Another interesting nugget . . .

He also showed the Daily Journal a text message he had just received from Stallings, which confirmed the story.

I’d love to know what was on that text message.

And, I have a hard time understanding the comments of saying that he investigated and saying Stallings “made no mention of the conversation with Lackey.” And then following with “On the contrary, he [Stallings] told Lackey to call the AG’s office.”

Moore, who represents Scruggs’ son Zach on his criminal charges in the Lackey bribery attempt, said he had an investigator interview Stallings and he made no mention of the conversation with Lackey.

“On the contrary, he told Lackey to call the AG’s office,” Moore added.

Was there or was there not a conversation between Hood’s good friend Stallings and Judge Lackey or not, according to Moore.

Rossmiller has some very good questions as well:

-What exactly did the text message say? 

-Will Moore be willing to share it with the public, say, by posting a copy of it on his law firm’s website?  Did Moore get Stallings permission to show his text message to third parties?

-When it says “confirmed the story,” what story was confirmed? According to Moore, Stallings said to contact the AG’s office.  Does that mean that Stallings did not relate the story about Hood being pressured? Does it mean he did relate that story but said to contact the AG anyway? Does it mean that he related the story but did not claim any involvement by Moore?  Does it mean that Stallings said Lackey’s testimony was entirely false? 

-If the text message confirmed something, why don’t we know verbatim what the message said, and if a message from Moore to Stallings preceded it, why don’t we have a verbatim accounting of what that message said?  Since Stallings is a Mississippi public official, these text messages should be accessible through a Public Records Law request. 

-Something about the Moore remarks strikes me as something less than a categorical denial that Hood received pressure from Scruggs to help settle the cases, or at the least, that Scruggs intended to or tried to assert such pressure. When Moore says he wouldn’t have anything to do with Patterson, does that also mean he wouldn’t have anything to do with Balducci?  If Scruggs wanted or intended to pressure Hood to bring about that result, even if Hood wasn’t aware of it, was Moore aware of it in any way?

-Is it wise to call Lackey out as either confused or a liar? This was tried, with a distinct lack of success, by Scruggs’ defense in the bribery case.  What motive would Lackey have to lie?

-If Lackey is confused, can Moore say with confidence the investigation would have turned out the same way had Lackey actually gone to the AG’s office? I mean, Hood showed a draft of his own civil lawsuit against Katrina insurers to Scruggs for his input within days after Katrina hit, he worked closely with Scruggs on such matters as the Rigsby documents and considered Scruggs his confidential informant.  It’s not like we lack evidence, outside of the evidence of Lackey’s testimony yesterday, that Hood and Scruggs were tight.  Who will say with a straight face that Lackey’s fears about going to the AG’s office were delusional?  It would take a lot of Hoodzpah to make such a claim.

"Since Stallings is a Mississippi public official, these text messages should be accessible through a Public Records Law request.”
Since the state doesn’t supply Stallings with a cell, it’s Stallings’ personal cell.
I highly doubt those cell records could be obtained through a Public Records Law request. Then again, I’m not a lawyer.

Alan,

A sincere thanks for putting together posts like this.  There is SO MUCH I’ve had to stop reading all the individual articles.  Your posts make it possible to keep up without getting a splitting headache or becoming completely unproductive 3 hours a day.

Where did Mike Moore go to lawschool?

According to Wiki,
Ole Miss, Class of ‘79.

I got the impression that the text message from Stallilngs was shown to the reporter and the reporter said it confirmed what he was saying. 

State Farm was using Jones v. Scruggs as a conduit of information.  Jones’s lawyers were filing all of these things to get them in the public arena spreading all of these rumors.  They came up in Natchez and Hood denied them.  This same rumor came up again in the fbi transcripts and 302s.  It sounds fishy to me that this same rumor keeps going around, made Lackey suspicious and led to his entrapping his protege Balducci and therefore Scruggs.  Who benefits?  State Farm.  Who loses—Katrina victims.

Boy, I sure would hate to see ole Mike Moore get sucked into this with his good friend Jim Hood....and Jim Hood good friend Dickie Scruggs.  ) To much Smoke here....

Aspen, you are a bit behind the curve.  No one can blame you as this thing has about 8000 moving parts.  We do know that Balducci and Patterson were paid $500K to influence Hood.  Hood and Balducci both admitted (under oath) that they had dinner.  The difference comes in what message was delivered.  A very close read of Hood’s denial shows substantial word parsing.

At the end of the day, though Hood denies the influence, Hood started criminal pressure on State Farm when Dickie wanted him to and ended it when Dickie wanted him to.  Those are the facts, and they are not pretty.

On the stand, Lackey said he had heard that because Hood didn’t want to settle a claims dispute with State Farm Insurance, Moore and Scruggs got mad, with Scruggs’ threatening to find a campaign opponent for Hood in the 2007 statewide election, just like he had done to Insurance Commissioner George Dale. Lackey said he heard that from Stallings.

However, Stallings told the Daily Journal on Wednesday he had told Lackey about Hood’s disagreement with Moore and Scruggs, but that he had never mentioned anything about Dale.

The threat to Hood did not include Balducci or co-defendant Steve Patterson, which an earlier story stated.

Stallings also said he told an investigator for Moore, who represents Zach Scruggs, about his advice to Lackey and what he had said about Moore and Scruggs’ disagreement with Hood.

A text message shown Tuesday to the Daily Journal, which reporter Patsy Brumfield originally thought was from Stallings, was not. It was from Moore associate Lee Martin, and Moore said again Wednesday it confirmed his recollection of what his investigator told him about speaking with Stallings and his advice to Lackey.

DJ corrects it’s story

Yeah, so basically all that BS re Stallings texting Moore denying having this communication with Judge Lackey was exactly that: BS.  I’d love to know how the DJ made this, imo, HUGE mistake.

trusting Moore a little too much and wanting to scoop something?  What if they had the smoking gun that the Judge who brought down Scruggs might have not told the truth on the stand and had a former AG with some sort of “proof”?  Push into print to scoop everyone because it will be a big story?

Stallings told the Daily Journal on Wednesday he had told Lackey about Hood’s disagreement with Moore and Scruggs, but that he had never mentioned anything about Dale.

That’s known as a distinction without a difference.  The point is, Lackey didn’t report the bribe attempt to Hood because Lackey believed Hood was under Scruggs’ thumb.  Stallings admits telling this to Hood, which corroborates the same story we’ve heard elsewhere (i.e., the infamous dinner at Crechales (btw, who the heck eats there anymore???)).

Whether Lackey also mentioned anything about Dale couldn’t possibly be less relevant.

Did Patsy Brumfield used to work for Dick Molpus?  If so, would Moore trust her enough to ‘feed’ her some BS so she’d run with it?

Like I said, there’s an awful lot of word parsing going on.  Moore and Hood are giving answers to the questions they’d rather have asked of them instead of the questions that they’re asked.