Kansas City, MO 04/09/07 - Medical Supply Chain founder Samuel Lipari unearthed a US Department of Justice memo revealing the Office of the Attorney General had targeted not eight but ten US Attorneys including the former attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Todd P. Graves. The documents were obtained during Medical Supply Chain's discovery related to the civil antitrust action Medical Supply Chain, Inc. v. Novation LLC, et al, Western District of Missouri case #05-210-CV-W-ODS filed on March 9, 2005.
The e-mail dated January 9th, 2006 from Kyle Sampson, chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to Harriet Miers and William Kelley at the White House, shows the ten U.S. Attorneys that were first selected to voluntarily resign or face termination. Attorneys that resigned were redacted. Todd P. Graves of Missouri resigned March 24, 2006.
Todd Peterson Graves was, according the link, working on Lipari's antitrust suit:
The Western District of Missouri US Attorney office under Todd P. Graves had been active in prosecuting Medicare fraud. Medical Supply Chain, Inc.'s civil antitrust suit against Texas based Novation LLC, Volunteer Hospital Association (VHA), University Health System Consortium (UHC) and Neoforma, Inc. alleges the companies formed a cartel and were involved in a scheme to monopolize hospital supplies to defraud Medicare through payments to administrators and kickbacks.
He was replaced by Bradley J. Schlozman. Get this: He worked in the Justice Department - and was one of the primary guys who helped get approval for Tom DeLay's controversial Texas redistricting plan. In other words, a true Bush supporter. Schlozman not only didn't prosecute Medical Supply Chain's case, according to Lipari he helped get Lipari's lawyer disbarred:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used a little known provision of the USA PATRIOT Act to replace Todd P. Graves with Bradley Schlozman. Bradley Schlozman failed to prosecute public corruption related to the Medical Supply Chain litigation and failed to enforce civil rights laws related to the Novation LLC defendants success in getting Medical Supply Chain's counsel Bret D. Landrith disbarred. Samuel Lipari raised these concerns before the US Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit. On January 16, 2007 Attorney General Gonzales tried to quell criticism of the mass US Attorney firings and the misuse of the USA PATRIOT Act by announcing John Wood would be taking Schlozman's place in Kansas City.
John Wood:
John Wood, U.S. attorney in Kansas City, who's the husband of Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Julie Myers and an ex-deputy general counsel of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
So Kyle Sampson puts Todd Graves on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired. The new guy cones in and Liparai's case gets damaged, if not killed. Obviously there have been other reasons put forward for the firings of the USAt.s - but was one missed is the question. Today's article says Carol Lam was working on similar investigations when she was sacked. Were any of the others?
And why was Schlozman replaced? He's the only one I've heard about that has been since the scandal went public. He's the one in Lipari's own district...
And this is hard to uderstand: Today, April 9, 2007, USBank lost an attempt to get the case dismissed. They lost a dismissal of the $450 million lost suit. Put it into Google news - and it gets sthree - 3 - returns. Is it just me or does that seem like pretty big news?
More later.
2 comments:
I'm with you. Something really rotten is going on here and there's no coverage. You need to get some links on this. If I find anything while researching I'll let you know. Good work.
A very accurate observation! I will give you another clue. This scandal is about $40-$80 Billion a year. It is all in the record and the facts. Transparency is going to bring down the house. I will release more content as the opportunities permit. S~
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