FLORIDA GOP 2000 RIOTER CHARGED WITH GROSS ETHICS VIOLATIONS

Shocker: Bush's Florida Thug Exposed As NY Supreme Court Judge

Republican Bully Faces Removal And Disbarment

Bush Bros: No Comment

Bad Timing For Jeb Crow: Reminder Of Bush's Thievery

In yet another blow to the Jeb Bush campaign, one of the thugs who helped organize the "bourgeois riot" shut-down of vote counting in Florida in 2000 has come under an investigation that likely will lead to his removal as a state supreme court judge and permanent disbarment from the legal profession.

The culprit, Republican hothead activist Thomas Spargo, was, in 2000, a part-time judge in Berne County, New York, outside of Albany.Ê Judges are not supposed to get mixed up in politics as Spargo did -- so mixed up that he appears repeatedly on footage shot of the Bush thug rioting.

And now Judge Spargo is -- get this -- Justice Spargo, a member of the New York Supreme Court.

Which is why he is now in deep, deep trouble with the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct. The Commission has charged Spargo with numerous ethical violations, ranging from the sleazy to the outrageous:

*     Buying drinks, donuts, pizzas, coffee and gasoline for potential voters while campaigning for Berne town justice.

*      Appearing as election counsel for Albany County District Attorney-elect Paul A. Clyne in fall 2000, and then failing to disclose in his capacity as town justice that he had a relationship with the prosecutor.

*      Participating in a "loud and obstructive demonstration" during the Florida recount "with the aim of disrupting the recount process."

*      Delivering the keynote speech at a Monroe County Conservative Party fund-raiser on May 18, 2001, at a time when he was simultaneously a practicing political lawyer, a sitting town justice and an announced candidate for state Supreme Court.

*      Authorizing his state Supreme Court campaign committee to pay a $5,000 political consulting fee to a Democratic and an Independence Party judicial nominating convention delegate.Ê Ultimately, Justice Spargo won the uncontested election with cross endorsements.

Naturally, Spargo is fighting tooth and nail to keep the matter from ever being adjudicated.Ê Which is in keeping with what the New York Law Journal has called his career as corrupt twister of election laws:

Spargo is a colorful and well-known character in New York and national political circles, with a carefully nurtured reputation as a master manipulator of the state's mind-bending election laws.

Serving as counsel to the State Senate Election Committee, Spargo helped craft Byzantine statutes, which he then used to clients' advantage when moonlighting as chief counsel to the State Republican Committee.

Even bitter opponents describe Spargo as an honest adversary and a happy warrior of sorts who always seemed to get a kick out of twisting election laws ever so close to the breaking point, without losing either his temper or sense of humor. While appearing in myriad hypertechnical elections cases, Spargo often wore a bemused grin, as if he were the only one present who got the joke.

Except now the election-law manipulator turns out to be a thug.Ê For, as the 2000 Florida recount showed, when you think that you can't manipulate the law, well then, "SHUT IT DOWN!!" Which is what Spargo and his rent-a-mob Republican lawbreakers did -- and did with impunity in Jeb Bush's Florida.

Can you imagine what would have happened to these people if they were Democrats in Bush World? How many years they'd now be serving in the state pen. But they weren't Democrats, they were Republicans. And in Jeb Bush's Florida, all that gets you is a round of champagne and a serenade of "Danke Schoen" from Wayne Newton. (Yes, you might say, a punishment of sorts -- but these guys think Wayne Newton is hip!)

Which is why this story is so distressing to Jeb, now that his campaign is bumbling toward disaster. Because Florida voters haven't forgotten 2000, have they? And how they know a little more about the thugs who stole the election. Jeb's Boys and Girls. The Brooks Brothers mob. The bourgeois rioters.

Source

Justice Spargo Faces Inquiry

By John Caher

New York Law Journal

When election law expert and longtime Republican activist Thomas J. Spargo was caught on film participating in a noisy political demonstration, nobody close to politics was particularly surprised. Spargo is a seasoned regular in the political game, and that he would show up in Florida at the Miami-Dade County Board of Elections during the Bush-Gore electoral debacle of November 2000 was almost predictable.

But there was one thing troubling about that image.

At the same time he was stumping for George W. Bush and chanting with other Republican supporters at what amounted to a boisterous sit-in, Spargo was serving as a part-time judge in the rural Albany County town of Berne. Judges are not supposed to get involved in politics.

Now, Spargo is a state Supreme Court justice, and the Commission on Judicial Conduct is hot on the tail of the onetime feisty election law litigator and political firebrand. The commission has accused Justice Spargo of multiple ethical breaches for his political conduct. It alleges he violated ethics rules by:

¥ Buying drinks, donuts, pizzas, coffee and gasoline for potential voters while campaigning for Berne town justice.

¥ Appearing as election counsel for Albany County District Attorney-elect Paul A. Clyne in fall 2000, and then failing to disclose in his capacity as town justice that he had a relationship with the prosecutor.

¥ Participating in a "loud and obstructive demonstration" during the Florida recount "with the aim of disrupting the recount process."

¥ Delivering the keynote speech at a Monroe County Conservative Party fund-raiser on May 18, 2001, at a time when he was simultaneously a practicing political lawyer, a sitting town justice and an announced candidate for state Supreme Court.

¥ Authorizing his state Supreme Court campaign committee to pay a $5,000 political consulting fee to a Democratic and an Independence Party judicial nominating convention delegate. Ultimately, Justice Spargo won the uncontested election with cross endorsements.

Commission Administrator Gerald Stern has not indicated whether the panel will seek to have Justice Spargo removed or impose a lesser sanction, such as admonishment or censure. The recommended sanction depends on the outcome of a hearing. Justice Spargo is attempting to ensure that it never gets to that point and is taking on the commission in federal court.

Restraining Order

On Wednesday night, Northern District U.S. District Judge Lawrence E. Kahn of Albany issued a temporary restraining order halting a hearing that was slated for Oct. 21. The matter is returnable Oct. 23 before U.S. District Judge David N. Hurd of Utica.

Justice Spargo is asking Judge Hurd to declare that the Code of Judicial Conduct violates his free speech, equal protection, and association rights under both the state and U.S. Constitutions.

"Out of concern that additional charges will be levied against me, and the concomitant threat of sanctions, I have refrained from exercising my free speech and associational rights and will continue to do so until a court declares the Code [of Judicial Conduct] and its interpretation to be unconstitutional or the Code is modified to eliminate the unduly restrictive provisions," Justice Spargo said in an affidavit. He declined Thursday to comment.

The matter raises both legal and pragmatic questions, and hinges at least partially on the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, 122 S. Ct. 2528 (2002). In that case, the Court ruled unconstitutional a provision in the Minnesota code of judicial conduct barring judicial candidates from revealing their views on "disputed legal or political issues."

Here, Justice Spargo's attorney, David F. Kunz, a partner with DeGraff, Foy, Holt-Harris, Kunz & Devine in Albany, cites the U.S. Supreme Court case. He insists that the ethics rules as applied by the Commission on Judicial Conduct impermissibly burden the constitutional rights of candidates for judicial office and subject those candidates to restrictions that do not apply to people seeking other elective office.

Stern said Thursday that he intends to argue in support of the rules and the commission's interpretation.

"Obviously, we will oppose [Justice Spargo's] interpretation of the rules and his position," Stern said. "But that will be decided by Judge Hurd."

Colorful Character

Justice Spargo is a colorful and well-known character in New York and national political circles, with a carefully nurtured reputation as a master manipulator of the state's mind-bending election laws.

Serving as counsel to the State Senate Election Committee, Spargo helped craft byzantine statutes, which he then used to clients' advantage when moonlighting as chief counsel to the State Republican Committee. Even bitter opponents describe Spargo as an honest adversary and a happy warrior of sorts who always seemed to get a kick out of twisting election laws ever so close to the breaking point, without losing either his temper or sense of humor. While appearing in myriad hypertechnical elections cases, Spargo often wore a bemused grin, as if he were the only one present who got the joke.

The former seminarian and onetime Army paratrooper worked for the GOP for 15 years, but that era came to an end in the wake of a lengthy and at times entertaining state investigation. From 1985 through 1989, the Commission on Government Integrity attempted to determine whether Spargo helped funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds from a shopping center developer to Poughkeepsie town board candidates. It never really got its answer.

Investigators Frustrated

Spargo frustrated the investigators at every juncture, and seemed to delight in doing so. He filed a series of 16 lawsuits, and finally agreed to testify only after a judge ordered him arrested for contempt. He then invoked the Fifth Amendment 19 times. The investigation eventually petered out after Spargo, who consistently denied any wrongdoing, resigned his party and state posts, and reverted to private practice in the public forum of electoral politics.

In recent years, Spargo, as an elections lawyer, represented politicians of all stripes, and even a few stars.

He counseled Ross Perot, Steve Forbes and Jerry Brown in presidential politics. He aided Karen Burstein, the Democrat who ultimately lost the 1994 New York attorney general race to Republican Dennis C. Vacco. Four years later, he advocated for Vacco when the incumbent attempted to salvage a victory from his close battle with current Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spargo has represented Gov. George E. Pataki as well as billionaire Thomas Golisano, who is now running an aggressive Independence Party campaign against the governor.

But by the time Spargo was hired to aid now-President Bush, he was a sitting judge, and therein lies the problem.

Justice Spargo was among the roughly 2,200 part-time judges in New York who are paid a relatively paltry sum for serving in the judiciary and earn their living through private practice. However, for Justice Spargo earning a living meant practicing election law, and practicing election law meant involvement in politics. How, or whether, he could switch hats from partisan hired gun to objective jurist is at the eye of this storm.

More and more, attorneys are wrestling with the ethical implications of advocacy in the court of public opinion, a professional tactic that the U.S. Supreme Court has suggested is not only legitimate but perhaps obligatory in the age of mass communications.

In Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030, (1991), Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that "an attorney's duties do not begin inside the courtroom door," and that those duties may include "an attempt to demonstrate in the court of public opinion that the client does not deserve to be tried."

Justice Spargo's many roles -- part-time judge, full-time advocate, candidate for judicial office -- add another element to the quandary of just what lawyers could or should do to advance the interests of their clients outside the courtroom.

Although there is no allegation that Justice Spargo did anything in Florida that would violate his oath as an attorney, and every indication that he was acting as a vigorous advocate for his client's interests, the commission maintains that a part-time judge cannot cavalierly separate his judicial role from his advocate's role and switch hats on a whim.

By participating in a campaign that was not his own, even though that was the nature of his private practice, Justice Spargo violated the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct, according to the commission.

The other charges are similar in that they center on behavior that is constitutionally protected when performed by an attorney or any other citizen, but forbidden if the individual happens to be a judge. In his affidavit, Justice Spargo suggests that when he donned robes he agreed to leave his biases, but not his constitutional rights, at the courthouse door.

"The distinguishing feature latched upon by the Commission is the fact that I chose to exercise my constitutional rights while seeking to be elected a town judge or a Supreme Court judge," Justice Spargo said in the affidavit.

From mediawhoresonline

Date Received: October 17, 2002