By Dan Christensen
BrowardBulldog.org
Months before popular Democrat Robert Wexler abruptly quit Congress last year federal agents interviewed two South Florida businessmen about his campaign’s unconventional $150,000 investment in a real estate venture.
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Tom DeLay
Adam Kidan, the Broward State Attorney’s star witness in the pending Gus Boulis murder trial, has been subpoenaed to testify this month in the Texas election law conspiracy trial of the once powerful Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Kidan, the former owner of SunCruz Casinos who now lives in Stony Brook, N.Y., was summoned to testify about “social interactions” he witnessed in DeLay’s Congressional office between DeLay and the notorious former Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff, of Miami-based Greenberg Traurig.
“Adam Kidan can also testify to Thomas Dale DeLay’s presence in Jack Abramoff’s skybox at a Washington Redskin NFL game,” says the subpoena, filed Oct. 18 in Travis County Court.
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
The $100 million-plus scam behind the collapse of Fort Lauderdale’s Certified Services is a classic South Florida courtroom tale of greed and woe.
Hundreds of investors who bought Certified’s publicly traded stock were wiped out as insiders looted the company, buying luxury cars and diamonds. Insurance companies who did business with Certified got stiffed for tens of millions of dollars in claims. And injured low- and middle-income employees across the country who counted on Certified to provide worker’s compensation insurance learned too late that their coverage was actually a mirage.
“There are victims everywhere,” U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission attorney Christopher Martin said in an interview.
Charlie Crist
UPDATED: 11:40 a.m.
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
Federal election records show that money was spent between Sept. 28 and Oct. 16 on a television and direct mail ad blitz supporting Rubio and opposing his closest challenger, independent Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Election Day is Nov. 2.
“The money coming from these outside interest groups is unprecedented overall, and especially in the Senate races like that of Florida,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics in Washington, D.C.
Election records show that the Rove-backed “superPAC” American Crossroads recently has begun wading into key House races.
By Dan Christensen, BrowardBulldog.org
G. Steven Fender
John K. Olson
South Florida’s chief federal judge will hold a hearing this month to decide whether a Fort Lauderdale bankruptcy judge should be kicked off a case. It has been alleged the proceedings are tainted because one side’s law firm hired the judge’s fiancé in the middle of the litigation.
Federal rules require judges to disqualify themselves in any case where their impartiality might reasonably be questioned.
But U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John K. Olson refused to step aside this summer when he was challenged for not disclosing that his fiancé had gone to work a year ago as a bankruptcy lawyer for Fort Lauderdale-based Ruden McClosky.
