Thursday, July 19, 2007

FRED THOMPSON

More and New Information on Thompson's Lobbying

Additional facts revealed in those Arent Fox billing records, having now seen them:

• Fred's work begins after a twelve minute conversation with Michael Barnes, a partner at the firm and former Democratic congressman. So this fits the narrative of Thompson being assigned the work.
• It was 19 hours of work over 14 months. The bulk of the work (10 hours) was in the beginning, July 1991. The most work Thompson did for the group in a single day was on a Saturday, about two and a half hours.
• I am more sympathetic to the argument of a faulty memory, as the "discussion with administration officials" consists of one meeting (a little under two and a half hours, and I'll bet that includes travel time and waiting in the lobby) and two phone calls totalling an hour and twenty minutes. (And a half hour of that is on Thompson's next-to-last day on this project, so it sounds like it's the wrap-up.) So it's about three hours and change of actual lobbying efforts from sixteen years ago. No wonder he didn't remember.
• Beyond that, almost all of Thompson's remaining work is "telephone conferences," mostly with Judith DeSarno. Almost all of them are less than half an hour.

I am told by someone familiar with the situation that the July 7 denial from Thompson spokesman Mark Corallo — "There's no documents to prove it, there's no billing records, and Thompson says he has no recollection of it, says it didn't happen" - was in reference to the Times' allegation that Thompson lobbied John Sununu. I asked if this individual was accusing the Los Angeles Times of taking his quote out of context; the response was that the initial e-mailed response, "Fred Thompson did not lobby for this group, period," was erroneous, but that the second denial was in response to the specific allegation of lobbying Sununu.

In the context of the L.A. Times story, Corallo's comment certainly reads as a general denial, not a Sununu-focused denial.

While the records indicate that Thompson spoke to an unidentified White House official on three occasions, it is unknown whether that official was Sununu. In that original Times story, Sununu said, "I don't recall him ever lobbying me on that at all. I don't think that ever happened. In fact, I know that never happened."

07/19 09:21 AMShare