A March 2009 email from a top director at Stratfor (released as part of WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files) shows that former US District Court judge Sam Kent, who has been in prison from May 2009 through November 2011 on an obstruction of justice charge, believed the charges against him were a result of him ruling against Halliburton.
The Kent case saw him accused of “aggravated sexual abuse” and he was later sentenced for lying during the investigation. According to the email, Kent was having lunch of Stratfor director Lauren Goodrich, and said that the Bush Administration’s Justice Department had begun “sniffing around for dirt to throw at me just weeks after I ruled a heavy case against Halliburton.”
The Stratfor analyst “told him he was nuts to rule anything against Halliburton.” The case appears to be a November 2007 case against Hallburton Energy Services brought by the US government, though interestingly the Southern District of Texas already had a misconduct inquiry ongoing against him. The Justice Department was not revealed publicly to be involved until December.
Thus is it unclear whether or not the judge’s assumption that his Halliburton ruling was behind the inquiry was an accurate one. It is, however, yet another interesting insight into the level of inside information Stratfor had access to, and the sort of information liable to continue to leak out as WikiLeaks releases some five million such emails.
Information about him appears in Wikipedia. The allegations of "non-consensual sexual abuse" are odd in that he seems to have admitted to these charges. But they don't seem to be rape. They could be as annoying as bottom-slapping or some kind of touching. And then supposedly he covered them up. Yet if it is true that this followed on a ruling against Halliburton (what sort of ruling? no details), then it puts one in mind of the Assange case. Also, if he is supposedly imprisoned due to this, then it would represent a warning to anyone else not to go against the favored company. Nobody would be surprised in a banana republic that such a ruling might gain imprisonment for a judge. But is there a connection here?
Interesting that on 2/26, George Friedman, the CEO and founder of Stratfor, resigned by email to Fred Burton. In a statement he issued previously regarding the hacked emails, he states that some of the "stolen" emails may have been altered, some not. Nice attempt at casting doubt. But I suspect that none of these emails have been "altered" and that there are going to be some very skittish government "officials" hoping that their email, or emails with their names embedded isn't one that gets released.
Of particular interest (to me at least) is the question of Fred Burton's "access."