Dramatic New Charges Deepen Link between Ohio's "Coingate,"
Voinovich Mob Connections, and the Theft of the 2004 Election
By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
The Columbus Free Press
Friday 29 July 2005
Columbus - New charges filed against Ohio Governor Bob Taft's former top aide have blazed a new trail between "Coingate" and the GOP theft of the 2004 presidential election.
Brian Hicks appears in court today to answer charges that he failed to report vacation trips he took to Coingate mastermind Tom Noe's $1.3 million home in the Florida Keys. A top Taft aide for a dozen years, Hicks stayed at Noe's place in 2002 and 2003. Another Taft aide, Cherie Carroll, is charged with taking some $500 in free dinners from Noe.
Noe is a high-roller crony of Taft, US Senator George Voinovich and President George W. Bush. Noe charged the Ohio Bureau of Workman's Compensation nearly $13 million to invest some $58 million. Ohio Attorney-General Jim Petro, to whom Noe once donated money, says some $4 million disappeared into Noe's pocket.
The new charges against Taft's former aide are at the edge of Coingate's links to Bush, Voinovich and organized crime. Through Noe's wife Bernadette, those links extend to the GOP theft of Ohio 2004.
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http://www.theocracywatch.org/election_04_columbusfr_july29_05.htmThe Fitrakis Files: The Brothers Voinovich and the Ohiogate Scandal
by Martin Yant
July 14, 2004
Bob Fitrakis is at his best when he writes about George Voinovich at his worst. Catching Voinovich at his worst was not that hard when the former "frugal" Cleveland mayor and future "moderate" U.S. senator held statehouse ethics hostage as Ohio's governor in the 1990s. So it's not surprising that The Fitrakis Files: The Brothers Voinovich and the Ohiogate Scandal -- the fourth compilation of the Columbus State Community College professor, lawyer, activist, and talk-radio firebrand's writings -- is probably his best.
That's not to say the first three Fitrakis Files -- Spooks, Nukes & Nazis, The Schoolhouse Divided and Free Byrd & Other Cries of Justice are not exemplary. How could I say otherwise when I co-wrote some of the entries in the Byrd book? But The Brothers Voinovich and the Ohiogate Scandal rises above the others because the Voinovich clan and the brownshirts who did their bidding made such easy targets as they turned statehouse sleaze into an art form.
Fitrakis gets off to a good start in this compilation of his writings from Columbus Alive and The Free Press with its dedication to "the exemplary life of David Sturtz and to the memory of Joe Gilyard, two of Ohio's finest public servants." Sturtz and Gilyard have two things in common. One is that they both took a costly, principled stand against the Voinoviches' unabashed cronyism. The other thing Sturtz and Gilyard have in common is that I referred Fitrakis to them after I persuaded him to try to make his points through investigative reporting rather than political pontificating.
With help of Sturtz, Gilyard and like-minded government employees who didn't believe Columbus should be turned over to a bunch of Cleveland crooks, Fitrakis took my advice and soon was breaking story after story about the veniality of the Voinoviches. With the support and assistance of Columbus Alive publisher Sally Crane and editor Brian Lindamood, Fitrakis began by exposing the corruption of Paul Mifsud, who went from being Paul Voinovich's right-hand man at his supposed "prison construction" company, if that's what you call building jails that fall apart as fast you build them, to being the right-hand man of George Voinovich's "government destruction" operation, if that's what you call expanding government funding and directing it into the pockets of your cronies.
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http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/17/2004/714
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