Florida Times-Union's feud with Angela Corey

http://jacksonville.com/opinion/blog/400589/frank-denton/2013-07-14/frank-denton-corey-s-silence-disservice#comment-729968

This is ultimately a tangent to the George Zimmerman case, but to me it goes a long long way to explaining some of the decisions made throughout it.

In short, the T-U recently wrote a story that the State Attorney used $341,000 of taxpayer money to upgrade her own pension and that of one other staffer. She said she was also doing it for 17 other prosecutors, but the state had no paperwork on any of that and the T-U reported as such. The state later found the paperwork for two of the 17, causing Corey to demand an apology and retraction, and to threaten a lawsuit. The T-U said get bent.

So Corey issued a directive that nobody should communicate with the T-U. The directive goes so far as to take the T-U off the email distribution list that every other media outlet gets for press releases.

That's a control freak who does not deal well with being told something she doesn't want to hear.

 

If their story was wrong -- at least in part -- they should have issued a clarification.

 

They did do that, according to the columnist -- they issued a correction regarding the two other prosecutors, explaining that the state had corrected its error. But according to the columnist, Corey felt she was due a full apology and a retraction of the article.

 

Corey pulled the "I'm still talking" card a couple of times during the Saturday night presser. Talked a lot of happy pablum horseshit.

Soon enough, she'll be rung up on disciplinary charges for all the junk her office put the defense team through.

I'm conflicted about the verdict. Not conflicted at all about her.

 

Horror stories about her temper and the climate in her office abound. The good news is that could run a paralegal from the firm of Dewey, Cheatum and Howe and beat her in the next election.

 

Then there's this, overshadowed since the guy got fired on the day deliberations began:

http://onlineathens.com/national-news/2013-07-13/florida-state-attorney-fires-information-technology-director-who-raised

The guy discovers evidence, sends it up the pipeline to Corey to be given to the defense, as per the law. Finds out it didn't happen, has a conscience and inquires of the Zimmerman team if they received it. Then he testified as such in pretrial motions and the judge said sanctions may come down on Corey's office.

Scary quotes from his lawyer about life working for Angela Corey:

[Kruidbos'] attorney Wesley White — who resigned from the State Attorney’s Office in December and is a critic of Corey — said the firing was aimed at sending a message to office employees “that if they feel like there is wrongdoing,” they should not disclose it or seek legal guidance from a private attorney.

“If they do speak to an attorney, then they are dead,” he said. “The State Attorney’s Office will do whatever is necessary to not only terminate them, but destroy their reputations in the process.”

 

National Review goes after her with a pretty scathing story:

http://nationalreview.com/article/353633/angela-coreys-checkered-past-ian-tuttle?splash=

Best nugget: she actually tried to get Harvard to fire Alan Dershowitz, a tenured professor, after he ripped her for bypassing the grand jury last year to charge Zimmerman through the use of an affidavit to the judge:

"Shortly after Dershowitz’s criticisms, Harvard Law School’s dean’s office received a phone call. When the dean refused to pick up, Angela Corey spent a half hour demanding of an office-of-communications employee that Dershowitz be fired. According to Dershowitz, Corey threatened to sue Harvard, to try to get him disbarred, and also to sue him for slander and libel. Corey also told the communications employee that she had assigned a state investigator — an employee of the State of Florida, that is — to investigate Dershowitz. “That’s an abuse of office right there,” Dershowitz says."

 

Yeah, she needs to go.

It strikes me that she believes she and she alone is aware of the law.

 

I thought it was hilarious that she's such a hick that she honestly believed, A. the dean of Harvard Law School would take a phone call from a state attorney in Northeast Florida and B. she could get a tenured professor at Harvard Law School fired.

That alone tells you all you need to know about her incompetence, and mean streak.

 

Looks to me as if the paper didn't get anything wrong. The state said it didn't have any records of additional payouts. Then it found them. Reporting that the state said it had nothing and later that it had discovered the two new records sounds accurate to me.

 

Outside of NASCAR, Big time trials must be the only place where losers feel it's perfectly fine to thank all the little people that made this thing possible.

 

I don't understand why the employee didn't end that conversation with something along the lines of "Go fuck yourself." about 30 seconds into her rant. How in the hell do you let her berate you for half an hour. Tell her to fuck off and hang up.