Willis Carto archive

Including information about his associates

More Lies from The SPOTLIGHT — January 22, 2001


‘Get-Rich-Quick’ Attorney Betrayed Client, Cause

Mark Weber’s co-conspirator — Santa Ana, Calif., lawyer William Hulsy — is the kind of creature poet John Keats undoubtedly had in mind when he wrote: I think we may class the lawyer in the natural history of monsters.

Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT
By Sanford Griffith

When attorney William Hulsy was not singing in the church choir on Sunday or preying on a potential cash cow in the new Reform Party of California, Hulsy otherwise occupied much of his time over the past eight years by working with his client, Mark Weber, in the effort to destroy Liberty Lobby and silence The SPOTLIGHT.

Were it not for the now-infamous Liberty Lobby Exception, any other attorney would almost certainly have been seriously sanctioned long ago if he had betrayed his own client as Hulsy did when he played a critical role alongside Weber in the illegal takeover of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which became the springboard for the subsequent conspiracy to bring down Liberty Lobby.

Hulsy is clearly guilty of an egregious conflict of interest that would be hard for any honest person to reconcile in any way. The indisputable fact is that in the months leading up to the IHR takeover — while he was secretly plotting with the paid staff employees of the IHR who had paid him a fee for his services — Hulsy was the paid attorney of record for the legitimate board of directors of the IHR and its parent body, the Legion for the Survival of Freedom (LSF).

In plotting with Weber and the other staff members, Hulsy was betraying the IHR board, yet — perhaps not surprisingly, in light of the Liberty Lobby Exception — the State Bar of California ruled that this was not a conflict of interest — that it was perfectly ethical for Hulsy to betray his clients.

Hulsy admitted that he joined the conspiracy to implement what he himself described as a terribly disloyal coup d’etat after he discovered that an American woman, living in Switzerland, Jean Farrel, had made a substantial bequest to the care of Willis Carto that the IHR staffers had decided to appropriate for themselves.

Hulsy hoped to get a cut of the Farrel money from Weber as a commission for his treachery, evidently expecting a substantial sum since his co-conspirator Weber had been busy telling selected persons both here and abroad that the Farrel legacy was perhaps as much as either $40 million or $80 million.

As a result, several others were brought into the conspiracy, endorsing Weber’s actions, thinking that they, too, would get a cut of the loot by lending their names and reputations in the arena of Revisionism.

In fact, the actual amount of the Farrel legacy was much, much less than Weber believed, although to their great dismay, Hulsy and Weber did not learn the true facts about the extent of the Farrel legacy until the course of legal discovery some three years after they staged their coup.

In an affidavit, IHR founder Willis Carto summarized the role that Hulsy played in destroying the IHR:

Hulsy is personally responsible for the wrecking of the LSF [the IHR’s parent body]. His actions have produced a monetary loss of at least $5 million to the LSF, not to mention destroying 30 years of labor … However, the money is secondary. The destruction of a viable, vibrant, honest and growing institution engaged in critical and important historical research is a crime that cannot be measured in money. Hulsy is clearly proud of what he has done, stating clearly under oath that his part in the conspiracy, takeover and wrecking was sine quo non, meaning that without him, nothing could have happened.

Hulsy has admitted that the IHR had been what he called his biggest client from October 1989 through September 1991, during which time Hulsy was paid — by his own admission under oath — some $80,000 in fees and expenses. Then, after Hulsy betrayed his legitimate clients on the IHR’s board of directors he received perhaps as much as an additional $300,000 in fees.

Hulsy’s cavalier attitude toward the destruction of the IHR was perhaps best expressed on Feb. 23, 1995, when he admitted of his own actions that I know it sounds terribly disloyal. Then Hulsy commented that the seizure of the IHR and its assets — particularly its valuable book in ventory subsequently sold by the conspirators for pennies on the dollar — was quite simply the spoils of war.

Despite all of this, Hulsy got away free and clear with not even a slap on the wrist from the California Bar which, if truth be told, is quite simply a mess, bringing utter discredit to the legal profession in California.

Over the last several years, legal corruption in California — including the judges* — has run rampant. The bar itself has had to fire numerous staff members and it was discovered that many attorneys were not even paying their dues. That Hulsy should survive his own legal im broglio is thus not really out of the ordinary: the bar is simply unable to police its own members.

Perhaps to its credit, however, the California bar did muster enough bravado to send Hulsy a warning letter telling him that he had been a bad boy by orchestrating and participating in a violent armed raid on the IHR headquarters on Oct. 15, 1993.

At that time, with Hulsy standing near by his side, Hulsy’s confederate, Greg Raven — who is now IHR chief — held a loaded pistol in the face of Mrs. Elisabeth Carto, saying I’ll kill you. (This was after Raven’s colleague, Weber, had brutally attacked Mrs. Carto, bloodying her about the face and shoulders.)

But Hulsy’s legal shenanigans have reached coast-to-coast. Hulsy also got away with violating the rules of the Washington, D.C. Bar by practicing law in the District of Columbia without a license, filing papers in federal court in Wash ing ton. The D.C. bar did not sanction Hul sy, but the federal court did refuse to accept his filings and sent them back to California when the clerk of the court learned of Hulsy’s misfeasance.

Hulsy is busy these days trying to save his failing legal practice. Potential clients who have heard of Hulsy’s IHR antics simply want nothing to do with him.

Hulsy has had to abandon his elegant suite of offices in a swanky neighborhood in Irvine where Hulsy openly bragged of his special IHR Room paid for by the fees he received from the IHR.

Today Hulsy operates out of a seedy office in Santa Ana — a far cry from Hulsy’s halcyon days when — as a sharp young lawyer unaffected by years of hard drinking and free of the shame of being publicly scorned for covertly conspiring behind the scenes against his clients — he won a substantial malpractice award that set him on his career. Now Hulsy is hustling for clients and surely rues the day back in 1993 when he thought he would soon get rich quick by helping Mark Weber grab the Farrel fortune and a million dollar book inventory.

* On Nov. 21, 1996, California Superior Judge Runston G. Maino levied an unjust and unfair total judgment of some $10 million against Liberty Lobby and supportive personnel. Since then, without jurisdiction, Maino has reached across the country to void the settlement agreement between Liberty Lobby and Mark Weber without authority.