Don't Pull the Plug On this One

A trial for the ages is going on in Detroit. Geoffrey Fieger, who made his fame winning acquittals for Jack "Dr. Death" Kevorkian, and his partner Ven Johnson are on trial for their professional lives. Both are accused of recruiting 64 people, mostly employees of their law firm, to contribute $127,000 to the 2004 presidential campaign of John Edwards then reimbursing them out of law firm profits. Fieger doesn’t necessarily deny the facts the government is asserting; he claims ignorance that such payments were against the law.

        Fieger is represented by famed defense attorney Gerry Spence, now 79, who claims this is his last trial. Spence told the jury: “If the government can do this to Mr. Fieger, the government can do this to any of us." He argued that higher ups in the Justice Department were out to get Fieger, a 1998 Democratic candidate for governor, and sent 80 agents to raid his firm and confront his employees in the darkness of Nov. 20, 2005, as if Fieger and Johnson were mobsters or terrorists. "If it's a snippet, let's nip it," Spence said, adding that the Edwards campaign never gave the money back and that the IRS never reimbursed the law firm for the federal taxes it paid on the reimbursements, which it gave to employees in the form of salary bonuses. Spence said the government just wanted to nail "a name...a trophy...a big shot." 

           Responded Justice Department prosecutor Kendall Day: “Fieger thinks he's smarter than you are. No one is above the law, especially a lawyer."

Alan Milstein