Last year, the firm was indicted on federal charges of fraud and bribery. But the political partnership has not been entirely severed. Since the indictment, 26 Democrats around the country, including four presidential candidates, have accepted $150,000 in campaign contributions from people connected to Milberg Weiss, according to state and federal campaign finance records. And some Democrats have taken public actions that potentially helped the firm or its former partners.The recent contributors include current and former Milberg partners who had either been indicted or were widely reported to be facing potential criminal problems when they wrote their checks. One of them, William S. Lerach, was a fund-raiser for John Edwards’s presidential campaign until his guilty plea last month. Melvyn I. Weiss, a founder of the firm, gave the maximum $4,600 to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in June. Other firm members contributed to the presidential campaigns of Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
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In the current campaign, the race for cash has led to several embarrassments for the Democrats, including the indictment of a trial lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, who was accused of using straw donors to make illegal contributions to Mr. Edwards’s 2004 presidential campaign, and the arrest of Norman Hsu, a businessman accused of fraud who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton.
In addition to the kickback charges in the Milberg Weiss case, federal agents have investigated allegations that the firm funneled campaign contributions through plaintiffs and expert witnesses in the 1990s, said two lawyers familiar with the inquiry. The guilty plea entered by Mr. Lerach hinted at that, but it also specified that prosecutors would not pursue campaign finance violations, in exchange for Mr. Lerach’s admission that he had conspired to obstruct justice by concealing the kickbacks.
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More recently, Mr. Edwards, a trial lawyer who became wealthy pursing personal injury cases, joined labor unions and consumer groups last May in pressing securities regulators to intervene in a lawsuit against banks brought by Mr. Lerach on behalf of Enron investors. His campaign said Mr. Edwards’s actions had nothing to do with Mr. Lerach, and were consistent with the candidate’s longstanding defense of working people.
Still, Mr. Edwards’s willingness to be seen doing anything that could benefit Mr. Lerach and allowing him to raise money provided fodder for critics. At the time the Edwards campaign took on Mr. Lerach as a fund-raiser, it was already widely reported that Mr. Lerach, who left Milberg Weiss in 2004, was one of the unnamed co-conspirators cited in court documents related to the firm’s indictment.
In all, Mr. Edwards collected about $16,000 from people connected to Milberg Weiss, including Mr. Lerach and two other former Milberg Weiss lawyers who had joined him at his new firm, Patrick J. Coughlin and Keith F. Park. Federal authorities agreed not to prosecute them as part of a plea deal with Mr. Lerach. (Mr. Lerach also raised $64,000 for Mr. Edwards from members of his new firm who were not named in the Milberg case.)
“With Edwards, he has associated himself with people in his campaign that don’t represent the face that even the trial lawyers want to put forward to the country,” said Walter K. Olson, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, who has written extensively on the American legal system.
New York Times 10/18/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/us/politics/18milberg.html?ref=politics
