Excerpt:
A key hearing next week, on February 8, ought to shed some light on how Judge Philip Shepherd intends to deal with Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is showing perilous little respect for the judge’s desire to move the landmark pension case, Mayberry v. KKR, along in a disciplined manner after it has languished for over three years. We’ve embedded Judge Shepherd’s order of December 28, the Attorney General’s request for an extension of time, and the Tier 3 Plaintiffs’ Motion of Opposition to the Attorney General’s extension of time. You can see the other major filings, including the complaint by the Tier 3 members that they hope to get leave to file, here.
We need to cover a lot of background before getting to the elephant in the room, that the timing of the Attorney General’s intervention looks suspect, particularly since he is a protege of Mitch McConnell and the suit he pulled from the jaws of apparent death by his intervention fingers heavyweight Republican donors Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone and Henry Kravis of KKR personally, along with their firms. Political insiders in Kentucky believe that Cameron needed some good headlines after getting considerable criticism in the national press for going easy on the cops that shot Brionna Taylor. One theory was that the revival of this lawsuit was also effectively a shakedown: Cameron would give the private equity firms a “cost of doing business” settlement, with no embarrassing discover, with an expected quid pro quo in dark money payments. Another theory is that Cameron might pursue the case a little but still enter into a cheapie settlement if he can use discovery to damage the Beshears, a Democratic party dynasty that had their fingers all over the Kentucky Retirement System mess.
Author(s): Yves Smith
Publication Date: 5 February 2021
Publication Site: naked capitalism