Gibbons Whistleblower Hires Heavyweight LawyerThe many investigations poking into Gov. Jim Gibbons’ (R-NV) life might be a headache for him, but a dream for lawyers.
The Reno Gazette Journal noticed that big gun lawyers are jumping on board the Gibbons scandal.
In the course of a civil suit with his former company, Nevada technology firm eTreppid, software developer Dennis Montgomery accused eTreppid head Warren Trepp of bribing then-Congressman Gibbons, offering Gibbons lavish trips and cash in exchange for government contracts.
Now Montgomery has hired high-powered D.C. lawyer Robert Bennett, the Journal reports. Bennett’s clients tend toward the elite: he represented President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, New York Times reporter Judith Miller in the CIA leak investigation and ex-World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz during his departure from the World Bank.
It’s not clear what Bennett is supposed to be doing for Montgomery — his suit is an intellectual-property dispute with eTreppid — but chances are it’s to help the FBI’s corruption probe into Gibbons: the paper quotes Bennett as saying he’s signed on for the “East Coast end of the investigation.”
For its part, eTreppid has also brought on Washington D.C. attorney Reid Weingarten, a white-collar crime expert.
Nor is Gibbons about to be left without white-shoe protection. The embattled governor himself just announced a new legal defense fund to fight not only the federal bribery investigation, but an allegation that he accosted a waitress on the way to her car and an accusation that he hired an illegal immigrant as a nanny. Gibbons’s last, controversial defense fund raised $200,000, but so far, he’s the only one willing to open his wallet for his legal expenses.