The Bush Presidency is almost over. In November the President announced the pardons of several people that included embezzlers, drug dealers, liars and the like.
There is an injustice that President Bush still has a few days to correct. Read my lips: Pardon Pat Nolan.
Most people know Pat Nolan now as the president of Justice Fellowship and his work for prison reform.
I met him over two decades ago as he served as State GOP Assembly Minority Leader Pat Nolan. Pat Nolan was an Assemblyman from the Glendale area.
But he was more than that. Nolan was the conservative movement in California. He was the one that helped organize conservatives in attempt to capture Democratic seats and preserve Republican ones. He found and developed leaders. He led fights in internal battles with GOP “old guard” types that stood in the way. Nolan also took care of his constituents.
That came to a screeching halt when he plead guilty in a FBI sting, one year before the Republicans took control of the State Assembly. One can only imagine some of the differences had he still been in power during that period.
His view of the criminal justice system changed s a result and there is no doubt that he has been a great servant in that capacity.
But let’s take a closer look at his “crime”
Democratic Assemblywomen Gwen Moore was convinced by FBI agents posing as a business that wanted tax breaks for setting up businesses in low income areas with high unemployment. It was similar to a bill that Nolan voted for two years earlier.
In fact the idea of these types of “Free Enterprise Zones” were an important part of Republicans addressing the needs of urban communities. The bill passed easily. In the Assembly it was 62-5.
One month after the vote, the agents meet with Nolan and gave $10,000. The $10,000 he reported to the FPPC and he put in the campaign accounts.
That was it. In fact this happens in Sacramento everyday. The FBI claimed they bribed him. Yet he had already voted for the bill and it fit his ideology.
How is that possible?
Unfortunately, this was the era of Willie Brown, term limits and lots of scandals. He was going to have a rough time at trial. Nolan got lumped in with these characters and chose to make a deal instead of risk lots of time away from his young family.
President Bush can make this right, by pardoning Pat Nolan. The facts don’t warrant him having these offenses on this record.
Cross posted on Red County
[Publisher’s Note: I would like to echo the sentiments of Mr. Spence. Pat Nolan absolutely deserves a pardon from this President – Jon Fleischman]
January 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Less we forget, it was Nolan who insituted the Republican Justice Department investigation of the Legislature in the futile effort to catch Willie Brown in wrong doing.
Ironically, it was Nolan himself who was caught.
Are we now to say that extremism in the acceptance of bribes to defend conservatism is “no vice” and should be pardoned?
Who’s next on the list? Sheriff Carona?
January 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Pat Nolan was, without question, the hardest-working, best stategist and sharpest mind the California GOP has had in the past 30 years. All others are wanna-bes and second-stringers, campared to Nolan. With Pat Nolan still in this state, the CA GOP would not be where it is today…gearing-up for another self-important ass-kicking.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
People who defend the treatment of Pat Nolan have not heard the unconscionable tactics used to obtain his plea bargain. Numerous people who knew that Pat Nolan was innocent were threatened, harrassed, and intimidated. In the end, there were people who would have said anything against him just to save themselves from an indictment. This is a sad commentary on our legal system.
This whole incident is a lesson for people like me who tend to be biased in favor of the prosecution. Pat Nolan was the victim of a prosecutor who was under pressure to find Republican legislators to charge with crimes, since the charges filed up to that point were all against Democrats.
Even if Pat Nolan was guilty of something, he has served his time in prision now, so the pardon would do no harm.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
There is simply no comparson to Corona. Those who study the Nolan case and care about facts will see that this was not a situation of seeking petty personal enrichment, which surely justifies the Corona indictment. The complained actions of Nolan were at root his playing hard-ball politics as Republican Leader, to try to get more Republicans elected to office – using the same hard-ball tactics the opposition used (and which the Democrats still reportedly use, most recently Gray Davis, who didn’t go to prison for it). Nolan was basically prosecuted for having a strong passion to change Sacramento and build a Republican majority in the Assembly. But prosecutors were able to spin the situation in a manner that a jury could not understand otherwise, and create an impression of political greed rather than the political passion it really was. This is a terrible injustice and Pat Nolan should be pardoned, and I believe he will be pardoned, someday. Thanks for the post, Mike.
January 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Good stuff, but this doesn’t compute:
“The FBI said they bribed him after he already voted for a bill, his ideology would have required him too.”
Please rewrite that, so we understand what you are trying to convey. Spell check too.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:00 am
As a Democrat who knows the Nolan’s reasonably well(I live in Burbank where they grew up) I don’t disagree with what you wrote, although those that think it was a partisan witchunt are wrong and should read about the case including the role of Democrat Paul Carpenter who was convicted in the same sting.
For those not familiar with the case, the FBI because of rumors about corruption in the Capitol (Which Republicans took to a fever pitch because of what they believed Willie Brown was doing) created a nonexistent business and got a Sacramento legislative aide who was already guilty of crimes to wear a wire and lobby legislators for the fictional business which claimed to be having zoning problems with a new plant they were hoping to build in California.
The prosecutors were helped in their case by former legislator Alan Robbins who testified against several legislators in the case and also helped convict prominent and well liked lobbyist Clay Jackson in the same case.
Obviously the idea that the business (A shrimp processing plant) didn’t really exist played a big part in juror’s minds who didn’t understand that many bills are passed in Sacramento where legislators have never actually seen the project and didn’t appreciate how a legislator could be fooled by a lobbyist who had letters from local businesspeople in their district supporting the change.
The prosecutor in the Nolan case argued that Pat Nolan sold his vote for political contributions to increase his clout in Sacramento and also violated the law by asking for contributions to go to other committees which would then use that money to make contributions to Republicans at his direction (The committees in some cases not having the negative connotations that a contribution to another candidate directly from Pat Nolan might have). This is technically against the law although a lot of people do it and I think many people were stunned when that was included in the charges.
For evidence the prosecutor submitted nothing more than the fact that Nolan had asked the “businessman” to sponsor a table at a fundraiser and to make a small contribution to a business committee in the same conversation where he told this person he would support his legislation creating a waiver from some of the requirements for building the shrimp plant.
Every legislator is told when they arrive in Sacramento not to discuss legislation in the same conversation where they discuss fundraising, but some legislators make the mistake from laziness of combining the two and even though they know better, many legislators will also ask contributors to give money to a third party (i.e. a party committee) that they know will let them give direction on where to spend the money.
It’s a technical violation, but not rare at all in my opinion and if you are going to convict on that, you might as well lock up everyone.
In Nolan’s case the jury found the discussion about supporting the legislation to be substantive enough to show a connection with the contribution and convicted Nolan for the crime.
The Paul Carpenter conviction in the same case was actually pretty hilarious. Carpenter was a Democratic legislator with a deserved reputation as a wheeler-dealer (who had been through previous investigations)figured out early on that the whole thing was part of a sting.
Having a lot of chutzpah, he proceeded to ask the lobbyist for the fictitious business to buy tickets to all sorts of fundraisers and then when the bill came up for a vote, went against the bill and called out to the phony lobbyist in the gallery that he hoped he and his buddies from the FBI enjoyed all of the fundraisers they went to.
Unfortunately for Carpenter, he was a little too arrogant about his actions and the FBI prosecuted him anyway and won a conviction (politicians almost always get convicted when they go on trial for corruption because the public instinctively doesn’t believe them) arguing that Carpenter found out after he had already taken a bribe by asking them to buy tickets to fundraisers.
After he was convicted, Carpenter
won a reversal on a technical decision and promptly fled the country before he could be retried, leaving for Costa Rica where he said he was seeking more aggressive cancer treatment.
For years no one from the US legal system could find him, although he won a national bridge tournament and was interviewed on Costa Rican TV several times. After his cancer got bad and it was clear he wasn’t going to make it, he allowed himself to be arrested and was returned to the United States where he passed away in the custody of the US legal system (which of course also meant that he got free medical care). Truly a character.
As for the call for a pardon for Nolan, as I said, I am a Democrat and I don’t have a problem with it, because I don’t believe much of what he did was that different from what would be normal politics. The problem is that you do have laws against some of these things and if you are going to pardon people who have been convicted (expecially if they are on your side politically) you make it very hard to enforce a lot of laws and prosecutors will probably stop enforcing a lot of things they probably should enforce.
January 17th, 2009 at 12:00 am
Indeed, Pat Nolan should be on President Bush’s pardon list come the 11th hour on January 20th at the latest. But let’s also add to that list Ramos and Campeon, who sit in practically phone booth tight prison cells for stopping an illegal immigrant attempting to smuggle in drugs from Mexico. All three of these guys should be pardoned.