Startling Claim In Balducci Transcript

The government on Monday released more transcripts in connection with the US v.Scruggs bribery case, and thanks to NMC at folo, we can take a look at the FBI’s November 2, 2007 interview with Timothy Balducci, right after he began cooperating. The most surprising new information:

Balducci further explained, prior to this March 2007 meeting [with Scruggs], the Scruggs Law Firm (SLF) was trying to settle some Katrina Insurance cases with the State Farm Insurance Company (SFIC). SLF and SFIC were near a settlement, however, Dickie Scruggs (DS) learned that the Mississippi State Attorney Generals office had threatened to indict SFIC due to some impasses between the Attorney General’s office and SFIC. SFIC was not going to settle the civil cases with SLF, if the company was going to be indicted by the Attorney Generals office. DS asked Steve Patterson (SP) to speak with Attorney General Jim Hood since SP and Hood had a long standing relationship. DS offered to pay Patterson Balducci $500,000 if they could get Hood to relent on indicting SFIC. Balducci accompanied SP to a meeting with Hood and Hood later agreed not to indict SFIC. SLF eventually settled with SFIC and that settlement yielded approximately $26 millions in attorneys fees….

So instead of the view that Hood threatened State Farm with criminal prosecution to benefit Scruggs’ civil cases, this scenario has Hood nearly screwing up Scruggs’ settlement with State Farm and has Scruggs (via Patterson) pressuring Hood to call off any criminal prosecution. If true, it certainly makes Hood look less competent than ever, if that’s possible.