Audio By Carbonatix
We were fairly deluged this morning with e-mails from readers of Arizona Republic columnist E.J Montini about a blog post he did about ex-Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Peyton Thomas.
“Has E.J. Montini become an apologist for Thomas?” a retired judge wrote us. “I don’t understand the purpose of giving [Thomas] a forum for his rants, making him to be the oppressed.”
Here is what the veteran daily scribe wrote:
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Okay, so Montini gave Thomas a forum to spew his tiresome venom about the judiciary, one of his longtime whipping boys (see our story here from a few years back about his war against `activist judges,’ i.e. those who disagreed with him and his policies for one reason or another).
But the columnist, whose carefully constructed phrasing in his blog post betrayed little in the way of a point of view, did win a nice quote or two from Andy, including this one about the State Bar and its minions:
“They’re lighting their torches and holding their pitchforks aloft and demanding what they can get.”
Not altogether sure about the metaphors at play there, but it has a good feel to it.
Actually, Andy Thomas as a Rocky-like underdog, as a one-person (not counting his most visible sycophants Lisa Aubuchon, Rachel Alexander, and Barnett Lotstein) corruption-fighting machine who dared battle The Man is going to be a tough sell on any level.
Hell, the dude was The Man.
And there’s this little thing called evidence, which in the case of the State Bar of Arizona vs Andrew Thomas is abundant.
It’s a hoot listening to Thomas sound like a whiny little boy crying out for “due process” in the administrative case pending against him that may cost him his ticket to practice law.
That from the same guy who decried “legal technicalities” foisted by evildoer criminal-defense attorneys upon beleaguered prosecutors and the “system” in general.
If certain events fall into place against Thomas — we are speaking of a criminal indictment — any actual State Bar sanctions against him may in hindsight seem almost quaint.
