OPINION
The Malvern connection
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f you read the daily newspaper or Say what? the Arkansas Blog you might have Here’s some of seen reporting on activities of the the story. Arkansas Teacher Retirement System. S t e v e F a r i s , MAX BRANTLEY maxbrantley@arktimes.com Under the leadership of former another Malvern state Sen. George Hopkins of Malvern, homeboy who sucit has taken a role as plaintiff in about ceeded Hopkins in the Senate, introa dozen class-action lawsuits alleging duced the Labaton firm to ATRS in bad work by investment companies. 2007. He made the introduction on The practice came to light when a behalf of a friend, Tim Herron, who federal judge in Massachusetts com- works in Chargois’ law firm. missioned a special report that looked Herron worked in Arkansas, too. into attorney fees in one of the suits. His uncle, Gordon Powell, worked It produced a $300 million settlement for the House of Representatives durwith State Street Corp. (including $40 ing sessions. Powell also was board million for ATRS) and $75 million in president for Central Arkansas Teleattorney fees for the Labaton Sucha- phone Cooperative in rural Hot Spring row firm of New York, among others. County, outside Malvern. Faris was Belatedly, the judge learned Laba- employed there for a time as manager. ton had paid $4 million to a Texas Hopkins was the co-op’s legal counlawyer, Damon Chargois, as a “finder’s sel. Paul Doane was ATRS leader at fee” in the case. The judge’s eyebrows the time of first Labaton contact, but were raised by the likes of this note after Hopkins took over in 2008 the to Labaton from Chargois: class-action cases multiplied. Hopkins “We got you ATRS as a client after told the judge he’d gotten encourageconsiderable favors, money spent and ment from political leaders, includtime dedicated in Arkansas ... ” ing the governor’s office, to enter the
No sense of decency
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uly 16 had all the attributes of the day when Donald Trump approached that “tide in the affairs of men” where they take the fateful step that leads on to either good fortune in life or misery. Good fortune, you sense, is not going to be the outcome this time. It was the day that the president, with his own countrymen and the rest of the world watching, took the side of America’s biggest and oldest enemy against the institutions of his own government and some of the country’s proudest history. He fawned over the world’s most cunning tyrant and savaged modern American presidents going back indefinitely — to ... Reagan, Carter, Kennedy, Truman? They were mainly to blame for bad relations with Russia that he and his great chum Vladimir Putin were now going to fix. He had spent the previous five days denouncing his predecessors in the White House, America’s allies and
the global institutions the United States had created to preserve peace, democracy and freedom. ERNEST A certain segDUMAS ment of the country has always found the candidate’s and president’s assaults on institutions and political and cultural leaders as invigorating and brave, but a week of wild episodes on the European stage seems somehow different. It may not be reflected much in the tracking polls for a while, but there is a dawning recognition that the wouldbe leader of the free world is never what he claims — a “stable genius,” a world-class bargainer who outsmarts everyone, a shrewd man who knows history, business, economics and government like no one before him. He has finally exposed himself as none of those things, but a showman who
cases. Chargois apparently got fees in government committees, including the at least nine of them. It was perceived Arkansas Lottery Commission. After undercompensation in some cases that his tenure in the Senate and despite led to his email complaint to Labaton. being a Democrat, Faris was hired by The political involvement with Republican Michael Lamoureux to be Arkansas doesn’t end at George Hop- his right-hand man when Lamoureux kins’ door. The Labaton firm, Chargois, was Senate president pro-tem. Note: Herron and Hopkins and his wife con- While in the legislature, Lamoureux tributed tens of thousands of dollars was on the payroll of a political orgato the political campaigns of former nization and a phone company with State Treasurer Martha Shofner. She legislative agendas. He served briefly served then on the ATRS Board, which as Govermor Hutchinson’s chief of took votes on hiring law firms. staff, perhaps influencing HutchinThe Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s son’s appointment of Faris to the Chad Day reported in 2013, shortly Arkansas Public Employees Retirebefore Shofner went to prison for tak- ment System Board. Lamoureux has ing kickbacks from a bond salesman, since become a lobbyist and it’s also that Herron had provided an apart- been disclosed that he figured in the ment to Shofner rent-free for about long list of legislators who helped ship four years. The reporting then indi- state money (unconstitutionally) to cated Faris had hooked Herron up the corruption-enmeshed Preferred with Shofner. Family Healthcare and affiliates. Faris is something of the Zelig of A related tidbit: In 2012, eight memArkansas politics. I met him first as bers of the Labaton firm contributed gatekeeper for Secretary of State Bill $500 each to a successful candidate McCuen, who would die in prison for state legislature in Arkansas. His while serving a sentence for public name? David Kizzia. Hometown? Malcorruption. Years later, as a Senate vern. staff nabob, Faris landed a pied a Must you pay to play in Arkansas? terre in a converted steam plant on To quote what President Trump said the Capitol grounds set up during the of Vladimir Putin’s disavowal of elecMcCuen era. tion interference: The denials from all Faris has won seats on all sorts of involved are “extremely strong.”
is not adept at much of anything. A few American leaders before Trump have faced the foredoomed moment in their affairs that Brutus captured in “Julius Caesar.” For Joseph McCarthy, it came during the televised Army-McCarthy hearings on subversion in the officer corps in 1954 when the blundering senator attacked the patriotism of a young lawyer who had joined the firm of the Army’s attorney, Joseph Welch. Welch finally cut him off with the famous rejoinder: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy’s great popularity collapsed and soon afterward Sen. John L. McClellan of Arkansas led a walkout of Democratic senators from the hearings and Sen. J. William Fulbright sponsored a resolution that censured him and ended his career. For Richard Nixon, it came the day that Judge John J. Sirica read from the bench a presentencing letter from James W. McCord Jr., who said he and the other convicted Watergate burglars had been pressured from the
White House to plead guilty and perjure themselves about the involvement of higher-ups in the break-in. Sirica told the convicted burglars he would reduce their sentences if they revealed the roles of the higher-ups. The revelations cascaded and the jig was up for the president. Trump may never face that moment, but his monstrous deception about Russian interference in American elections and global conflicts put his army of reluctant defenders, including all six members of Arkansas’s congressional delegation, in impossible straits. They had to issue statements denouncing his stands. Although the Justice Department alerted him before he left for Europe, it is almost certain that Trump never read the detailed indictments of the 12 Russian officers who directed the infiltration of computers of national Democratic organizations and election systems in key states to affect the election of the president and members of Congress. Trump counts on Republican voters not reading them either, but a degree of knowledge is unavoidable. Trump had promised to bring up the election interference, as he did
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CONTINUED ON PAGE 29 arktimes.com JULY 19, 2018
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