When Haley Barbour was sworn in as governor of Mississippi in 2004, he set up a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest and said he had severed ties with the Washington lobbying firm he co-founded.
Barbour is running for re-election this year. Brunini said the trustee of Barbour’s “blind trust has fully complied with all the provisions of these documents so that the governor does not know what of the securities, property, etc., that he owned in January of 2004 have been sold or retained; nor does he know what, if anything, has been purchased.”
“That, after all, is the purpose of a blind trust: to keep the elected official, in this case Governor Barbour, from knowing what his investments are so that he will not be, or appear to be, affected in any decision by his own financial considerations,” Brunini said in his e-mailed statement.
Magnolia Tribune
