Smelling Rats in the Tumey Dismissal

Something is wrong about the recently concluded Robin Tumey case. Tumey ran the Democratic Party of Benton county recently, and has served the party in several capacities over the years.

A company which she and her relatives owned was accused of making unlawful deductions from the paychecks of workers she was using to service a government contract (imagine that, someone well connected to a political party makes money servicing a government contract). Worker's Compensation Insurance is required by law when using workers for a federal job. The accusation was that Tumey's company deducted 10% from the worker's checks, but never used the money to purchase the insurance. Presumably, they pocketed it. I also seem to recall that some if not all of the victimized workers were illegal aliens, but if so that aspect didn't make it to Doug Thompson's article.

At any rate, Thompson spends a great amount of print citing facts which hint that the case was only filed for political reasons. The original U.S. attorney was appointed by the Bush administration under a loophole in the mis-named Patriot Act which allowed the President to make such appointments without Senate approval. There is growing evidence that such federal prosecutors were used for political purposes. If so, I say impeach, and imprison. The only reason I am not all over that side of the story is that it is the side covered in Thompson's article and elsewhere. I am more interested in the other side, how Tumey "beat the rap".

Although the original U.S. Attorney (Bradley Schlozman) was indeed appointed by Bush in a controversial way he could only file the case, he did not prosecute it, and at any rate he has resigned. The man who was in charge of prosecuting it was an assistant U.S. attorney named Richard Monroe- and that man is a Democrat who is running for Congress on the Democratic ticket. It seems like a partisan prosecutor would not hand the case over to the operational control of a fellow who was in the best case unbiased or in the worst case a partisan for the other side. That argues against an unwarranted prosecution and indicates that Schlozman thought he had a solid case against Tumey's company, MSI.

If so, he may have underestimated the degree of "stickin" (ala James Carville's book) that the Democrats do for each other. The lawyer for MSI made a request for discovery for some documents in the Atlanta U.S. Attorney's office. Either the U.S. Attorney in Atlanta dropped the ball and did not provide the records despite the best efforts of Missouri Assistant U.S. Attorney (and now Democratic Congressional Candidate) Richard Monroe to get them, or Monroe himself did not make a serious effort to get the records. That was the biggest favor he could do for Robin Tumey and MSI. Records that should have been provided in 20 days were still not provided in two years. This allowed the lawyers for Tumey's company to move for dismissal because they did not get a "speedy trial".

To me, it seems clear that Monroe dropped the ball, and it is hard to see how it could be an "accident" since it stretched over two years. I am baffled as to why an experienced reporter like Thompson did not pursue this angle in his coverage. Instead, the lawyer for the defense compliments the honesty of the prosecutor whose refusal to turn over evidence allowed her to win a dismissal for her client. It seems Thompson only asked Monroe if his boss (Schlozman) was playing politics when he filed the charges against Tumey's company. Sure, that is one question to ask, but an even more obvious question is was there any political motivation in Monroe's refusal to provide discovery? Was this a case of a Democratic party candidate giving an influential party operative an escape hatch by deliberately muffing the case? Bear in mind this "oversight" allowed the accused to escape trial.