Who is Jamison Shipman? A new name in the tradition of Tom Delay and Garrett Lott.

Pillar111 has a fascinating post about a scheme to hide ownership of St. Louis fee offices.  He discloses that a fresh-out-of-law-school associate at Lathrop and Gage, one Jamison Shipman  has set up a series of LLC's related to the fee offices.  So why would a junior associate in Kansas City set up LLC's for fee offices in St. Louis?  Why would the new fee agents have enough money to afford big time legal fees for an out of town law firm?  Who is Jamison Shipman (I'm not the first person to ask this) and why use him?  These are all questions some reporter needs to ask. 

 Interestingly, Jamison appears to be an up and comer in the world of skirting campaign finance laws and, although he has a very short legal career, has already been involved in other questionable campaign activities.  Apparently he set up a not for profit campaign related organization that mis-filed reports with the IRS, then fixed them to make sure that the Missouri-based organization would file its campaign finance reports in Kansas, a state with much less transparant reporting requirements.  The organization was accused of improperly trying to influence Kansas elections.

Stay tuned, I think we are going to hear more about Mr. Shipman in the future.  If you know anything about who he is, please post it here.

Submitted by J. Carter on March 15, 2005 - 10:45am

Jamison Shipman & Terry Brady

Submitted by pilar111 on March 17, 2005 - 8:09am.

Another interesting connection is the Graves for Congress filing Mr Brady 

http://pview.findlaw.com/view/2364891_1

created this past January 2005.  Mr Brady works with Mr Shipman.

https://www.sos.mo.gov/BusinessEntity/soskb/Corp.asp?1652032

The timing seems convenient..............  along with the appointments of the other Grave family members to the two Contract Fee offices on the western side of the great "show me" state.

»

Charles Polk Jr Another Lathrop & Gage Alumnus

Submitted by pilar111 on March 18, 2005 - 7:04am.

Another Lathrop & Gage alumnus is making front page news this morning!  Charles E Polk Jr  was also the Master of Ceremonies for the then Attorney General Ashcroft's swearing in (Washington DC 2002). Boy, things can change fast when hanging with this Ashcroft, Garrett Lott & Jamison Shipman group.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/76E9129BDB9DCB5086256FC7005A33C7?OpenDocument

US Attorney Jim Martin explains Polks alledged crimes...........I'm wondering if the US Attorney from the other side of the state could have proceeded with this case?

»

JC...you're not being fair.

Submitted by Roy Temple on March 18, 2005 - 7:41am.

It's unfair of you to ask a question like that about U.S. Attorney Graves.  You know his spokesman Spence Jackson has already said he would have to recuse himself from all investigations involving corrupt political figures.

From the JC News Tribune:

Jackson said: "I'm confident that, if there were any situation at all that the U.S. Attorney felt he had a conflict of interest of any kind, that he would recuse himself."

Oh no, wait.  Jackson is not the spokesman for the U.S. Attorney after all.  He's the spokesman for the potential target of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney. 

Nod, nod, wink, wink.  No need to investigate little 'ole us. 

Don't you think it's just a tad weird for Jackson to be telling the U.S. Attorney not to investigate the Governor or they will claim it is a conflict of interest? 

So I guess you are right, maybe Graves couldn't have proceeded with a similar investigation, since he has a multi-million dollar conflict of interest.

»