Birmingham Attorney, Coal Executive Found Guilty of Bribing State Lawmaker
An attorney with the Birmingham firm Balch & Bingham and an executive with coal company Drummond have been found guilty of bribing a state lawmaker to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from expanding a Superfund toxic cleanup site around north Birmingham.
Jurors found attorney Joel Gilbert and Drummond Vice President David Roberson guilty on six federal charges including bribery, conspiracy and money laundering. The verdict was announced Friday evening.
“We’re obviously pleased with the verdict. We believe that justice was done,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney George Martin, who led the prosecution. “We’re happy for the citizens of north Birmingham. Someone is finally speaking on their behalf.”
The EPA had designated part of north Birmingham as a Superfund site because of elevated levels of arsenic, lead and other substances in the soil. Such toxins are linked to coal production. The EPA notified Drummond and four other companies they could be held responsible and face millions of dollars in cleanup costs.
Prosecutors argued Drummond hired Balch & Bingham to oppose efforts to expand the Superfund site and to add the area to the National Priorities List, which would have fast-tracked the cleanup effort. They say Drummond’s Roberson and Gilbert bribed then-state Representative Oliver Robinson through a secret consulting contract in exchange for Robinson’s help opposing the EPA’s effort. Prosecutors say Robinson’s payments totaled $360,000. Robinson had pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
A third defendant, Balch & Bingham attorney Steven McKinney, was dismissed from the case earlier this week. Judge Abdul Kallon did not comment on the dismissal.
Drummond officials released the following statement after the verdict.
“We are disappointed by the jury’s decision to convict our employee, David Roberson. While we respect the judicial process, we consider David to be a man of integrity who would not knowingly engage in wrongdoing.
“When an environmentalist group raised allegations regarding our operations in the Birmingham area, Drummond responded by hiring one of Alabama’s most well-respected environmental law firms. As testimony in the trial showed, we were assured the firm’s community outreach efforts on our behalf were legal and proper.”
A federal judge dismisses the DOJ’s effort to get voter data from California
The Trump administration has been dealt its first legal setback in its unprecedented effort to consolidate voter data traditionally held by states.
Behind the front lines of the legal battle against Trump’s National Guard deployments
As President Trump began a pattern of deploying the National Guard to democratic-led cities, several Democratic attorneys general and their staffs worked to coordinate their fight against the deployments – and, ultimately, they won.
Trump health care plan doesn’t help people facing skyrocketing ACA premiums
President Trump announced a plan that addresses drug costs and health savings accounts, but not the health insurance premium spikes millions of Americans are facing.
Verizon just had a big outage. Here’s what we know
Verizon says a software problem caused the glitch and they are conducting a postmortem, but experts say outages are "a fact of life" these days.
Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act (again). What is it?
As protests grow over violent ICE enforcement actions in Minneapolis, the president said he could invoke a centuries-old law that would give him sweeping powers to deploy the military in U.S. cities.
There’s an internet blackout in Iran. How are videos and images getting out?
Starlink is illegal in Iran, but people are still using the satellite internet service to get around the government's internet shutdown.
