A Gateway Pundit EXCLUSIVE! On Sunday we brought you the story of Oregon’s elaborate play-for-play scheme involving law firms who lan...
A Gateway Pundit EXCLUSIVE! On Sunday we brought you the story of Oregon’s elaborate play-for-play scheme involving law firms who land phat state contracts after shelling out loads of money to politicians’ campaigns. Today, we venture down an even more treacherous path, as it appears as though Oregon governor Kate Brown is rewarding her campaign donors by appointing them to judge positions.
You may recall the story a few months ago where Kate Brown appointed her own personal lawyer to the appeals court. The public cried foul, and Brown went back to the drawing board after rescinding that nomination.
Last week, Governor Brown announced that she is appointing attorney Jackie Kamins to the appeals court bench, despite Kamins havine no experience as a lower court judge. What Governor Brown DIDN’T mention is that the law firm Kamins works for, Markowitz Herbold, just happens to be a huge donor to Kate Brown’s political campaigns over the years. Between the law firm as an entity and employees of the firm, they’ve contributed $26,770 to Brown.
Even more disturbing, they’ve donated $3500 to attorney general Ellen Rosenblum as an entity and another $1274 as individuals. Now Kamins, one of their attorneys, will be judging cases that Rosenblum’s office is a party to, as every criminal appeal is represented by Rosenblum’s state AG office. This creates a significant conflict of interest.
More conflicts of interest could arise should Kamins be tasked with ruling on cases involving Multnomah County, as she previously worked for the county.
State treasurer Tobias Read has received $7500 from Markowitz Herbold as a company and another $1500 from employees. Read also has power to award state contracts and was one of the subjects mentioned in the previous pay-for-play scheme.
In total, Markowitz Herbold as an entity has contributed to $61,689 to political causes. Employees of the firm have contributed a total of $57,989. All of these contributions have been to democrats or far left organizations, such as Future PAC or the Trial Lawyers PAC.
Many of these individual contributions are from David Markowitz himself.
This information is all searchable on Orestar, the state’s election database.
Oh but it gets better! This law firm that donates bigly to the politicians also happens to land several phat contracts, to the tune of nearly $114,751,000.
Markowitz Herbold contracts with the state of Oregon, most of which are for the Justice Department. (click image to enlarge)
There’s an additional $6,150,000 contract that shows up on a different page.
They pocketed a further $27,950,000 in expired contracts that began in 2006.
They’ve also received $60,905 from expenditures of campaigns for legal services.
The whopping grand total is $148,911,905.
That’s quite a return of kickbacks on their contribution investment.
But wait, there’s more! This isn’t the first pay-for-play instance where Kate Brown rewarded Markowitz Herbold. She had previously appointed one of their other attorneys, Steffan Alexander, to a seat on the Multnomah County circuit court bench.
Alexander was also quite generous with his political contributions.
It should also come as no surprise that now-Judge Kamins is a rabid anti Trumper. She even penned an op ed for The Oregonian called “The Privilege Of The Master Class,” where she uses the straw man of an average frat bro at her old college and ascribed those attributes to Justice Kavanaugh to incite more hatred toward him, his nomination, and Trump. She admitted she knew nothing of the Kavanaugh and Ford situation, but still felt the urge to ramble on about it.
To top it all off, the local mainstream media in Portland and across Oregon are pretending like this scandal doesn’t exist. While they were happy to cover Brown’s appointment of Jacqueline Kamins, none of them are reporting that Kamins’ lawfirm just *happens* to be one of the most cherished donors to the campaigns of Brown, Rosenblum, and Read.
If Governor Kate Brown had any morals or ethics, she would withdraw the nomination of Jackie Kamins, due to the numerous conflicts of interest. And if now-Judge Jackie Kamins had any ethics, she’d recognize the conflict and decline the nomination.
We are pleased to announce that Steffan Alexander, Markowitz Herbold shareholder, has been appointed by Governor Kate Brown to the Multnomah County Circuit Court bench. Congratulations, Judge Alexander! pic.twitter.com/bqFLQSWOr6— Markowitz Herbold PC (@markowitzpc) August 12, 2019
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