Jack Thompson. NewsMax.com. Thursday, June 29, 2000
Even to the last moment, the attorneys working for Elian's Miami family, led by one Kendall Coffey, did everything in their power to see that little Elian was put into the clutches of Fidel Castro.
From the beginning, the legal and political group around Elian's Miami family, controlling and manipulating them, were no more than Democratic Party and other insider political hacks, sordid characters, some close to Janet Reno herself, all trying to better their own positions at the expense of
6-year-old Elian.
For sure, there was no shame with these folks, even at the last moment.
Consider what happened just in the past few days.
On Sunday, June 25, NewsMax's Carl Limbacher, after interviewing Larry Klayman, reported that Klayman's Judicial Watch had been brought in as co-counsel on behalf of Elian.
Klayman was going to ask the local federal court to set aside U. S. District Court Judge Michael Moore's order entered months ago denying Elian Gonzalez an asylum hearing.
Klayman was going to argue this on grounds that the Justice Department had engaged in fraud when it hid from Judge Moore the clandestine collaboration between Justice and the National Council of Churches and others to subvert, rather than enforce, the asylum laws of this country.
Klayman had sued the INS for its documents, which showed that Justice Dept. officials had lied to the court.
I wrote about this last-ditch strategy of Judicial Watch for two days prior to yesterday's climactic events, with no complaint from anyone other than a partner of Kendall Coffey who wrote me a flurry of e-mails telling me to stop criticizing Coffey, stop telling what Judicial Watch was going to
do (even though Klayman was publicly saying what he was going to do), and – my favorite from this Coffey clone – telling me, "I am your conscience, Jack. Listen to me."
How can Coffey and friends have any conscience after the way they handled this case and so successfully returned Elian to Cuba? (For sure, Coffey's conscience is deformed. In 1996 he was alleged to have bitten a lapdancer on the arm, drawing blood, in a notorious Miami strip club, the Lipstik
Lounge. Though he had to resign as U.S. Attoney, he didn't believe he had done anything wrong at the time, and I'm sure he still feels the same way.)
Despite all their claims to fight for Elian, Team Coffey's real strategy emerged Wednesday morning.
I had been asked to appear on the most-listened-to Spanish language station here in Miami at 8:30 a.m. to explain primarily what Judicial Watch was going to do in federal court in Miami. They asked me; I didn't ask them. And I told them in detail what was already in the public domain.
Apparently Team Coffey went berserk, because I got no fewer than five cell phone calls from Judicial Watch personnel, including Larry Klayman, telling me not to divulge what they were going to do in court on Elian's last day.
Such calls from Judicial Watch made no sense, because I had been reporting to the national and international readers of NewsMax.com what Klayman was going to do. Klayman knew that, and Klayman thanked me for that, before Wednesday in a friendly phone call. Klayman couldn't tell me who ordered
him to call before I went on the radio show. He didn't have to.
The calls had to be ordered by Coffey because of his concern that word was getting out to the faithful local Miami supporters of Elian's freedom that the real action was here in the Miami court and not in the Supreme Court in D.C.
Coffey apparently wanted the perception here in Miami, on the street, to be that he was the white knight, riding to the Supreme Court to save the boy. This lawyer who had lost hearing after hearing. He also did not want the people of Miami to know that another legal action could have been taken
right here to save Elian.
Now stay with me, because this is where it gets good and when you will see how Coffey's strategy minimized what could be done for the boy.
The Supreme Court denied the Miami relatives' appeal at precisely 11:59 a.m.
Larry Klayman was not allowed to hold a press conference announcing that he was going to Judge Moore until 12:30 p.m.
But by then, it was too late. By not allowing Klayman to proceed with his filing in district court before the Supreme Court had ruled, Coffey once again allowed the political and judicial momentum to turn against efforts to save Elian.
With the Supreme Court's ruling, a mountain of momentum, irresistible in its psychological impact on Judge Moore, had paralyzed Moore in ever taking a serious look at the fraud Klayman could prove.
It put Moore in the position of in effect ruling against the Supreme Court, which nearly all serious independent legal analysts say is not something a judge likes to do.
For whatever reason Coffey did it in this order – the Supreme Court first and the trial court second – this tactical blunder assured that the only real shot the boy had, which was in the Miami district court, would never get a fair shake.
It would be as if you had totaled your car and then took it to the local car wash for a wash and wax.
When I asked about Coffey's screw-up, which is a kind description (there are others that the reader can supply), Klayman, maintaining all confidences, simply said wryly: "I have always said, before we became co-counsel, that the correct order to approach this problem was to prove first the
underlying fraud by the government in securing Moore's order. Everything else would follow."
So, let me say what Larry Klayman cannot say, but which a blind man can see: Team Coffey made hundreds of decisions that hurt Elian's case – all of their moves led to today's debacle. They crippled the one chance this little boy had to prove the government of this country had betrayed him.
Team Coffey worked pro bono – for free. They were worth every penny. Elian deserved better. It is a sad day for justice and for this country.
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