Attorney General Gary King now says the entire basis for the Wall Street Journal’s “pay-to-sue” assault on him is false.
It’s true that the Williams Bailey law firm gave $25,000 to King’s AG campaign on Sept. 27, 2006, and another $25,000 to King on Oct. 18, 2006. But F. Kenneth Bailey, the Houston lawyer the newspaper says is at the center of the pay-to-sue scheme, broke off all ties with that law firm long before the firm gave King the contributions.
An announcement published on Sept. 5, 2005 in Texas Lawyer indicates that Bailey had left Williams Bailey and helped form a new law firm called Bailey Perrin Bailey. It’s Bailey Perrin Bailey that is suing Janssen Pharmaceuticals on behalf of New Mexico and a number of other states.
In short, while Bailey is convincing AGs in a number of states to get involved in the lawsuit, it’s not accurate to claim that King did it in exchange for big campaign contributions, because Bailey had no involvement in the contributions to his campaigns, King said in a statement released by his office.
The Journal originally hit Bailey and a number of AGs, including King, in an April 16 editorial, then came back and took a closer look at King in an editorial published on Tuesday. Both claim that Bailey gave the contributions to King and call that pay to play.
“Upon careful research of the records related to this transaction we believe that the allegation is patently false,” King said. “The author of the article apparently assumed that contributions from the Williams Bailey law firm to the campaign could be attributed to Kenneth Bailey. In fact, Mr. Bailey left that firm in 2004, two years prior to the decision by the firm to contribute.”
King said the firm kept the Bailey name for a time, “even though Mr. Bailey no longer participated in the firm,” because of a prior agreement.
He also said Bailey and the Bailey Perrin Bailey law firm have never given to his AG campaign.
“Therefore, it is clear that the allegation of contributions from Mr. Bailey to my campaigns raised in each editorial is provably false,” King said.