In the past few weeks, the Office of the Attorney General has waged a curious battle against plaintiffs in the Pershing Park case.

Attorney General Peter Nickles & Co. fought over whether plaintiffs could depose a government witness. They lost that battle and the deposition provided devastating evidence of more discovery abuses.

The losing fight over the depo has yet to put a dent in Nickles’ M.O. The AG has not backed down from further stonewalling in the cases. In a curious move, the OAG argued in federal court filings that plaintiffs should return 211 pages of documents claiming that they were “mistakenly produced.” The OAG contended that these documents were attorney-client work product.

Last night, Legal Times reported that U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled against Nickles on the matter.

So what are these mystery docs?

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Read The Document Nickles Didn’t Want You To See” »

After some last minute stonewalling by the Office of the Attorney General, Pershing Park plaintiffs were finally allowed to depose a District employee concerning the vast discovery abuses in this mess of a case. Backed up by a court order, the employee was deposed on October 23. According to a filing submitted in U.S. District Court yesterday, the deposition exposed new  discovery abuses.

What are those new abuses?

During discovery over the cases, District employees culled e-mails related to Pershing Park. There were so many e-mails found that they needed a flatbed dolly to transport the documents. Those thousands of pages were carted to the office of the D.C. Police Department’s general counsel.

Years later, the documents have not yet been turned over to plaintiffs attorneys. Even after the U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan slammed the city for its discovery failings this past summer. Even after AG Peter Nickles promised a thorough case review and document dump.

How do the lawyers know this? The District’s own witness—Kimberly Thorpe—told them in last week’s deposition.

Read More “Pershing Park Case: New Discovery Abuse Shocker” »

At this point in the whole Pershing Park court mess, AG Peter Nickles is supposed to just play nice and hope the two big cases settle. Nickles offered up his problematic mea culpa and promised that settlements would be forthcoming. It appears his sweet talk has an expiration date.

Last week, plaintiffs lawyers in the Chang case filed an emergency motion to get the OAG to comply with a request to take a deposition. The plaintiffs lawyers wanted to depose a District official “regarding the District’s preservation or lack thereof of electronically stored materials, including e-mails.”

This deposition goes to the heart of the entire court mess. And it may be important since the D.C. Council hasn’t come close to investigating the Pershing Park discovery problems or the missing evidence in the case.

But the OAG decided to prevent such a deposition from taking place. The lawyers write in their motion:

“Two days before the deposition was to go forward, District counsel unilaterally and without cause announced that the deposition was cancelled, suggesting that it continues to believe its litigation strategy of discovery abuse can continue without consequences.”

More on this drama after the jump.

Read More “Pershing Park Case: OAG Reverts Back To Stonewalling” »

Seven years on and still more government documents being “found” and turned over to plaintiffs attorneys in the messy Pershing Park case. Today, AG Peter Nickles filed a notice that roughly 2,000 pages of documents had been produced for the plaintiffs. This is not the first of such notices nor will it be the last.

Nickles writes to the court that “these documents were located as part of the District’s sweeps of the OAG Civil Litigation Division.” Also included with the production was a privilege log reflecting documents redacted or withheld.

Read More “Pershing Park Case: OAG Finds 2,000 Pages Of Discovery Materials” »

By now, District residents have been well versed on the heroics of Taxicab Commission Chairperson Leon Swain Jr. in the bribery scandal, and the alleged failings of Jim Graham’s Chief of Staff Ted Loza. But the majority of the defendants aren’t well known.

They are parking lot attendants, gas station workers, people who struggle in the service economy to make ends meet. These defendants are the ones who allegedly bribed Swain for under-the-table taxicab licenses. You can find the indictments here.

We decided to do a piece on these anonymous men. Who are they? What did they really know about the bribery scheme?

The answers surprised us. You can read the full story which details what they did, what they knew, and how they were arrested.

Read More “Meet The Other Defendants In the Taxi Bribery Scandal” »

Yitbarek Syume, alleged leader of a bribery scheme targeting the D.C. Taxicab Commission, has been ordered to remain in jail pending trial, Jason Cherkis reports from the federal courthouse.

U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman’s ruling this afternoon overturns an Oct. 9 decision by Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson to allow Syume to live in a halfway house pending trial. Prosecutors had asked that Syume be kept in jail due in part to comments he’d made on tape purportedly threatening the life of Abdulaziz Kamus, named in a Washington Post report as a FBI mole. On the tape, Syume can be heard saying Kamus will be “permanently eliminated” and that “they will come to him.”

Read More “Accused Taxi Briber Will Stay in Jail, Judge Says” »

UPDATE, 6:50 P.M.: LL here. This much is clear: Leon Swain is an amazing informant.

On Sept. 25, he wore a recording device, along with FBI agent John McNair, while meeting with alleged bribery ringleader Yitbarek Syume. The tape was played today in Magistrate Judge Deborah A. Robinson’s courtroom during a hearing on whether Syume should be jailed pending trial.

Context was this: The day prior, D.C. Council aide Ted Loza had been arrested, exposing an ongoing federal investigation into taxicab-related bribes, and named in a Washington Post story as a stool pigeon in that bust was Abdulaziz Kamus—a Ethiopian community leader supposedly in thick as thieves with Syume and his crew. Syume read the WaPo article, by Del Quentin Wilber, and brought a printout of the story to a meeting with his “accomplice,” Taxicab Commission honcho Swain. Tagging along was Swain’s “nephew”—aka McNair. It took place in a parking lot near commission headquarters in Anacostia.

First words out of Swain’s mouth to Syume: “What the fuck happened?….I thought this was your boy!”

Read More “Taxi Bribery Case: Syume on Tape Threatening FBI Informant” »

Right now, Abdulaziz Kamus has a lot on his mind. First, there’s the fact that he’s a central figure in the Ted Loza bribery case (Kamus allegedly joined the Fed probe, wired up, and paid Jim Graham’s Right Hand Man $1500 in bribes). Today, we learned that key players in the bribery scandal discussed killing Kamus after the Loza story broke. Several community leaders say that Kamus has not appeared in public since his law enforcement activities became public.

Now comes the claim that Kamus wasn’t such a great community organizer. We had previously heralded the man as the major player within the Ethiopian community. Yesterday, I was cautioned that this just wasn’t the case at all.

Daniel Belayneh, the executive director of the Ethiopia Community Services and Development Council, laughed when I mentioned Kamus as a leader.

“Mostly he was working with the Latino community,” Belayneh said. “He’s more with Latinos.”

Read More “Claim: Kamus Is No Community Organizer” »

The back-and-forth continues over the Pershing Park mess in U.S. District Court. Today, AG Peter Nickles filed his response to former Councilmember Kathy Patterson’s letter to Judge Emmet Sullivan on Aug. 20.

In his barely three-page response, Nickles provides a nearly substance-free denial of Patterson’s claims that his sworn statement had contained inaccuracies. Last week, Nickles had expressed his displeasure to the court that Patterson had jumped into the fray and that her letter had been made public. Again, it all centers around the discovery problems.

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Nickles Responds To Patterson’s Charges” »

Plaintiffs lawyers in the second Pershing Park case have filed their response to AG Peter Nickles’ sworn statement submitted to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan on August 12.

Nickles’ statement in which he was ordered to explain numerous discovery problems including a missing police document and faulty radio dispatches has come under heavy fire from Councilmember Mary Cheh, Councilmember Phil Mendelson, and former Councilmember Kathy Patterson. Last week, plaintiffs lawyers in the other Pershing Park case submitted their own critical take on Nickles’ testimony. They have called for an independent investigation into the missing evidence.

Now comes the plaintiffs lawyers in the Barham class-action case. They too believe Nickles fell well short of an honest explanation of the case’s numerous OAG-related problems. In its 32-page rebuttal, they focus particularly on Nickles’ claim that he is only now just learning about the missing and/or tampered police evidence.

In fact, they argue Nickles was quite familiar with the Pershing Park case since Jan. 2007. You can read the entirety of their statement [PDF].

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Nickles Could Have Addressed Missing Evidence Long Ago” »

Today, plaintiffs attorneys in one of the Pershing Park cases filed their response to AG Peter Nickles‘ sworn statement submitted to the court on August 12. The plaintiffs’ response is a 26-page takedown of the OAG’s and the D.C. Police Department’s conduct in the case as well as a refutation of Nickles’ own sworn declaration [PDF}.

At issue: the missing evidence, doctored or missing radio dispatches, and a discovery process that has lasted for years without an end in sight. Nickles’ statement apparently has done little to assure plaintiffs that they will be getting a full accounting of what happened during the mass arrests at Pershing Park—and what happened to all that missing evidence.

The attorneys state that they were so disappointed with Nickles and Co.’s representations to the court, they can only form one conclusion: the need for an independent investigation, and “severe sanctions.”

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Plaintiffs Call For ‘Independent Inquiry’” »

Last week, former-Councilmember Kathy Patterson submitted a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. The letter called into question several statements made by AG Peter Nickles in his sworn submission to Sullivan regarding the Pershing Park case. Councilmembers Phil Mendelson and Mary Cheh have their own critiques. But it was Patterson who sent her letter to the federal judge. The judge then issued an August 20 order releasing it to the various lawyers in the case—but not to the public.

Soon, the letter made its way to the press. Nickles does not approve of this leak. He may have a point. But it seems a little petty in light of the AG’s promises of a full investigation into the case’s numerous evidence problems. Also, Patterson corrects several errors that she believes were made in Nickles’ sworn statement. Is this really the moment Nickles should go back to playing the bulldog lawyer?

Nickles suggests he wanted time to oppose the public release of Patterson’s letter. In a filing yesterday, Nickles raises the issue with Sullivan:

“Since Ms. Patterson is not a party to this case, the purpose of the Court’s August, Order was to make Ms.Patterson’s correspondence available to all parties and also to inform the parties of the Court’s inclination to post the correspondence on the public docket and to provide the parties with an opportunity to respond publicly. The Court’s Order, however also provided that any objections to the posting of the Patterson Correspondence on the public docket be filed by no later than August 26 and that the Patterson Correspondence would not be made a matter of public record until the Court so ruled.”

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Nickles Plans To Respond To Patterson’s Letter” »

Late last week, I got an anonymous letter gently complaining about our coverage of the Pershing Park mess. A few times a week, we’ve posted critical pieces concerning the sloppy work of the OAG or pointed to discrepancies among D.C. Police personnel over how basic documents could either disappear (the running resume) or be tampered with (the radio dispatches containing gaps). The writer wanted to know why the plaintiffs in the case didn’t just settle.

The facts are really not in dispute–the mass arrests were bad, violated due process, etc. Other Pershing Park plaintiffs have settled.

I can’t begin to guess why the plaintiffs in this case have not settled. But one thing that appears driving the plaintiffs is the simple quest of getting to the truth of what happened on September 27, 2002.

Why is this important? Because immediately following those bad arrests, D.C. Police officials lied and manipulated information about that day.

Read More “Why Does The Pershing Park Case Matter?” »

On August 12, AG Peter Nickles submitted his sworn statement to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan. By now, the statement has been read by several Pershing Park experts. Their verdict: Nickles’ statement needs a re-write! Councilmember Phil Mendelson and Former Councilmember Kathy Patterson caught several possible errors.

Mendelson took issue with Nickles’ claims that the D.C. Council had prevented him from instituting reforms at OAG and had cut OAG’s budget. Patterson found fault with Nickles’ assertion that his attorneys had been blocked from getting materials discovered in the council’s Pershing Park investigation. Patterson says the majority of those materials were made available to the public along with her detailed  final report.

Today, City Desk reached Councilmember Mary Cheh. Cheh had helped lead the D.C. Council’s investigation into the mass arrests at Pershing Park.

Her take on Nickles’ statement: “This is an attempt to exonerate himself from any liability,” she says. “From what I can tell, he has misled the court….This is just an erroneous, unreliable self-serving statement on his part.”

Read More “Pershing Park Case: Cheh Joins Others In Slamming Nickles’ Statement” »

Today, former Ward 3 Councilmember Kathy Patterson submitted a letter [PDF] to U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan regarding the troubled Pershing Park Case.

Patterson, who headed up the council judiciary committee at the time of the mass arrests and spearheaded an exhaustive investigation into the incident, may be the best authority on the subject (not including plaintiffs’ attorneys).  It appears she wrote the letter to refute several assertions made by Attorney General Peter Nickles in his sworn statement turned into Sullivan on August 12.

Read More “Kathy Patterson Fact-Checks Peter Nickles on Pershing Park” »