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TexasTowelie

(111,279 posts)
Thu Jun 26, 2014, 10:03 PM Jun 2014

Michael Quinn Sullivan Goes Mute--Refuses to Testify after TEC Subpoena

Michael Quinn Sullivan, the conservative power broker who’s the subject of a long-running investigation by the Texas Ethics Commission, had his day in court yesterday. The commission, looking into allegations that Sullivan acted as an unregistered lobbyist, issued a subpoena to compel Sullivan to testify at a lengthy formal hearing Wednesday. And Sullivan refused.

For some time, Sullivan, who functions as the overseer for an endless stream of “dark money” emanating from Midland oilman Tim Dunn, has responded to the commission’s inquiry with an increasingly surreal attitude of legal nihilism. The charges against him are illegitimate because the Ethics Commission itself is illegitimate. Any laws restricting the activities of lobbyists, those paid to influence legislators, are illegitimate. It’s a bit like Bernie Madoff telling his judge that money is simply a social construct.

With an Abbie Hoffman-esque sense of showmanship, he’s tried to turn a standard ethics complaint into a David-and-Goliath battle. MQS’ allies have even christened his cause with a hashtag, #TXspeechfight, as in, free speech. If he’s forced to register as a lobbyist, he says, so will every Texan visiting their state rep to ask about, say, their local water board. It’s nonsense, but it’s succeeded in riling the troops.

MQS has compared the Ethics Commission to Nazis, and sent out email blasts from his organizations slamming the commissioners as the jackbooted thugs of the Establishment. In closing arguments yesterday, his lawyer, former state Rep. Joe Nixon, wandered the room telling the crowd that “today is a day we stand on a wall between tyranny and freedom.”

More at http://www.texasobserver.org/michael-quinn-sullivan-goes-mute/ .

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