Stan Quoted in Roll Call re: "Murky Legal Trail in DOJ Case"

“Obstruction, perjury, false statements —that’s always how these things get started,” said ethics attorney and former House counsel Stan Brand.

Brand pointed to the Watergate defendants, many of whom were charged with similar crimes.

“There were not many substantial offenses charged in most cases. That was a cover-up,” he said.

Brand represented J. Steven Griles, the former Interior Department deputy secretary, who pleaded guilty to lying to Congress at the end of March after misrepresenting his relationship with disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2005.

But the question of whether the Justice Department actually could bring criminal charges, if it came to that, against its own employees, or former employees, is a tricky one. That has led some attorneys, such as Brand, to argue that the appointment of a special prosecutor in the investigation is inevitable.

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Stan in The Hill on "Pelosi threat to sue Bush over Iraq bill"

The House would have to demonstrate what is called “injury in fact.” A court might accept the case if “it is clear that the legislature has exhausted its ability to do anything more,” a former general counsel to the House of Representatives, Stanley Brand, said.

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Stan in The Hill re Boehner Decision

Stan Brand, former House general counsel, advised that the tape be given directly to either the ethics committee or the proper authorities. When asked yesterday about the implications of the decision, Brand called the case a “historical anomaly.”
“Half the people in Congress weren’t around when this occurred,” said Brand. “This doesn’t really change the law.”

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Stan in USA Today re Leg. Pressure on Gonzalez

"They didn't want to keep getting beaten over the head with this story every night on the nightly news," said Stanley Brand, the House general counsel at the time.

The Environmental Protection Agency case may hold lessons for Democrats seeking testimony from Karl Rove and other high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. There's no law or court ruling that can force testimony from a top presidential aide, according to Brand and other legal and political experts.

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Stan in The Hill on Renzi's Failure to Disclose

“Speaking generally, failure to disclose is always a signal to investigators of an intent to conceal,” said Stan Brand, an ethics lawyer who has advised many lawmakers on how fill out their personal financial disclosure reports.

“You’re always better off listing a transaction, even if it falls in a gray area, and I don’t think this falls in a gray area,” he said of the reported $200,000 payment to Renzi. “Failure to disclose always sets you up for a charge of intent to conceal.

“I don’t see how you avoid that,” he said of reporting such a large payment. “It’s hard for me to imagine how you avoid disclosing that if you have interest in a transaction. If you’re getting proceeds, how do you avoid reporting that?”

Brand noted that indictments related to the scandal involving lobbyist Jack Abramoff cited failures to report gifts on disclosure records as evidence of intent to conceal conduct.

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