Thu 28 Jun 2007
Goddard retaliating against Arpaio for bribery investigation
Posted by Candie Dates under Crime and Punishment , Government , Uncategorized[4] Comments
Red State Arizona notes an article published in the paper recently by one of Arpaio’s attorneys explaining how former state treasurer David Petersen claimed he didn’t owe the AG $1.9 million until Goddard began investigating him – then suddenly he paid him and his felony charges were reduced to a misdemeanor by the AG. This all came out recently when current state treasurer Dean Martin came across a tape-recorded conversation revealing the exchange, and turned it over to Sheriff Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas for investigation. Now, Goddard is trying to thwart the bribery investigation by deliberately transferring big-money cases involving the Sheriff’s office to Pima County instead of to Arpaio & Thomas. It looks like Goddard is trying to influence the investigation against him by withholding this money from the county attorney & sheriff – effectively taking money that should go to Maricopa County government and sending it to Pima County government instead. It’s either retaliation or an attempt to force Arpaio & Thomas to back down on the investigation in order to get the big-money cases back – both clearly unethical, particularly for an attorney like Goddard who is subject to strict ethical rules under the Arizona state bar. The State Republican Party just came out with a strongly worded piece attacking Goddard yesterday. Goddard’s political career is going down, down, down. It looks like this may also be a political maneuver by Goddard, since Arpaio & Thomas are Republicans, and Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall is a known feminist Democrat.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:27 am
That’s a nice story you have there except it isn’t true.
As Rob Robb points out, Arpaio is getting the vast majority of the money from the case that was transferred. http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/94/2130
And Pima County turned down the transfer of the civil case. http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/PluggedIn/2247
Oh, and it was the State Bar’s ethics counsel who told Goddard to transfer the cases to avoid an ethical conflict in the first place. http://www.azag.gov/press_releases/june/2007/AGOTransfersCases.pdf
June 28th, 2007 at 11:58 am
While Goddard is ceratinly guilty of going after numerous Republican elected officials for political reasons, you are just regurgitating the same old lies about Petersen. You should be more careful about what “facts” you keep parroting about this situation; otherwise, you do nothing but discredit yourself. The entire transcsipt of the tape you reference is available from the media (and from Arpaio), and everyone I know that has read it views it as much ado about nothing. It is unintelligible in most parts, and nearly all of it has very little to do with your allegations of “bribery”. I would think that our great party leader and rat pack Treasurer have more important things to do than slander the former Treasurer for things that did not happen, and that will never be proven. Perhaps you should grow a pair and ask Petersen himself what ocurred. But then again, I have to remind myself that you are only a lazy blogger with no journalistic integrity whatsoever.
As to the disucssion of the payback from Goddard, I can only say that it is an obvious retributive move, but can Thomas expect anything less from Goddard?
For a lesson in real journalism, and an expose of Goddard and his spate of investigations of Republican public officials (Petersen, Ross, etc.) I would suggest that you pay attention to an investigative article coming out in the Tribune in the next few weeks about the subject. Then, perhaps, I can expect better analysis, and less conjecture and wild speculation, from your forthcoming posts.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:24 am
I really cannot say it better than azslim. You are way off base here “Ted”
June 29th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Yeah C’mon people. Let’s not let our zeal for taking out Goddard blind us to buying into Candy Ass Thomas’s allegations about Peterson. Peterson is a good man.