Willis Carto archive

Including information about his associates

More Lies from The SPOTLIGHT — June 19, 2001


Liberty Lobby Goes Chapter 11, Again

New Chapter 11 filing with different twist required by judicial trashing of first bankruptcy.

Exclusive to The SPOTLIGHT
By Sanford Griffith

On June 8, a second Chapter 11 bankruptcy pleading was filed in Washington, D.C. by Liberty Lobby, publisher of the weekly newspaper, The SPOTLIGHT.

The action came on the heels of a decision by federal bankruptcy Judge S. Martin Teel, who on June 6 ruled that he had no authority over the settlement agreement and plan agreed to on August 2, 1999 between Liberty Lobby and creditor Legion for the Survival of Freedom, Inc. (LSF), the legal name for the Institute for Historical Review (IHR).

BIZARRE

The bankruptcy grew out of a bizarre ruling against Liberty Lobby by a California state judge, Runston G. Maino, on Nov. 26, 1996. Maino ruled that a large bequest personally given to Liberty Lobby’s treasurer Willis A. Carto in 1985 and already spent by Liberty Lobby, should be repaid to a group of conspirators who took over the IHR at the point of a gun on Oct. 15, 1993.

The sequence of events leading up to the new bankruptcy filing began with a fraudulent mailing sent out by Mark Weber and Greg Raven — officers of the new IHR — on June 7, 1999. The letter deceitfully asked for money to save Liberty Lobby and was printed on the letterhead of a nonexistent Committee of Concerned Americans allegedly located at a street address in Corona del Mar, California which, however, is a commercial mail drop. The fraudulent letter was signed by Kirk Lyons, a North Carolina lawyer.

The letter was mailed to a list that had been stolen from Liberty Lobby by an advertising consultant and was provided to Weber and Raven.

On Nov. 8, 2000, the scam was countered by a civil lawsuit alleging mail fraud and civil violation of the Lanham Act, naming Weber, Raven and Lyons and filed in federal court in Washington. At this, Judge Maino — who has been consistently biased against Liberty Lobby ever since his punitive judgment in 1996 — took jurisdiction over the settlement agreement and voided it, saying that the new suit violated its terms although he made no inquiry and heard no evidence to determine whether that was true. In fact, it was not true.

The hearing before Judge Teel on June 6 was to get him to assert his rightful authority and order Maino to stop interfering in a federal matter. The bankruptcy laws are federal and the judges are federal. State judges cannot lawfully interfere with a federal order.

Surprisingly, Teel said he had no authority over Maino and trashed the original settlement agreement. Like Maino, Teel has never ruled in favor of Liberty Lobby in any of the issues which have been brought to his attention.

The new bankruptcy by Liberty Lobby suspends all collection activities by Maino & Co. until a new settlement agreement can be agreed to between the parties. This will take months.

Ironically, the action by Teel also means that Liberty Lobby will suspend all further payments to the IHR and its aggressive collection lawyer, Bryan D. Sampson, until a new agreement is settled.

Former IHR board member, Dr. Robert Countess, has identified Sampson as a Mossad lawyer.

The new filing differs from the first in many respects. The most significant is that Liberty Lobby will this time file the amount of each subscriber’s unexpired subscription as a liability. In other words, a subscriber who has paid $59 for a year’s subscription and has received 26 issues, is owed 26 more. Thus, he/she has a claim against Liberty Lobby for one-half the amount paid, or $29.50 and is a legitimate creditor. This liability will be counted against the liability owed to the LSF under the Maino judgment.