A hearing this morning over whether to unseal testimony Mitt Romney gave in a a divorce case between Staples founder Tom Sternberg and his wife, represented by Gloria Allred, will continue tomorrow morning at 9am. The motion to unseal, filed by the Boston Globe, would lift a 1994 impoundment order on Romney’s testimony.
Boston Phoenix reporter David Bernstein, live-tweeting the courtroom proceedings, wrote that there was no objection from Romney to unsealing the testimony:
Romney attorney Robert Jones said in an interview with Time magazine “this is a decades-old divorce case in which Mitt Romney provided testimony as to the value of a company. He has no objection to letting the public see that testimony.” Tom Sternberg is opposing the release of the testimony, which pertained to the valuation of the couple’s Staples stock.
CBS Boston’s Bree Sison tweeted during the proceedings that Judge Ulwick said the testimony had been destroyed; Allred then presented two volumes of transcipts.
Access to the transcripts may be provided to the public tomorrow morning at the hearing. All in all, the Allred October surprise seems a bit lackluster.
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Our tirelessly truth-seeking journalism profession at work. Because unsealing 26 year old court records of a divorce tangential to the Republican candidate is more important than reporting on fresh, direct evidence that the President of the United States lied to the American people over the death of a US Ambassador and in the process denigrated the First Amendment.
“Access to the transcripts may be provided to the public tomorrow morning at the hearing.”
Anne, help me understand how you got there? In light of the fact this involves a hearing on unsealing these very records, and they are not remotely authenticated, how do you see them being made available to the public?
https://twitter.com/BreeSison/status/261111674394775552
Thanks, but that does not address the legal questions, which also include the fact that the other parties just got this material and rightly have the opportunity (and time) to review them.
I’m thinking that, if the judge grants the motion to open the sealed materials, then they could be released to the public immediately because Allred has them ready to go.
Typically, in such a situation, if the judge did order that the transcripts be unsealed, they would have to be re-ordered from the court reporter, so that a clean and certified copy could be produced. I presume that, when the judge said the transcripts had been destroyed, he meant that the court reporter no longer had the original notes or tapes.
If hubby is fighting to keep these sealed, then the lack of a clean source copy can only help him. If Allred can’t “prove” that her copy is exact and accurate, he’ll likely prevail.
From my experiences in NY, if someone orders a transcript in a proceeding, the court reporter automatically files the “original” in the court file. The fact that Allred has them ready to go suggests that someone ordered the transcript in the past, so the court in unsealing the record may already have the minutes.
BTW, is Allred admitted in Mass., or is she going pro hoc vice (with Liewatha appearing of counsel)?
You got that right. It’s routine for divorce and guardianship transcripts to be destroyed after some statutory period. Since there is no record to compare to that which Allred offers up, I don’t see how she can prove that this is the unadulterated record that was produced back in 1994. Romney’s attorney, if he was given a copy, should be OCR’ng this damn thing and going over it with a fine toothed comb. I think so little of Allred, I wouldn’t put it past her to have recognized the lack of an official, retained transcript, and to have enhanced something she can now introduce into the campaign environment. I don’t trust her further than I can throw her.
While the Boston Globe was busy playing a role in this unseemly Gloria Whoria political charade, its headlines were silent on the Benghazi emails the WH received in real time as the terrorists were killing our ambassador and Seals. Instead, the Boston Globe was focused on Scott Brown’s modeling not only giving him a means to pay for law school but also getting him a foot in the door to “celebrity.”
Boy I don’t know, this could be the end. A business expert giving his opinion on the value of a company so that the owner’s soon to be ex gets her ‘fair share’ I assume?
Is this of interest to anyone other than Sternberg and his wife?
And it’s being live Tweeted no less…
This is even less of a story than some we were speculating about last night.
Business valuation testimony can…very validly…range over a broad expanse of possibility.
And sweet Maureen got what the court gave her (or to which she agreed), and promptly poured it into the sand.
BFD.
My understanding is that she was always going to get 500,000 shares, the question was what was their value going forward. If Romney didn’t predict the future price run-up, it didn’t affect her settlement at all – in fact if he underestimated the company’s value, she may have received more than she deserved.
This woman has been suing her ex over and over for 25 years because she sold her stock cheap and he didn’t, so now he’s worth $150 million and she wants more. She’s a psychotic greedy whore, which explains why they called Allred from the left coast.
Something else I don’t understand about the woman’s claims: Romney reportedly testified on behalf of her husband. Surely the wife had her own expert review the business’ books, and didn’t just accept the opinion of her husband’s friend and business partner in an adversarial proceeding.
Also, what incentive would Romney have to lowball the value of the shares? If he testified that the shares were not worth much, then the husband would either have to give the wife more shares, or he’d have to give her more of their other joint property. If Romney was willing to lie to help the husband, it would have made more sense for him to overstate the value of the shares, rather than understate it. But regardless, why in the world would the wife ever rely on Romney’s opinion in the first place?
If Romney understated the value of his shares, he would be harming his business reputation, while also inviting formal investigations and criminal charges from the SEC.
An absurd put-up job that stinks of desperation. Maybe it’ll work; hopefully not. In fact, hopefully it backfires in a spectacular way, permanently taking Gloria Allred back to whatever hole in the ground from whence she crawls for periodic on-camera Republican bashing.
Yeh, but the record was sealed because Romney obviously had something to hide, Rags. As an officer of the court, Allred is only concerned in seeing justice done. [sarcasm off]
The back story here is that Romney paddled to the depo after lauching his dog from the roof of his car.
Or something…
TWITS Tweet!
and HALF-TWITS
and HALF-TWITS Tweet for O.
How can the court use someone else’s copy of the testimony? How would they know it hadn’t been altered?
That’s exactly what I was thinking. If Allred brought the transscripts, how do they know they haven’t been altered? What do they have to compare them against?
What if they add Mitt’s confession about his killing of a hobo? Oh wait, that was “The Onion” parody video about a Congressman killing a hobo.
RE: “What if they add Mitt’s confession about his killing of a hobo? Oh wait, that was “The Onion” parody video about a Congressman killing a hobo.”
OC BILL what if they add Mitt’s confession about cooking Obama’s favorite dish of “Bow Wow Chow” for a hobo and the the hobo up-chucking all over Obama and Michelle coming in and….OH THEY CAN JUST STICK IN ANYTHING THAT WAY….right?
Allred “BOUGHT” the transcripts????????
I’m asking…….
Big DUH. D.U.H!
But I do like what Donald Trump put out. Donald Trump’s ‘big reveal’ against Pres. Barack Obama
The skinny:
And what’s going to happen then? Hmm…
I still think Benghazi is a much bigger story. As Drudge put it perfectly on his headline, “HE KNEW.”
Trump ought to offer the L.A. Times $5 million for the Khalidi tape. Someone mentioned that since their parent is in bankruptcy, the court might even force them to take that offer (or something like that). I mean, I’m not an attorney, but I used to watch Perry Mason reruns when I was a kid.
I like your thinking here!
Trump is a self-promoting chimp, and I see little difference between his stunt here and Larry Flynt (some…not much).
But the Khalidi tape offer would be totally ligit, and could be snapped up by the source.
I got the idea about the Khalidi tape from someone else’s post a while back, I think on this site. Their point, I think, was that a bankruptcy court is protecting the creditors and might be able to force the L.A. Times to produce the tape if a significant, legitimate monetary offer were on the table that would benefit the creditors. Sounds legit, but I don’t really know one way or the other.
It is certainly a valid argument to put to the court. I could make it with a straight face, which is a good test.
Also, DrJim77, below…
I’m thinking $20 million, with a certified check in hand to give the judge in the bankruptcy case (but the offer’s only good until 10/31).
That’s a LOT of creditor protection. Might even make some of them whole, or nearly so. 😀
Trump should extend his offer to inside whistle blowers and offer the reward to them personally…
Except for liberals are jumping on the bandwagon that Mitt lied under oath.
LOL. Good luck to them proving that Mitt lied. Business valuations are a matter of opinion, and they can vary widely.
This Stemberg woman has reportedly been trying to shake down her ex-husband for more money for years. She received 500,000 Staples shares in the divorce, and promptly blew most of the money. That wasn’t Mitt Romney’s fault; that was all her.
Like most of Allred’s scams, this one is much ado about nothing.
A lot of what Maureen got in the settlement went to pay her lawyers because she can’t let go. Since then she periodically goes to the press and on the internet with a poor, poor pitiful me story – all the while living in an $5,000/month apartment. In 2006, a blog on purses (I kid you not) posted an entire article from the Boston Herald on her latest pity party under the headline Should this wealthy executive’s ex wife get more money? The comments were pretty much Drop dead (rhymes with witch).
I was involved in one a lot like this years ago. At that point the client had been separated for years. She was already getting in alimony about three times my salary as a junior associate but she wanted it all. She was the only client I ever truly wanted to slap silly.
What what what?
Stemberg is Michelle’s cousin????
RE: “and promptly blew most of the money..”
Her real complaint was that she sold her shares too cheaply, wasn’t told of the impending IPO (which sounds like just crap, more likely she got the notice but paid it no mind, and wishes she had held on for more and got as rich as her ex who held his shares did.
As an old friend explained many years ago, “Ex-wives are like extra anuses: who needs them?”
I was actually involved as an attorney in which Allred finally settled on behalf of her clients. While not intended, she apparently threw away an offer which would have been a win-win for all concerned. Instead she took another path which ultimately, in the most extreme case of butterfly effect I’ve ever seen, ended up getting her client’s face chewed off.
When the Norfolk County Probate court moved from Dedham to Canton about 5 years ago, many files were lost. I know that for a fact as half of the files from my 1993 divorce were “lost”.
On a seperate note, the last time I was in that court in 2009, I personally heard a judge tout how obama’s stimulus plan would soon add many jobs allowing several contempt defendants that day to soon be able to get employment. The thing that really struck me that day was how fawning this judge was to the great obama…
Let’s see, assets (including goodwill) minus liabilities = net worth. OK next.
Shouldn’t the judge be asking how Allred came into possession of sealed documents?
Shouldn’t the judge dismiss the request if the records being requested no longer exist?
If the records in question have indeed been destroyed, anything Allred releases is nothing but hearsay.
Major fail any way you cut it, since the ’emergency’ request has nothing to do with the case itself or the interests of the principals, only with a political hit job. There isn’t a sufficiently disgusting 4-letter word in the English language to describe Allred.
RE: “Shouldn’t the judge be asking how Allred came into possession of sealed documents?”
RIGHT ON! RIGHT ON! RIGHT ON!
AMEN!
She could say she got them from the wife, her client, who received them by request through her attorney prior to the record being sealed.
Of course that doesn’t authenticate them – it simply explains how she (Allred) came to have them.
This is pretty bad to drag private citizens into the limelight just to possibly rack up points against Romney. The left doesn’t care who gets inconvenienced, hurt or…..killed. I should think these transcripts Allred produced are invalid and/or tainted. I wonder how she got them in the first place or why she bothered. This smells to high heaven. The left, as we all know, are not above counterfeiting documents. Look at Dan Rather’s mess-up. They still claim their inferences were true even though they had no proof. Libs take no prisoners and if we want to survive, we had better learn to do the same. Playing nice only works when dealing with reasonable and ethical people which libs are not.
Allred represents the wife. She was a party to the action back when the testimony was taken. She would certainly have received a copy of the transcript back then. “Sealed” means, she cannot make it public.
If what she has is a copy certified as true by the court at the time and had the court’s permission to possess it, then it would have to be considered legit. It seems to me that unsealing the documents would have to be in the interest of one or more of the principals, and in furtherance of some issue related to the substance of the proceedings, to be granted. Simply wanting to make Romney’s witness testimony public shouldn’t cut it.
The judge sitting on this matter was just appointed by Deval Patrick, meaning a couple months ago. I believe she’s Hispanic, so she may personally be a ‘rat. At any rate, she’s fresh judicial meat in the 2nd or 3rd most far-left town in the country.
I would be pleasantly shocked if she ruled against Allred and The Boston Globe, which is the moving party and not represented by Allred.
No one dragged this nasty embittered piece of work anywhere. Maureen Sullivan Stemberg has been pretty relentless over the years in her attempts to publicly trash her ex-husband. There have been articles in the Boston newspapers whining about how she is broke even though she was ensconced in an apartment only the 1% can afford. She posts her tale on the Internet. Of late she had been trashing Ann and Mitt Romney at Puffington Host.
Maybe I’m thick, but exactly what is supposed to be shocking about Romney’s testimony from someone else’s divorce in 1994?
They want to try to paint a picture of Romney as someone that deprived this poor divorcee of money by misleading testimony on the value of some stocks so women will come flocking back to Obama remorseful that they ever left his highness who care so much about their feelings.
It’s 4th down, and this is their “Hail Mary”.
Mea Culpa.
Went off the deep end, thinking this would be something really awful. Like Romney getting grilled about some horrible thing going on within the marriage that he may have known about, being the man’s partner. (I can see the Dem headlines: Did he know or didn’t he? Sure he did. What did he testify? He probably lied, the stinking Republican!)
Turns out Romney is OK with this being released. Romney’s campaign should have broadcast that IMMEDIATELY to all news outlets, including the New Media ones.
Republicans never go on the offensive to kill easily-killable stuff. That’s why they’re fair game for smears, and why GOP supporters live on a knife-edge.
The 2006 story is Mitt actually may have tried to be a good guy. The divorce completely estranged the father from the son. At the son’s request Mitt agreed to talk to his friend about Maureen’s alleged financial woes.
I can see where such a bitter divorce among people he knew might disturb Mitt. The cynic in me thinks everyone knew Mitt was going to run for President and Maureen saw it as a way to leverage more out of her ex through his close connection to Mitt, else she’d start spewing her venom on Mitt, too. Which she has done. She calls Mitt “a partner in crime with Mr. Staples” at Puff Ho.
It just occurred to me:
Elections (especially really important ones) seem to bring out vile, disreputable otherwise women who throw large, sharp rocks at Republicans.
Proof positive that Radical Feminism = hate + anger + miserable women.
“MEDIA WHORES TO H#LL – OBAMA STILL LOSES”
Just two weeks to election, and the Media Gods,
Have thrown all sense of honor away.
Doesn’t matter to them if they slander or lie,
Just as long as their “b*tch*” can still stay,
In a post he’s not fit for, with a title he’s not earned,
With a job he has never fulfilled,
But the Media’s whores learned in 2008
They’d divine power to raise up a shill**.
So they took an unknown from the City of Crime,–
Some kid with a past they could hide.
And their finest deceivers conspired to create,
A fiction who could smile and lie.
Down the “memory hole” went his past, piece by piece–
How’d it work? We can hardly begin,
To appreciate the skill and sheer gall of their fraud,
They did “whatever” they needed to win.
To the men he was “buff”, to the women “pure sex”,
(Even now there are some who will swoon!)
To the blacks he was “brother”; and the whites felt for sure,
He’d absolve them of their “racist” doom.
He’d a hell of a smile; and he learned from the best,
To project “hip” and “cool” on TV.
He was carefully trained in the “Teleprompter’s art,”
But without? Let’s just say–“lost at sea”.
Well, the Media Whores did a hell of job–
He won BIG in ’08, and began,
To attempt to fulfill all those outrageous vows,
Which he’d been making up as he “ran”.
The TV, the papers, the progressive blogs,
Praised his FAILURES as if he was God,
But the fact was, he really had nary a clue,
How to do more than watch them applaud.
Well, the “rest is now history” (such fearful words),
Our Republic’s survival’s in doubt.
But one thing that’s for sure is we better make sure,
That we know what this election’s about.
“Cause the Media Gods on the 5 o’clock news,
Do NOT want you to think; if you do,
You may form YOUR opinions, and questions, and ask—
How honest has the Media been with you?
* Slang for a weak man dominated by others.
** One who acts as a decoy, stalking horse, or “surrogate”
ROMNEY & RYAN WIN BIG…less than two weeks.
If Sternberg objects to the document release, which he will do for Romney’s sake, Obama/Allred will somehow make sure that the document they have in hand will find its way to the public.
But that will then dump all the bad publicity that Sullivan has accumulated over the years back into public view as well.
However, the whole kerfuffle will soon die for lack of oxygen now that the Benghazi emails have surfaced.
No. In part, this is intended to distract from Benghazi.
This could all go very poorly for our celebrity lawyer friend Allred. Joel Kozel, Mr. Stemberg’s attorney, is one of the finest Family Law Attorney’s in the state and is a man of unimpeachable character and almost unrivaled legal acumen. Allred isn’t qualified to share the same courtroom with him. Furthermore, I really think people who are expecting salacious details will be rather bored by the results of any successful motion to release the transcripts.
The happy few who have either conducted or witnessed the cross-examination of a valuation witness in a domestic relations case will tell you that they are usually rather dry affairs unless the witness is either incompetent or obviously biased. And based on what we have seen and know of Romney, I am sure he was neither.
To be sure, Wife’s attorney tried to paint Romney as biased and unreliable. But based on the Wife’s bitterness almost two decades later, we can be sure of one thing, his cross-examination obviously wasn’t effective.
Repeat after me.
Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi.
Hey Gloria – do whatever you want.
The Romney Badger don’t give a $#!%!
Now, is that language befitting of a duchess?
That’s why I put symbols and not letters…
Heh!
That poor woman is so miserable. Imagine if she just took the 5 million and moved on with life? It doesn’t even sound like she is heart broken, just vengeful. I love my husband a lot, I think I would be more heart broken to even think about money.
Tom could be a jerk, for all we know, but I think this woman could make anyone’s life hell.
[…] Gloria Allred’s big reveal of Romney? Nothing. […]
Per Maureen Stemberg’s Linkedin page…
“My projects, have included designing and completing the entire Trump Plaza Penthouses…” (interior design)
Divorces are so full of false accusations, claims of perjured testimony, hidden assets, dirty tricks and outright assault they should be handled in criminal court.
Or a steel cage match arena.
This twit/twat gets a very nice pile of dough for the rest of her pitiful life and she’s still so bitter she’s willing to take anyone down to satisfy her petty grudge.
Gee lady. Did he pee on your carpet or something? You screwed him for all you could get, get over it.
And stop shopping your sad tale of woe cause no one cares and you’ve helped make that happen.
Allred is a gargoyle who should be disbarred. (I know it won’t happen but she really is beyond question the biggest harpy in the business)
OH. And make her certify every page with witnesses and sworn testimony as to it’s provenance.
Still if the original tape/transcript was destroyed how can anyone certify these are accurate and not been tampered with?
Regardless what Mitt says about being willing to release this stuff, they better make damn sure what’s in them.
We already are fairly sure that Obama and his pals won’t stop at the falsification of legal documents.