So Balducci will plea.  Notice there is a polygraph clause in the plea.  I am sure the feds will leak that out somehow.  If Balducci passes a polygraph, testifies against Scruggs and has the “jury consulting” agreement and the check from Scruggs, the “hapless rich guy” defense that Scruggs will try to put on will fold like a house of cards.

This whole group of people (Hood, Langston, Moore, & Scruggs) have had all sorts of mutual personal/political benefit ties that go back a long way.  Tobacco, MCI, and now Katrina stuff.

The key question for those of us on the outside trying to guess where the investigation stands and how far—and how many people—it reaches is this: did the Feds have to close the net prematurely because of some event or development, or did they close the net because they had everything they needed or everything they thought there was to get?

If the latter, then they probably have a pretty tight case. If the former, then what event or development could have caused them to accelerate the search warrant and indictments? It could have been some internal event that we could not know about. The only publically known event proximate in time with the arrests and involving anyone even remotely related to the targets of the investigation was the resignation announcement of Trent Lott.

There doesn’t seem to be any logical connection between the two. Only if the investigators had reason to think that the Lott announcement would be interpreted as a danger alert by the targets and spook them would it have caused them to move early. The timing of the Lott announcement appears to have been an uncanny coincidence, in which case they probably closed the net because they had all the fish in it. Time will tell.

On the issue of Patterson being a member of Balducci’s firm:

http://www.insurancecoverageblog.com/

Now THAT is crazy.  Wonder what the Bar determined and did in response?

Scruggs and the other indictees will be getting their discovery in the next few weeks.  It will be interesting to see if their defense continues to be that Balducci was a rogue attorney and was doing this without their knowledge once they start getting copies of the tapes of the wires he was undoubtedly wearing when he met with them, (after the point at which he was flipped by the FBI and began cooperating).

Almost all federal investigations have phases, with new indictments coming out at the end of each phase, as more information and evidence comes to light, and as more defendants plead and cooperate.  Balducci has probably been provided additional information to them, (unless in the unlikely event that this is the first time he has ever been involved in anything like this).  It would seem likely at this point that there will be additional indictments coming down, especially if more defendants start to cooperate.  And, historically and statistically, it is more likely than not, that at least one more of the defendants will elect to plead guilty and cooperate.

If I was representing Patterson or Backstrom, I know what I would be telling them to consider doing before they were the next ones who got thrown under the bus.