Jim Hood’s statements about his meeting with Patterson and Balducci
That meeting between Jim Hood and Patterson and Balducci keeps coming up, most recently in an interview by Anita Lee of Attorney General Hood in the Sun Herald last Friday.
If the AP story is right, the meeting happened in late December 2006 and not early January 2007. And, at that time, according to Anita Lee’s story, Langston did not yet know Balducci was leaving. One interesting sidelight is that, in the Anita Lee story, Hood really does link the settlement with State Farm and the grand jury proceeding. The linkage that his side previously tried to pretend away seems to me explicit in this interview.
Next, in the two interviews, Hood openly acknowledges talking to both about the State Farm cases, and says that he thought they were fishing for information about them. In the testimony in the hearing in Natchez, Hood ducks and weaves and then says: “I remember having dinner on one occasion with Mr. Balducci and Mr. Patterson, but that conversation was about they were leaving the firm that they were presently — that Mr. Balducci was presently with. They didn’t convey any threats to me about settling the case or anything like that.”
FOLO
4/27/8
Magnolia Tribune
