Former Utah Attorneys General John Swallow, Mark Shurtleff arrested, face 23 charges

[DonViejo]

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

Charges » Both men face counts of soliciting bribery, evidence and witness tampering among others.
By Robert Gehrke And Bob Mims | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published 3 hours ago • Updated 9 minutes ago

Former Utah Attorneys General John Swallow and Mark Shurtleff have been arrested.

The two were arrested at their homes Tuesday morning and are in custody, according to a law enforcement official.

Court documents show Swallow is charged with 11 felonies and two misdemeanors. Five are second-degree felonies for a pattern of unlawful activity, accepting gifts, compensation or loans when prohibited, receiving or soliciting bribes/bribery by a public official and false or inconsistent material statements. Six third-degree felonies include receiving or soliciting bribes/bribery by a public official, tampering with evidence, misuse of public money and obstructing justice. The two Class B misdemeanors are for falsifying/atlering government records and failure to disclose conflict of interest/comply with reporting.

Court documents show Shurtleff is charged with 10 felonies. Seven are second-degree felonies for a pattern of unlawful activity, receiving or soliciting bribes and accepting gift, compensation or loan when prohibited and improper use of a employees position. Three third-degree felonies included tampering with a witness, tampering with evidence and obstructing justice.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58185969-78/arrested-shurtleff-swallow-john.html.csp

[Drunken Irishman]

1. REPUBLICAN Attorney Generals. Two corrupt, slimy assholes...

And our current AG, who was nearly arrested for contempt of court, is just as bad.

[ColesCountyDem]

3. We have that problem with governors, here in Illinois.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

9. Yeah

Former Governor Rod Blagojevich (D) is in the federal pen for corruption. I was hoping he might become the cellmate of his immediate predecessor, George Ryan (R), but they were in different prisons (and Ryan is now out). Whatever you might say about Blagojevich, at least his corruption did not lead directly to the deaths of six children, which Ryan's corruption did.

But let me tell you about Cicero, Illinois (home town of that staunch Republican, Al Capone). Cicero town officials have uniformly been Republicans for decades.

Betty Loren-Maltese used to be the Town President of Cicero. She inherited the job from her husband, Frank Maltese, who had to resign as Town President after he was convicted of mob-related gambling charges. (He died of cancer before he could start serving his sentence.) Anyway, Loren-Maltese got into trouble because a newspaper reporter discovered that she had bought a house in Las Vegas for $1 million, yet her salary was $85K. So where did the money come from?

The US Attorney started looking into Cicero, and discovered that Loren-Maltese, the Town Treasurer, the Town Attorney, the Police Chief and his predecessor, and a couple of mafiosi had robbed the town of $12 million. (During the course of the investigation, the entire Cicero police force was fired. Two thirds of the patrolmen and half of the detectives did manage to be re-hired, but for the better part of a year, the town was patrolled by the Illinois State Police, at a horrendous per-diem paid to the state.) Ms Loren-Maltese has been released from prison, and is now working at a hostess at a pizzaria.

The replacement as Cicero Town Attorney, Ed "Fast Eddie" Vrdolyak, a former Chicago Alderman, former Democrat (now Republican), was convicted of fraud and was in the same cell block as George Ryan. Vrdolyak's successor, Michael Del Galdo, is was found to have overbilled the town to the tune of $2 million.

Cicero, incidentally, was named after the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero, who was noted as a fighter against governmental corruption.

[lark]

5. You are repeating yourself

You had all the adjectives covered with the first word - REPUBLICAN.

[Fred Sanders]

2. Republican systemic corruption being exposed could be the Achilles heel...there should be a lot

more arrests this summer of corrupt politicians thinking their corruption is legal, or can retroactively be made legal (see Wisconsin), all Republicans no doubt.

[freshwest]

4. The problem is trickle down from their corruption benefits some voters. It's a culture.

On another thread, it was called trickle down facism. Because people below them are bought off and live well that way. They'll defend it, legally or not, most often by intimidation of those who expect the law to act as an equalizer.

[Fred Sanders]

6. Interesting. Kind of like zombie lies, they keep getting reanimated as successively more stupid

people benefit from repeating the dead lie.

Have to stab the zombie lie in the head.

[freshwest]

10. Someone here posted a name for this phenomena. We know about the Dunning Kruger effect, but this one

was about how those who are less skilled create networks to survive. They highly resent those with more education and the positions they have attained.

This has been played out around the world. From the last century, the Nazis used an unhealthy populism to claim intellectuals and Jews had stolen the wealth of working men.

They created a new workforce to carry out the most vicious acts against those who'd previously been above them in society. When they got petty authority, they exercised it for revenge.

This was played out in Rwanda, China, Cambodia and it is still used. In all the Bagger run empires, this kind of textbook nepotism takes over. They live by 'It's not what you know, it's who you know.'

That culture does not foster equal opportunity nor does it encourage social mobility. It's a form of tribalism.

JMHO.

[Jackpine Radical]

12. Reminiscent of Pol Pot's Cambodia too.

[PeoViejo]

7. Laws are for little people.

Only for us piss-ants.

[blkmusclmachine]

8. These men are not part of "THE FAMILY/THE FELLOWSHIP," whose members are all Too Big To Fail

[Hamlette]

11. Any inside scoop on why DOJ did not pursue this?

One of the allegations is they were going to bribe Harry Reid but I understood they gave up on that scheme and never actually approached Reid. One rumor is the DOJ didn't want to investigate a potential bribery charge against Reid but that is coming from deep red Utah so I don't believe it without something more.

That bastard Shurtleff even dismissed fraud charges against Bank of America to get his job in DC after he left office as an AG. Which he quickly lost soon thereafter. I always wondered why a fancy pants DC firm would hire a hick like Shurtleff and now we know. We also know why he was fired. Wonder if they are going after the DC firm for bribing Shurtleff? Or BoA?

Fun time to be a lawyer in Utah. Everyone is talking about it today. We all know some of the players/witnesses. As a friend of mine, who was and AG under Shurtleff said: "I believe every word of the allegations against him."

[Jackpine Radical]

13. Why did the US DOJ back off?

"Gill scolded the U.S. Department of Justice, which assigned its public integrity section to investigate Swallow and Shurtleff, but opted in September 2013 against charging either of them — although FBI agents in Utah continued to work aggressively on the case."