Says major GOP players to testify in federal case
By Chris King
Of the St. Louis American
According to attorney Charles Polk Jr., very prominent political figures from Missouri will be joining him and his lawyer Scott Rosenblum in the courtroom once his federal trial on charges of tax evasion, bank fraud, money laundering and interstate transportation of stolen funds gets underway May 8.
Polk said former Attorney General John Ashcroft and U.S. Senators Kit Bond and Jim Talent have been subpoenaed to testify in the case, and not only as character witnesses.
“Character witnesses are for when you’re guilty and are looking for lenient sentencing,” Polk told the American on Monday. He said these men would testify regarding Polk’s work representing the Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District, the context of the federal case against him.
As of Monday, Polk said he had not received in the mail the court order that was reported Friday in the St. Louis-Post Dispatch. In a judgment in a civil case regarding a separate matter, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Melvyn W. Wiesman awarded $3 million in punitive damages and $621,807 in actual damages to James M. Helenthal of Quincy, Ill., and a newspaper he had owned, the Tri-City Shopper.
Polk represented himself in that case. He said he plans to appeal the decision.
Helenthal’s suit was based on his work with Polk in attempting to win settlements for survivors and heirs of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing in the wake of proposed federal pay-outs to victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Polk said that Helenthal first approached him in 2001 to represent him in anti-trust litigation. Polk was then the vice chairman and partner-in-charge of the Washington offices of the law firm Lathrop & Gage. According to Polk, that firm will be represented by Armstrong & Teasdale when a civil suit that Helenthal filed against it goes to trial in June.
After initially meeting about the anti-trust case, Polk said, he and Helenthal entered into an agreement “to try to get victims of the Oklahoma City bombing folded into the 9/11 fund.”
This pursuit in itself has been characterized by some as federal ambulance chasing. Polk denied this and claimed he was motivated by a spirit of racial equity. “The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing were mostly lower-class and black,” he said. “The victims of 9/11 were mostly rich and white.”
Helenthal claimed that Polk’s motives were financial. He testified that Polk had estimated that the average pay-out per family would be $1.8 million and that they could enlist 168 families. He said Polk planned to charge legal fees of 27.5 percent, with Helenthal taking a 45 percent cut for finding the families.
Polk told the American that Helenthal’s only role was to provide the “seed money” in the form of paying Polk the amount he would have earned in salary from his firm during the year he planned to devote to the project, which involved complex enabling federal legislation.
That alleged “seed money,” which Polk confirmed was paid to him, represented the majority of the actual damages for which Helenthal successfully sued.
Polk’s wife Cheryl Polk also was implicated in the suit because one of the checks Helenthal issued to Polk was written out to his wife.
Polk told the American that was because he had expressed doubts to Helenthal whether his wife would agree to his leaving his lucrative position for a year to push the required legislation. Polk said when he voiced these doubts that Helenthal wrote Cheryl Polk a $135,000 check “to show he had the wherewithal.”
“Hindsight is groovy,” Polk said, when asked why he would let his family get involved in a business transaction.
Polk said that at the time Helenthal seemed to be “a reputable businessman.”
Polk now carries in his briefcase Helenthal’s page from the Sex Offender Registry. Helenthal pleaded guilty to child molestation after his project with Polk dissolved in the summer of 2002.
Prominent local attorney Douglas P. Dowd also became briefly involved in the project, but then backed out when he learned of the arrangement between Polk and Helenthal.
“Charles asked if I would help him, as a lawyer, to get these people compensation, and I said I would,” Dowd told the American.
“I got out when I found out that Charles had a secret contract with Jim Helenthal.” Dowd said the tip came “from a confidential source that remains confidential.”
“I asked Charles if it was true that he had a secret contract to share legal fees (with a non-lawyer), and Charles said it was true,” Dowd said.
“I said, ‘Charles, that’s a bad thing,’ and I withdrew from the case.”
Dowd said he reported the incident to the Missouri Supreme Court the next day.
As for any compensation for the victims of the bombing, Polk said, “They never got it.”