Birds of a Feather
Sep 28th, 2005 at 11:27 am by Susie
Timothy Flanigan is set to become Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He is the General Counsel of Tyco, one of the most scandal-plagued corporations in the country. He is directly connected to the Abramoff scandal. As GC at Tyco he hired Abramoff to protect Tyco’s ability to avoid paying taxes through its relocation to Bermuda. He was also central to the legal White House decisions permitting quasi-torture to be used by the US military.
Attorney General Al Gonzales will almost certainly have to recuse himself from various aspects of the Abramoff case as it centers more and more on the White House. That leaves Flanigan, who is even more directly implicated in the case. He’ll have to recuse himself too, whether he realizes it yet or not.
So, major corporate corruption, implicated in the Abramoff scandal, legal enabler of torture.
Is Al Gonzales really such a politically disinterested figure that he needs a pure party-liner as his number two?
Why is this guy’s nomination not dead in the water?
I assume this is a rhetorical question?
UPDATE from Josh:
Correction: Timothy Flanigan is not General Counsel of Tyco. He is General Counsel for Corporate and International Law. The General Counsel is William B. Lytton. Also, Flanigan came to Tyco after the criminal activity which led to indictments of company executives.
Josh has put up a correction to some of this; you should link to that too.