Barry, meet Scooter

. . . and I don’t mean Rizzuto.

Ex-San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball’s record-holder for career and single-season homeruns, was indicted Thursday on five counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to federal prosecutors investigating steroid use by professional athletes linked to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO).

Within hours of the indictment’s unsealing, President George W. Bush—who had earlier this summer congratulated Bonds on surpassing Hank Aaron as baseball’s all-time homerun king—rushed to jump on the Barry-be-bad bandwagon.

In Washington, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said: "The president is very disappointed to hear this. As this case is now in the criminal justice system, we will refrain from any further specific comments about it. But clearly this is a sad day for baseball."

Bush, who often likes to brag about having run the Texas Rangers (even though he was only a 5% owner), neglected to mention that during the time of his involvement with the Rangers, steroid use was understood to be rampant in baseball—a dirty little secret kept on the down-low by owners and players, alike, because all concerned liked what the juiced numbers were doing for the game’s bottom line.

But that’s not the height of the hypocrisy in the Bonds case—not anymore.

The President rushed to condemn Bonds for allegations that bare a remarkable resemblance to the charges on which Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby was convicted earlier this year (for the record, that would be four counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice). Libby’s conviction carried mandatory jail time—as would the charges against Bonds, should they be proven at trial. But Lewis I. Libby never went to prison—George Bush pardoned Scooter soon after his conviction. Can Barry Lamar Bonds expect equal leniency from the man who was in this case, as he was in Libby’s, at least peripherally involved?


A sidebar, Your Honor

Bush’s involvement with Major League Baseball isn’t the only thread that ties the President to the BALCO investigation and the Bonds indictment. On the same day that the charges were revealed, Bush named the man who will prosecute Barry Bonds should the case go to trial.

A bit of background: The BALCO investigation was begun back in 2003 by then US Attorney Kevin Ryan—a George W. Bush appointee. But Ryan stepped down early this year, forced out, as were several other US attorneys, by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales because of a perceived lack of loyalty to the Bush Administration.

The turnover at the Northern California prosecutor’s office disrupted the ongoing BALCO investigation, likely causing a delay in the handing up of indictments. For the last eight months, the Bonds case was handled by interim US Attorney Scott Schools, a veteran DoJ lawyer.

With the confirmation and swearing in of new Attorney General Michael Mukasey, President Bush set about filling the vacancies created by the previous AG’s White House-directed purge. Joseph Russoniello, who served as US Attorney for ten years in the same district under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, has been nominated by his former boss’s son to take over the office now tasked with prosecuting Bonds.

And, one more thing, if this case doesn’t seem muddied enough by the behavior of the President and his appointees, defense attorney Mike Rains, representing Bonds in this matter, is accusing the feds of “unethical misconduct,” stating:

Every American should worry about a Justice Department that doesn't know if waterboarding is torture and can't tell the difference between prosecution on the one hand and persecution on the other.

I’m not ready to grant him that Bonds is simply being persecuted here, but as for his other observation, yeah, it—like this entire tangled web—has to get you thinking. . . .


UPDATE:

Questions about the timing of the Bonds indictment and its relationship to recent DoJ turmoil are asked in Saturday’s New York Times:

Why now? A defense lawyer for Barry Bonds and two outside legal experts raised questions yesterday about the timing of the perjury indictment against Bonds, saying they did not understand why it came this week and not months or even years ago.

But the United States attorney’s office in San Francisco declined to answer questions about the case against Bonds. . . .

The 10-page indictment issued by a grand jury Thursday consisted mostly of quotations from Bonds’s 2003 grand jury testimony, in which he repeatedly denied taking steroids or human growth hormone.

A government official involved with the case said the Department of Justice in Washington did not sign off on the decision to indict Bonds, which is not unusual. The official, who talked on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who was officially sworn in Nov. 9, only learned of the indictment after Scott Schools, the acting United States attorney in the Northern District of California, called the office an hour before the indictment was announced.

The lead defense lawyer for Bonds, Michael L. Rains, said the indictment did not appear to contain much new information. “Nothing has changed in four years,” Rains said. . . .

Two former federal prosecutors, Tony West and Walt Brown, speculated that Schools might have wanted to issue the indictment before he was replaced by someone unfamiliar with the case.

Less than four hours after the indictment was announced Thursday, the White House nominated Joseph Russoniello to replace Schools, a career prosecutor who has served as interim head of the office since Kevin Ryan was fired in January.

The White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the timing of the announcement was “completely coincidental.” . . .

West, a defense attorney in San Francisco and a former federal prosecutor there, said, “It’s a logical way to think about it, that you don’t have to get another U.S. attorney up to speed on it.” West said he was otherwise perplexed why Bonds would have been indicted Thursday on evidence the government seemed to have collected months ago.

Assistant United States attorneys in the office pushed to indict Bonds in the summer of 2006, but Ryan wanted to get testimony from Greg Anderson, Bonds’s trainer.

Anderson was jailed for contempt for refusing to testify for the last year, and he has been steadfast in his refusal to appear before the grand jury — another reason the government may have decided not to wait any longer, West said.

Anderson was released from jail shortly after the indictment against Bonds was announced. . . .

Brown, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and now a defense lawyer in San Francisco, also said the coming change in United States attorneys might have been a factor. “You can’t help but notice the timing,” he said.

But Brown said the prosecutors might have also waited to charge Bonds until after the baseball season to avoid complaints that they had interfered with Bonds’s pursuit of Hank Aaron’s home run record.

So, either the indictment was rushed because the White House was about to replace the lead attorney (who was himself a replacement after the USA-gate purge), or the indictment was delayed so as not to interfere with the baseball season and Bonds’s pursuit of Aaron’s record—is that what counts as jurisprudence and due process these days?


(cross-posted to The Seminal and Daily Kos)

up to $50,000—or more!

This is a little late as obits go, but I had completely forgotten about my signature Scooter moment until I was talking with a friend last night. “I’m embarrassed to admit it,” she said, “but growing up, I didn’t even know Phil Rizzuto was a baseball player.”

I knew right away what she was going to say next: “I thought he was just the guy from The Money Store.”

When I first came to the New York City, lo those many years ago, late night TV was filled with ads for Crazy Eddie, the Ritz Fur Shop, and, yes, The Money Store. The Money Store was one of those (is one of those? I think it still exists) sleazy, second mortgage, refi places that prayed upon the desperate with promises of quick cash from “the equity in your own home!” Even to the uninitiated, completely new to the world of credit, it seemed clear, these guys were basically little more than legal loan sharks.

Perhaps to soften their image, perhaps to capitalize on some personal connection to the subject—or perhaps to collect on an outstanding debt—for many years back in the go-go ‘80’s, The Money Store used legendary Yankees shortstop and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto, the Scooter, to, uh, pitch their loan business.

Now, being a lifelong baseball fan, I knew that Rizzuto was a famous Yankee from the 1940’s and ‘50’s, a hall of famer, the 1950 MVP, but I, too, must admit that what left the biggest imprint on my mind was not his playing career, nor his goofy way of calling everyone a “huckleberry” and not always paying attention to the action on the field during his years broadcasting Yankees games. No, for me, like for my friend, when I think of Scooter, I think (well, now I think of Scooter Libby—but before that) of The Money Store.

Rizzuto started every ad with “It’s a hit!” and then would launch into a stilted reading of some typically awful copy that tried way too hard to associate second mortgages with baseball games. But what got me, really got me, every time, was when Scooter promised that I could borrow “Up to $50,000—or more!” I would just lose it. . . every time.

Alas, I shouldn’t have to explain why, but after telling this story on more than one occasion to blank stares and polite nods, I feel the need to point out that the meaning and purpose of “up to” is completely negated by the addition of the phrase “or more.” Can I borrow some amount between one dollar and fifty grand, or is there effectively no limit on what The Money Store might lend me? Which is it Scooter??? Make up your mind!

Philip Francis Rizzuto passed away on Monday night. He was almost 90. . . or more!



24-hour party’s over

I would be remiss if I were not to also note the passing of another man that helped shape my ‘80’s experience: Tony Wilson.

As a 26-year-old reporter for Granada Television in Great Britain, Wilson attended a Sex Pistols concert that, as legend (and the movie, 24 Hour Party People) would have it, was attended by founding members of Joy Division, Buzzcocks (not “the Buzzcocks,” Mr. New York Times guy), the Fall, and the Smiths. Inspired by the music, the scene, the cheap drugs, or the raunchy sex in the men’s room, Wilson soon after formed Factory Records, and released music by the likes of Joy Division (and New Order), A Certain Ratio, The Durutti Column, and Happy Mondays.

In spite of that lineup, Factory never made a profit. “You either make money, or you make history,” said Wilson. When faced with the possibility that I might have had to go through the 1980’s hearing Scooter say “up to $50,000—or more!” up to 50,000 or more times, but without hearing a song like “Love Will Tear Us Apart” even once, I am glad Wilson chose the latter.