An attorney for Amanda Cooper, who ran the Moving America Forward Foundation, calls the motion an ‘irresponsible publicity stunt,’ offers affidavit instead of documents
Frank Foy, whose lawsuit alleges pay to play in the Richardson administration, has asked a judge to hold the now-defunct Moving America Forward Foundation (MAFF) and the Richardson political operative who ran it in contempt for refusing to produce records in response to a subpoena.
Foy is also asking the judge in a motion filed Tuesday to order that records be turned over by the foundation; the woman who ran the foundation, Amanda Cooper; and the foundation’s accounting firm, Meyners + Co.
Foy, through his attorney Victor Marshall, issued the subpoena in January. It sought a list of donors and other information from Gov. Bill Richardson’s nonprofit foundation, which took in $1.7 million in donations through the end of 2007. The foundation dissolved several months ago.
Foy’s lawsuit alleges that the state lost $90 million in investment deals made in exchange for a little more than $15,000 in contributions to Richardson’s 2008 presidential campaign. Foy has also pointed out that Anthony Correra, a close friend of Richardson, was an MAAF director, and his son, Marc Correra, shared in millions of dollars in controversial finder’s fees for helping Vanderbilt Financial and other companies win state investment contracts.
In the newest motion, Foy’s attorney alleges that MAFF “was used as a conduit or vehicle for making kickbacks.” The motion states that donations to the foundation “included money from persons who were engaged in pay-to-play schemes involving the State of New Mexico.”
The subpoena seeks the evidence to back up those allegations.
Cooper offers affidavit
Cooper’s attorney, Joseph E. Sandler of Washington, D.C., said in a prepared statement that Foy’s newest motion is nothing more than an “irresponsible publicity stunt.” He said the foundation “has nothing to do with” Foy’s case.
Cooper, he said, “is prepared to give (Marshall) an affidavit stating under oath, that NONE of the defendants in this case and NONE of the persons or entities mentioned in the Complaint — none at all — ever made ANY contribution to MAFF.”
Sandler made that offer to Marshall in a Feb. 20 letter in which he wrote that the subpoena “seeks to impose on a non-party the burden of searching for and producing documents that have no relevance whatsoever to the case.” In offering the affidavit, Sandler wrote in that letter that he trusts that “such an affidavit would conclusively address the question of relevance and that, upon its receipt, you would withdraw the Subpoena.”
Sandler said in his statement to me that Marshall never responded to the letter. In addition, Sandler said, Marshall “failed to send a copy of this latest ‘Motion’ to either Ms. Cooper or myself. But of course he did distribute copies of his motion to the press.”
In the new motion, Marshall wrote that the Feb. 20 letter from Sandler is “obfuscatory, evasive and dilatory.” He wrote that the points raised in the letter “do not constitute valid grounds for refusing to produce subpoenaed documents.”
The context
Foy is the former chief investment officer for the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board, one of two boards that invested the money with Vanderbilt. His lawsuit was filed under a state law intended to root out public corruption that allows people to sue on behalf of the state. Foy is seeking total damages that could exceed $300 million for the state. If an award is made, Foy would receive a percentage of the award for his work.
State officials who have been publicly named as defendants in the lawsuit are State Investment Officer Gary Bland and Bruce Malott, chairman of the educational retirement board. Several companies and officials tied to those companies have also been named.
There are a number of defendants in the case who have not been named publicly, and it’s possible Richardson is among them.
MAFF is the foundation counterpart to a Richardson political organization that’s at the center of another pay-to-play controversy dogging his administration. The Moving America Forward 527 organization is one of two under investigation in the federal probe that derailed Richardson’s nomination to be commerce secretary.
That investigation, which is reportedly complete and has been forwarded to the office of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for consideration, centers around allegations that CDR Financial Products received a state investment contract that paid almost $1.5 million in exchange for $110,000 in contributions to two Richardson political committees and his 2006 gubernatorial re-election campaign. CDR was paid to advise the NMFA on interest-rate swaps and restructuring escrow funds for $1.6 billion in bonds related to the transportation project dubbed GRIP, or Governor Richardson’s Investment Partnership.