $200 million with phony billings. The physicians are on a list of suspects identified by the medical fraud unit of the district attorney's office, which was created in 2003. "It's staggering. It's disgraceful," Deputy District Attorney Al MacKenzie said. "You have one doctor alone who got $23 million in five years from the workers' comp system." The unit seeks tax evasion charges against physicians rather than undertaking prosecutions for medical fraud. "The advantage...

The disciplinary arm of the N.C. State Bar dropped charges of felonious misconduct against two former Union County prosecutors Friday because of a 1999 clerical error at the state Supreme Court. The State Bar had charged Kenneth Honeycutt and Scott Brewer with lying, cheating and withholding evidence in a 1996 death penalty case. The ruling Friday marks the second time that Honeycutt and Brewer won on procedural grounds before the bar's Disciplinary Hearing Commission, which sits as judge and jury in disciplinary cases. . . . Prosecutors around the state are concerned that the case is damaging their reputation and...

WASHINGTON – A Texas prosecutor has issued subpoenas for bank records of a defense contractor involved in the bribery case of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham as part of the investigation of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. District Attorney Ronnie Earle issued subpoenas last Thursday for California businessmen Brent Wilkes and Max Gelwix, records of Perfect Wave Technologies, Wilkes Corp. and ADCS Inc. in connection with a contribution to a fundraising committee at the center of the investigation that led to DeLay's indictment on money laundering charges. Perfect Wave contributed $15,000 in September 2002 to Texans for a Republican...

NEW YORK - A Pakistani man went on trial Wednesday on charges alleging he agreed to help an al-Qaida operative planning a chemical attack against Americans sneak into the United States. Uzair Paracha, 25, is accused of agreeing to support the plot during meetings with two al-Qaida operatives and his father, a businessman held at Guantanamo Bay. "This trial is about the defendant's role in helping al-Qaida penetrate this country and attack the United States from within its own borders," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Bruce said in his opening statement. Bruce said Paracha was trying to help Majid Khan, an...

Attorneys for Lewis "Scooter" Libby are likely to question whether the political bias of news outlets involved in the Leakgate case played a role in testimony by their reporters against top White House officials, reports the Wall Street Journal. "Just wait until defense counsel starts examining their memories and reporting habits, not to mention the dominant political leanings in the newsrooms of NBC, Time magazine and the New York Times," warns the Journal in an editorial on Friday. NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert - the star prosecution witness against Mr. Libby - should offer particularly fertile ground on this...

We have been hearing for a long time what a terrible thing it is to reveal the name of a covert C.I.A. agent -- and it is a terrible thing because that can be a life-and-death situation for the agent exposed and a devastating setback for this country's ability to get people in other countries to supply intelligence. But it was quite an anticlimax when the man who is accused of doing that -- Lewis Libby on Vice President Cheney's staff -- is not even charged with the crime for which a special prosecutor was appointed, with extraordinary powers and...

WASHINGTON - A Texas prosecutor has subpoenaed the head of a liberal activist group and records of political contributions from mostly Republican state judges in advance of a hearing Tuesday to decide who should preside over former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's criminal case. Prosecutor Ronnie Earle on Friday subpoenaed Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, a liberal group that took an active role in the last presidential campaign and generally opposes Republicans and their policies. DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, requested the removal of state Judge Bob Perkins because the judge has made 34 contributions since 2000 to Democratic and...

Any advice? They are notorious for doing a lot of nothing in Louisiana. It is a destruction of intellectual property issue.

The Movie: Ronnie Earle, on a Mission from God The Texas DA is inspired by the Bible to prosecute Tom DeLay. A new film featuring Travis County, Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle as he pursued the investigation that led to the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay portrays Earle less as a partisan figure than as a messianic leader on a mission to rid American politics of the "evil" influence of money. A copy of the still-unfinished film, entitled The Big Buy, was obtained by National Review Online Friday. On several occasions in the film, Earle engages in monologues on...

Federal Prosecutor in West Virginia Leaves Office The Associated Press Published: Aug 1, 2005 CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - The chief federal prosecutor for southern West Virginia abruptly left office Monday, and a Justice Department official would not comment on the departure. A call to U.S. Attorney Kasey Warner's home was not immediately returned. Warner, 53, was appointed four years ago by President Bush. His office prosecuted several vote-buying cases this past year in some Democratic counties, landing guilty pleas from a sheriff and a police chief, among others. Defense attorneys have complained that investigators looking to catch people buying and...

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Two fishermen found a laptop computer at the bottom of a river that belonged to a county prosecutor who has been missing for 3 1/2 months, police said Monday. The laptop, which was missing its hard drive, was found Saturday in the Susquehanna River under a bridge, Bellefonte police said. The fishermen turned it over to state police who determined it belonged to Centre County District Attorney Ray F. Gricar. Authorities had searched the river several times already. Dive teams searched it again Saturday and Sunday but found nothing else. The computer's hard drive had either fallen...

“Top Cheney Aide Among Sources in C.I.A. Story” is the headline the Associated Press chose for its article on now-famous journalist Matthew Cooper’s first-hand account of his testimony before the grand jury investing the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. But the real story is that Karl Rove has been further vindicated. Though the ultimate arbiter of any legal issues will be special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and the aforementioned grand jury, the political case against Bush’s right-hand man is quickly crumbling. Cooper’s story—on Time’s new cover—confirms that Rove was not “shopping” for an outlet to “out” Plame, but that he was...

From here in heartland America, I'm winging a message eastward. It's addressed to my brothers and sisters of the mass media as they scrunch up their brows and artfully work their jaws, seeking to understand and explain what Karl Rove knew about Valerie Plame and when he knew it, assuming he knew much of anything, and whom he told, if he told anybody, and who heard, and who else knew it and why. And my message? A terse one: Just shut up, wouldja? Unfortunately, I already know the answer to such an excellent and timely question. The answer is a...

Why is special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursuing so zealously the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, since it is all but impossible to prove that the leaker or leakers committed a crime? So why is Fitzgerald acting like Inspector Javert in "Les Miserables"? The answer may lie in a sentence Walter Pincus of The Washington Post wrote on June 12, 2003. President Bush mentioned the British findings in his State of the Union address in January 2003. In his leaks to Pincus, and earlier to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Wilson claimed Bush knew this was false. The key...

If you want sure proof of America's moral inversion, consider this: For allegedly refusing to tell a lie, George Washington became a man of legend. For telling the truth, Karl Rove became Public Enemy No. 1. Let us review the summer's pre-eminent political scandal. Two years ago, Karl Rove cautioned Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper against believing a story detailed by former diplomat Joseph Wilson. Wilson wrote in The New York Times: (a) that he, Joseph Wilson, had been dispatched by Dick Cheney to conduct a secret mission to Niger where he was to ascertain whether that nation had sold...

Columnist Robert Novak has made a career for himself as a human flamethrower for conservative causes. Yet, even Novak appears surprised at the mounting cost of his disclosure in 2003 of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. It was classic Novak: a hatchet job directed not at Plame, but at her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The firestorm that erupted has consumed millions of dollars in investigation and litigation costs and has wreaked havoc with the career not just of Plame (who had to leave the CIA) but of two reporters who were hauled into court and...

A lawyer for presidential adviser Karl Rove has disclosed that his client spoke with a Time magazine reporter just days before the name of a CIA operative was leaked to the media, but he did not leak the confidential information. Rove attorney Robert Luskin said that Rove did not reveal any secrets, and, furthermore, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has assured him that the adviser is not a target of his investigation. According to Luskin, Rove spoke to Time reporter Matthew Cooper in July 2003 - a week before media reports revealed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife...

ORANJESTAD, Aruba -- Aruba's chief government spokesman said late yesterday that three young men detained in the disappearance of an Alabama teenager could be formally charged as soon as Monday. Spokesman Reuben Trapenberg did not clarify what charges would be filed against the three. Earlier, Aruba's attorney general, Karin Janssen, said the young men had been charged with murder since their arrest three weeks ago. "The three have been charged with the murder of Natalee Holloway from the beginning" of their arrest 10 days after the young woman went missing May 30, she said in a recorded interview. "At the...