Yikes. Joe Ganim’s probation officer Christopher Rogers is having a bad day today. He apparently misrepresented that former Mayor Joe Ganim’s federal sentencing judge Janet Arterton approved of Ganim regaining his law license. Well, as Ed Mahony of the Hartford Courant reports, the Connecticut Post Editorial Board wrote in support of Ganim regaining his law license on the basis that Judge Arterton agreed. See here. Judge Arterton also rejected, in a decision issued Tuesday, Ganim’s motion for early termination of supervised release. Should Joe regain his law license? What say you? From Mahony:
The week began full of promise for former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph P. Ganim’s quest for personal, professional and political rehabilitation. But promise proved illusory and, at midweek, Ganim was back where he began, a convicted racketeer in search of a fresh start.
Wednesday morning, Ganim’s probation officer was said to be arranging the retraction of stunning testimony two days earlier, on Monday, that appeared to be a coup by the ex-mayor in his long-odds application for reinstatement of his law license.The probation officer had said, at a hearing in court before a bar committee, that the U.S. District Court judge who said Ganim’s perjury at his corruption trial justified an extra-long prison sentence, was supportive of the ex-mayor’s efforts to regain his license to practice law. But within hours of the hearing, the probation officer was conceding that he had testified in error, according to lawyers and others familiar with the events.
Meanwhile, the supposedly supportive judge, U.S. District Judge Janet B. Arterton, was making it clear that she was not.
“The Court has taken no position on this application for bar readmission,” Arterton wrote in a signed order dated Tuesday and made public Wednesday morning.
In the same order, Arterton also denied Ganim’s long-standing request for an early end to his probation. Early termination of probation, a highly unusual step in the federal practice of criminal law, could have been used as compelling evidence of Ganim’s rehabilitation and as a justification for his readmission to the bar.
Arterton’s positions contrary to Ganim’s interests are likely to deflate an editorial supporting the ex-mayor on Tuesday by his hometown newspaper, the Connecticut Post.
Headlined “Ganim has served his time,” the editorial asserted in its first paragraph: “If for no reason other than U.S. District Court Judge Janet Arterton believes it is a good idea, former Bridgeport Mayor Joseph Ganim should regain his license to practice law.”
Ganim’s lawyer was not immediately available Wednesday to discuss the events. The probation officer said he would clarify his position in the near future.
When I read that in the Post it did not seem right to me. Judge Arterton must have bitch-slapped that probation officer silly. Right Lennie.
Do you think Joe tried to fast-talk his PO into saying that?
Yup.
I’m in favor of Ganim getting his law license. The cheap-shoe prick did not use his law license to bilk the city out of all that money. He used and abused the public trust. For that he forfeits any right to run for office. I could care less if he practices law. I will, however, never allow the bum back into public office.
Unfortunately yahooy, you don’t have the only say in the matter. I agree, Joe should not be returned to office. The problem is the majority of the brain-dead voters in this city would vote for him again in a heartbeat.
What a moron that probation officer was. Guess it hurts Joe’s hope of running for Mayor down the road. It is a shame, really. Sometimes you just have to accept you can’t go back. So much water under that bridge.
It was a bell you cannot un-ring.