Heckuvajob There, Gloria
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; send your tips here.]
Frequent commenter AD-RtR/OS! clued me into this story where Gloria Allred managed to get a settlement from Meg Whitman over that whole “nannygate” affair. So Gloria Allred risked her client being imprisoned, deported and sued for defamation, and all to get the princely sum of $5,500. I think if you take out Allred’s usual rates, she just might break even.
Of course we all know what they were really after (deep-sixing Whitman’s political career) and this is the same reason why it is not self-evident that she did a disservice to her client. As I wrote on October 6:
There ha[ve] been a lot of questions about the representation [by] Gloria Allred of Nicky Diaz Santillan, the former maid of Meg Whitman. I agree the whole thing looks bad. I mean this woman is a mother of two children who is risking prison (for falsifying documents) and deportation (for being an illegal alien) by putting a giant target on her head. Certainly from a financial perspective this makes just about no sense. But I have argued with others that you can’t really file ethics charges against Allred because she has a ready defense. She can say that the maid was so mad at Whitman and so wanted to ruin her political career she didn’t care about those potential negative consequences she would personally suffer. Its dubious but just plausible enough that I don’t think the disciplinary board would even be interested in investigating her.
I stand by my prediction that she probably won’t even be investigated, but at the same time I wish the California Bar did this at the very least: take Santillan aside and away from Allred, and verify that this really was what she wanted.
And it’s worth noting that Santillan’s own public proclamation that she was not being manipulated was less than credible:
Nicky Diaz Santillan, a Mexican who Whitman says used a fraudulently obtained Social Security card and California driver’s license, dismissed claims by the GOP nominee that she was part of a Democratic smear intended to damage Whitman’s standing with voters, particularly Latinos.
“I make my own decisions and I am not anyone’s puppet,” Diaz Santillan said in a prepared statement she read at the Los Angeles office of her attorney, Gloria Allred. “Nobody made me do it.”
As I said at the time:
I don’t know if the AP writer was intentionally snarking or what. I mean the AP article goes on to mention a few other harsh facts. But yeah, that doesn’t exactly help the case to read a prepared statement that you are not being controlled by anyone.
If this woman ends up deported I wonder what she would think of Allred’s representation.
[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
Who would deport her? The Obama administration, perhaps after some political grandstanding by Gov. Brown forces him to take action?
Puhlease!
Anon Y. Mous (5ac901) — 11/17/2010 @ 2:51 pmLOL, I came in here to say “who’s going to deport her?”
Anon is right.
Now, if she had asked a Joe the Plumber question, the government would have investigated her and prosecuted on any matter it could find.
Dustin (b54cdc) — 11/17/2010 @ 2:53 pmWhat Mission accomplished, she got Jerry Brown elected, and apparently was able to wrangle a settlement out of the victim
narciso (82637e) — 11/17/2010 @ 3:33 pmDustin, Anon,
at best obama can protect her until ’12. But what happens in ’13?
A.W. (a30317) — 11/17/2010 @ 3:39 pmWe’ll be lucky if California doesn’t become an asylum state.
Kevin M (73dcc9) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:02 pmCui bono?
What makes any of you think Santillan was a client in the traditional sense that she ‘hired’ a lawyer and that lawyer got paid? Well, I have no doubt Allred got paid, and plenty, but not by Santillan.
‘Break even’, that’s a larff, I’ll bet Santillan was very well paid for her nice bit of hatchet work.
Fred Z (c1782b) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:30 pmFred
Fair points.
But then, who was paying her? Inquiring minds and all that.
Aaron Worthing (b8e056) — 11/17/2010 @ 4:33 pmwho was paying her
FOJ!
AD-RtR/OS! (68ed01) — 11/17/2010 @ 5:09 pmI thought the lady was from Nicaragua… so if we send her by plane and she gets groped by TSA, can she rehire Allred?
SteveG (cc5dc9) — 11/17/2010 @ 7:10 pmThis could go on forever
The temerity to earn $23.00 an hour using all false docs, then cry about the Whitman’s were mean and unfair…..Yet, yet…the MSM played us like a fiddle and the crocodile tears overflowed so that moonbats felt they had proven something about “justice” etc? Proved what? How easily Californians are suckered into a growing morass of giant takeaways for foreign nationals and endless awful pixilated choices?
How much of my taxed income has Ms. Diaz Santillan and co. siphoned out of my tax dollars and just who contributes to our 22B$ deficit?
Gloria Allred is the the embodiment of evil and utterly opposed to truth. Ms.Diaz Santillan is a useless,vindictive, ungrateful lying sack of leech dung. $5500.00? What next, the Elvira Arellano bully pulpit for her? Well, there will be a bad moon rising for them both, ultimately, eventually. Won’t it? It could happen…
dudeabides (4f6c69) — 11/17/2010 @ 7:47 pmShe has three children as I figure it — two before being hired by Whitman and one after. So she is costing California 3*13*8500 per year to ‘educate’ her children will be north of $300,000. Anyone really think her and her husband will come close to paying that amount in taxes over their lifetimes? Whitman should be billed.
stari_momak (d936e8) — 11/18/2010 @ 3:24 pmDeport her, and her kids.
AD-RtR/OS! (a60876) — 11/18/2010 @ 3:34 pmThe kids can apply for re-entry upon reaching majority.
I basically hated both candidates.
I did read that Dr. Harsh attended the hearing and asked ‘lil Nicky..to “”look him in the eye”” and say she was really owed money. She refused.
dudeabides (4f6c69) — 11/18/2010 @ 8:28 pm