The Nation's Pulse / The Framing of Pat Nolan
Kannon, John Von
The Framing of Pat Nolan by John Von Kannon S tate Assemblyman Pat Nolan is not known to many people outside California, but his story is an important one. It is a story that shows just how hard...
...attorney filed charges against him for racketeering and money-laundering...
...That Pat Nolan remained true to his conservative principles even as he advanced may have been the root of his downfall...
...The FBI claims it can search mortgage files because the application forms are submitted to the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, an agency of the federal government...
...By 1988 he had worked his way up to Republican leader, and was within five votes of unseating the powerful Democratic speaker Willie Brown...
...This is how the sting worked: The FBI set up a phony company, Peachstate Capital, which sought special legislation to reduce its bonding requirements so the company could start doing business and providing employment in a predominantly black neighborhood...
...Nolan was first elected in 1978 as one of sixteen new Republicans in the 80-member Assembly, and soon distinguished himself as the principal architect of a Republican revival...
...She told him they wanted to contribute to his effort to elect a Republican majority...
...In the meantime, FBI agents worked over Karen Watson, a Nolan loyalist and the prime witness, who had arranged the meeting where Nolan was videotaped receiving the envelope that turned out to contain the two checks...
...So what is the FBI's motivation...
...A more charitable explanation is that the FBI was merely trying to weed out the corruption that does exist in the California legislature...
...It passed 62 to 5 in the Assembly and unanimously in the Senate...
...Is lobbying the FBI's job...
...p at Nolan is an old friend of mine...
...Nonetheless, when the charges surfaced, Nolan stepped down as Republican Assembly leader...
...not involve the use of taxpayer money...
...The bill did John Von Kannon, former publisher of The American Spectator, is vice president and treasurer of the Heritage Foundation...
...On the day of the raid in August 1988, FBI agents seized Watson off the street, loaded her into a car, and took her to a building where they grilled her for seven hours...
...attorneys and Justice Department resources are not dissipated on investigations that have little basis, or that smack of political motivation...
...All three were Democrats...
...In fact, two of those connected with the investigation have been convicted, and one other has pleaded guilty...
...56 The American Spectator November 1993 / n the course of the investigation, FBI agents reportedly pulled the mortgage applications of "witnesses" deemed uncooperative, and compared the income reported to qualify for loans with actual income...
...She was told she could have an attorney, but that if she left the room, they would raid Nolan's office...
...Which, eventually, she did...
...But when news of the FBI sting hit the press, Brown was not implicated...
...Whether or not Willie Brown used the FBI to divert attention from himself, it is clear that the FBI had no case against Nolan...
...Most Americans would be pleased if the FBI would focus on solving crimes that have actually occurred and apprehending people who have actually committed the crimes, rather than engaging in fanciful and expensive operations to create crimes that entrap innocent citizens—even if they are politicians...
...0 The American Spectator November 1993 57...
...During the seven-hour marathon, she made contradictory statements...
...One such witness I interviewed told me that when he had nothing negative to say about Nolan, the FBI agent exploded, saying, "I don't know why you want to protect Pat Nolan after what he has done...
...Is campaign finance reform...
...Moreover, the questions directed at potential witnesses ("And what bill was this gift tied to...
...He had had no contact with the phony company before these votes, and only after the second vote did he receive an unsolicited contribution—which byall appearances was perfectly legal...
...Since corporate contributions are legal in California, Nolan's staff deposited one of the checks in his campaign committee account and the other into the Republican Assembly campaign committee, not in his own personal checking account...
...attorney's office say there is no case...
...The agents told her they would give her a lighter sentence if she would sign a charge implicating herself and Nolan...
...I was living in Sacramento in 1988, when the story first appeared, and the rumor around town—recently repeated by Dan Walters, the top political columnist for the Sacramento Bee (and no supporter of Nolan)—was that the FBI had originally set up its sting with the idea of catching Assembly Speaker Willie Brown...
...Agent-in-charge Richard Ross told the Los Angeles Times: "We'll in a sense be lobbyists for the citizens of California...
...Nolan had voted for a virtually identical bill that passed two years earlier but was vetoed by Governor George Deukmejian, who had been tipped off by the FBI that it was part of an undercover investigation...
...Brown is the influential and flamboyant lawyer/politician whose income from legal fees has soared since he was elected speaker...
...John Shahabian, former aide to a Democratic state senator, who had cooperated with the FBI on a related case, recently sent a letter to the FBI...
...According to the Los Angeles Times, Shahabian "accused the government of 'unethical police methods' and 'deceit' by allegedly distorting transcripts of secretly recorded conversations and covering up important evidence...
...n August 1988, the FBI conducted a sting operation against Nolan's office and announced that he was under investigation...
...Some pegged him for a future governor or senator...
...Practically no one in Sacramento outside the FBI believes Nolan is guilty, and even, people within the U.S...
...What's more, he had broken Stan Evans's Law that "when Our People get in a position of power, they cease to be Our People...
...As a free-market conservative who first introduced enterprise zone legislation in 1981 and who has supported virtually every effort to reduce government regulation, Nolan voted for the bill...
...After the vote, which took place on May 19, 1988, one of Nolan's legislative aides, Karen Watson, urged him to meet with people she thought were the owners of Peachstate Capital but who were, in fact, FBI agents...
...They would be told to sign or face perjury charges for lying on a loan application form...
...By depositing those checks, his staff inadvertently set Nolan up for a money-laundering charge...
...Four years and eight months after Nolan was targeted, days before O'Connell's term of office was up, and just four months before the statute of limitations would expire, O'Connell—reportedly hankering for a federal judgeship from the Clinton administration—decided to indict a Republican...
...After several requests, Nolan accompanied Watson to a meeting on June 29, where the undercover agents thanked him for his support and handed Watson an envelope, which turned out to contain two postdated checks for $5,000 each, marked "Payable to the order of ." (The Sacramento Bee's press accounts to the contrary notwithstanding, Nolan was never videotaped receiving the envelopes...
...The $10,000 from "Peachstate" represented .314 percent of the $3.2 million Nolan raised that year...
...Now, nearly five years later, Nolan is charged with soliciting and accepting campaign contributions inexchange for votes, apd laundering money into campaign accounts...
...His law office is conveniently located two floors below his Assembly district office in San Francisco...
...It is a story that shows just how hard bureaucrats—even gun-toting bureaucrats from the FBI—will work to justify their existence and past mistakes...
...As Louis Freeh takes over the FBI, it is important that he establish priorities for investigations...
...Not until April of this year did U.S...
...Nolan had voted for the bill twice, and his vote was consistent with his overall voting record and publicly stated views...
...show a certain naïveté about politics, and an unawareness that most people make political contributions because they believe in what the politician stands for...
...He has since been reelected to the Assembly three times...
...More important, they suggest a lack of real evidence of a crime...
...And if the attempts of White House counsel William Kennedy to get the FBI involved in investigations of the White House travel office are any indication, that is not an idle worry...
...Last April, California's U.S...
...Attorney George O'Connell file charges...
...Attorney General Janet Reno must make sure that U.S...
...As Republican leader, Nolan was responsible for raising campaign funds...
...It was not lost on Sacramento pundits that the targets eventually chosen were people Brown and his allies wanted taken out: three conservative Democrats and two Republicans, including Pat Nolan...
...Valuable FBI resources should not be used on fishing expeditions...
...T here is, in part, a confusion as to the FBI's role in investigations with political overtones...
...Those who "puffed" their income to qualify for a loan would get another visit from the FBI, this time with a typed "302 field report," complete with false testimony...
...And it's important because Pat Nolan is a principled and effective politician who could still have a future in front of him...
...Over the next year, FBI agents confronted Watson with the contradictory transcript, warning her that unless she cooperated, she would go to jail for lying to a federal agent—a federal offense...
Vol. 26 • November 1993 • No. 11
