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Oct 29, 2009

Comments

A Neighbor

Although I may have disagreed with him politically, as a former neighbor, I always found Jeff Merrifield to be an honest and honorable person. I think it's wrong to villanize someone based on the fact that a couple of votes may have, perhaps, maybe could have benefited those companies. Were the votes contentious in nature? Was the final vote close? I think it's wrong to present only the parts of the picture that back up your assertion and not the totality of his service on the committee. After all, if he were serving for his own gain, would that really have only been evident in the last 2 months of his service? Perhaps his focus in the last 2 months was ensuring that he had a job and could provide for his family but then let those out there who would still have been 100% focused on the current job cast the 1st stone.

An agent

Nice work on the NRC deal. DOJ is fairly worthless on 18 USC 208 cases, shy of a Druyun. Keep beating them up in the press! I also saw in the NRC report Merrifield failed to disclose some material info on his SF-278. That is a felony too, 18 USC 1001, false statements. I saw his excuse was it went "over his head" or something like that. A standard bullshit answer from a senior executive service member. Failure to disclose such things is evidence of concealment of his crime and knowledge in this case that his acts were wrong. DOJ could have charged him on stand alone 18 USC 1001 or folded it into an 18 USC 208 prosecutorial theory --- he violated conflict of interest law, and didn't disclose his acts on his SF-278 because he knew it was wrong and didn't want to get busted.

A good prosecutor could have had a good chance of winning this thing at jury trial.

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