Lawyer: Tape of Brown’s confirmation ‘tampered’

The Superior Court will look into whether the tape recording of the Senate confirmation of attorney general Pamela Brown has been tampered with to reflect that senators actually voted in favor of her nomination.

The allegation of tampering cropped up in consolidated hearing on the Public Defender’s Office’s requests to dismiss three separate criminal cases on the ground that they were not brought to court by a lawful attorney general. The Public Defender’s Office has assailed the legitimacy of Brown as attorney general.

“It appears to have been doctored,” assistant public defender Angela Marie Krueger said during the hearing, referring to a tape that is in the possession of the Attorney General’s Office.

Krueger said the transcript given to the Public Defender’s Office by the AGO regarding the purported confirmation of Brown on Nov. 17, 2003 contains matters that were not reflected in a tape she obtained from the Senate.

“The transcript is not an accurate reflection of what happened,” Krueger said. She narrated how the Senate session proceeded as contained in her tape, saying that one side of it ended before senators purportedly took a vote in favor of Brown’s confirmation. The other side of the tape continued without any voting by the senators on Brown’s nomination, Krueger said.

Krueger submitted her tape to the court and asked that it also inspect the AGO’s tape. She also said that the AGO’s tape should also be accompanied by a Senate certification that it is authentic.

Deputy attorney general Clyde Lemons Jr. said the AGO would submit its tape to the court before noon today.

“She’s [Krueger] not an expert in that field,” Lemons said, belittling Krueger’s allegation of possible tampering as merely an opinion. Krueger said she would like the tapes inspected by an expert.

The hearing, which lasted more than two hours at the courtroom of presiding judge Robert Naraja, featured the arguments by both the Public Defender’s Office and the AGO for and against the legitimacy of Brown as attorney general. Public defender Masood Karimipour accompanied Krueger, while assistant attorney general John Eaton joined Lemons.

The hearing attracted lawyers of the Malite estate and the Marianas Public Lands Authority, all of whom have assailed Brown’s legitimacy in a separate proceeding regarding the attorney general’s lawsuit to stop payment of some $3.45 million in land compensation being claimed by the estate.

Besides lawyers, former congressman Stanley Torres also sat at the gallery of Naraja’s courtroom to witness yesterday afternoon’s proceeding. Torres is facing criminal charges for his alleged involvement in a scheme to employ a ghost employee. The AGO had filed the charges against Torres several days after Brown’s purported confirmation by the Senate.

“This is not an attack by the Public Defender’s Office against Pam Brown and the AGO,” Krueger said, adding that she was merely defending her clients.

“If the government breaks the law…it invites every man to be a law to himself,” she said. “The Commonwealth government should be limited by the Constitution.”

Krueger asked the court to dismiss the criminal charges against Md. Aktar Hossain, Hua Wu Cheng and Joaquin Peredo. The defendants face criminal charges in separate cases. The AGO had charged Hossain and Peredo for allegedly sexually abusing a minor.

Krueger asserted that Brown’s nomination for attorney general, which Gov. Juan N. Babauta made on June 16, 2003, expired after the 90-day statutory deadline on Sept. 14 that year, when the Senate had not acted on the nomination yet. She said that Brown could not be renominated after the nomination expired.

A Senate faction composed of four lawmakers explicitly voted to reject Brown’s nomination on Sept. 17, 2003. Krueger said the later action by five Senate members, who confirmed Brown’s nomination on Nov. 17, 2003, came at a time when the nomination had already expired.

Citing the CNMI Constitution, Krueger said that only the attorney general could prosecute criminal violations. She assailed Brown’s legitimacy as attorney general in asking the court to dismiss the charges against Hossain, Cheng and Peredo.