Enron Corp. founder Ken Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling are pushing to postpone their fraud and conspiracy trial, which is scheduled to begin January 30. This follows a sudden agreement by Enron's former top accountant Richard Causey to testify on behalf of the prosecution.
Lay's urgent desire to postpone his trial seems to be opposite of what he wanted back on September 1, 2004, when he wrote"...if all Americans had up-close, personal knowledge of the brutality and arbitrary nature of the system in white-collar cases, they would rise up and overthrow it." in a Washington Post editorial that he had directed his lawyers to demand an "immediate and speedy trial on the charges I face."
He must still feel that way. He reprinted the whole editorial on his own web site, KenLayInfo.Com.
Not that the trial should matter anyway, because Lay and Skilling are going to argue that everything Enron did was legal. The Wall Street Journal reports that the dynamic duo's army of lawyers, pollsters, economists and other specialists are going to expose once and for all the federal government's ruthless attempt to "criminalize legitimate accounting and financial decisions."
On his web site, Lay's attorney Michael Ramsey channels the ghost of Sam Adams in previewing the spirit of populist rebellion:
"Only those Americans who have felt the sharp end of the Government spear touch their living flesh can truly understand of what I speak. ... In fact, if all Americans had up-close, personal knowledge of the brutality and arbitrary nature of the system in white-collar cases, they would rise up and overthrow it."
By the way. Lay's web site includes a disclaimer that it's "for informational purposes only," which means it isn't actually advocating that Americans overthrow the government, but that they dang-well would if they all experienced that spear-in-the-living-flesh thing........
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