Today's Impeachment Dannce Update comes
courtesy of David Skolnick and the hometown paper of Marc Dann, the Youngstown Vindicator. Remember this?:
Despite the controversy, Dann said shortly after the report’s May 2 release that “there is nobody who’s raised a single concern about the delivery of services” of his office.
Later that day, he told The Vindicator: “I don’t think anybody here has challenged our success in law enforcement or as lawyers or as environmental protectors. Nobody has challenged that and nobody in the state has challenged that, by the way. The work product has remained outstanding.”
Marc Dann, please meet -- again -- Magistrate Michael L. Bachman of the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court:
“This court must conclude that the attorney general was using this court to advance a political agenda rather than seek a legal remedy in a court of law,” the magistrate wrote in a Feb. 4 decision.
Bachman didn’t stop there.
The magistrate said Dann’s intervention in the housing foreclosure case was a conflict of interest under the Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct.
“This court has significant concerns regarding the ethical implications of the attorney general moving to dismiss an action,” he wrote in the decision that went against the woman who lost her house to foreclosure and Dann, a Liberty Democrat.
And if that weren't enough -- you guessed it -- there's more!
The magistrate also wrote in his decision that Dann had a conflict of interest.
The state had an interest in the property because Barnes used it as part of a $20,000 bond in an aggravated-menacing case, according to a Feb. 5 article in The Enquirer, a Cincinnati daily newspaper.
“On its face, the attorney general’s motion seeking to dismiss the foreclosure action conflicts with his duty to the taxpayers and citizens of the state of Ohio to collect on judgments rendered in the state’s favor,” Bachman wrote.
Dann told the magistrate that no conflict existed because he concluded the state is more likely to collect the money owed if Barnes kept the house.
“The court finds the attorney general’s argument utterly baseless and demonstrably meritless,” he wrote.
Of course, what's left of Marc Dann's staff is doing their best to provide their emperor some clothes, but this is the best that they can scare up:
Ted Hart, an attorney general spokesman, said categorizing the magistrate’s statements as refuting Dann’s assertion that no one has challenged the office’s success as “a little bit of a stretch. You found one legal case in which we were battling for a homeowner. ... The overwhelming evidence is the body of work has been excellent.”
Nice try, Ted... Is anybody buying that? Not even for a dollar...
