Wall Street case that nicked Bruning is apparently over

By   /   January 4, 2013  /   4 Comments

Joe Jordan | Nebraska Watchdog

A two year old Wall Street controversy, which damaged Attorney General Jon Bruning’s ill-fated Senate campaign, is apparently over.

Bruning’s good friend and former fund raiser David Sokol has been “completely cleared” of any wrongdoing, according to Sokol’s lawyer.

David Sokol

Reuters is reporting that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has dropped its insider trading investigation of Sokol. The SEC will not confirm the report.

Jon Bruning

Early on the case found Bruning, the state’s top law enforcement official, being heavily criticized for coming to Sokol’s defense.

In an exclusive interview with Nebraska Watchdog, Bruning said Sokol had not done anything “even close to a criminal matter” regarding Sokol’s legally and ethically questionable stock deal with Lubrizol.

The interview was followed by an editorial in the Omaha World-Herald arguing that for Bruning “to so quickly leap to a conclusion that no criminal act had occurred when he would have no way of knowing whether that was true is inexcusable for the attorney general…Rookie police officers are trained not to make quick conclusions about guilt or innocence before all of the facts are known.”

Sokol’s ties to Bruning go back several elections. As Nebraska Watchdog has reported, Sokol raised an estimated $100,000 for Bruning’s 2012 Senate campaign, and was a major fundraiser for at least two of Bruning’s previous campaigns.

After the Lubrizol dust-up Sokol no longer had an official position with Bruning’s Senate campaign.

The Lubrizol deal derailed Sokol’s chances of one day taking over Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway corporation.

Contact Joe Jordan at joe@nebraskawatchdog.org

 

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Joe Jordan

  • racefish

    Typical politics. Find something that “might” be true and push and lie about it. Worked with Cain didn’t it?

  • resistwemuch

    This isn’t going to make WFL very happy. On the other hand it gives her/him another opportunity to slur her/his favorite conservative targets.

  • Watching_From_Lincoln

    Just the appearance of impropriety is enough to cast a dark shadow on an already smarmy visage. Bruning reaps what he sows in the associations he keeps, and this STILL does not clear him from his other questionable actions such as that “association” with Nelnet Executives with that $600K+ “vacation home timeshare”, taking campaign contributions from special interest groups then making internal rulings in their favor that his office is NOT qualified to make, not to mention how many millions of dollars of Nebraska Taxpayers money that legal buffoon has wasted arguing one losing case after another trying to score political points for the NEGOP. In Nebraska, what do you call a lawyer who graduates in the bottom third of his law school class and takes five tries to pass the State Bar Exam? State Attorney General Bruning.

  • http://www.facebook.com/susan.smith.73157 Susan Smith

    I wonder if the left wingers have considered changing their script or list of maligning buzz words? Anything new to that end would be refreshing.