DOJ sued DISH network for $3.3 billion but dismissed the suit after its chair donated to Biden

 Two sayings are pertinent to this essay. The first is that correlation does not imply causation. Just because two events seem connected doesn’t mean they are. The second is that timing is everything. Think about both as you consider the Department of Justice’s decision to dismiss a massive corporate fraud lawsuit a short time after the corporation’s founder made a sizable donation to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

DISH Network is an American satellite network. In 2015, the DOJ sued DISH under the False Claims Act. The suit was based on Whistleblower Vermont National Telephone Company, Inc.’s allegation that DISH and its affiliates were allegedly using fraud to get small business discounts for wireless spectrum licenses. As recently as November 2023, a federal judge kept the case alive in the face of DISH’s motion for a judgment on the pleadings (i.e., DISH contended that the DOJ’s complaint contained within it the seeds of its own destruction).

On December 15, 2023, less than one month after the federal court refused to dismiss the DOJ’s suit, one of DISH’s founders, Charlie Ergen, along with his wife, Candy, donated a total of $113,200 to keep Biden in the White House…and, inevitably, to keep his currently constituted Department of Justice in power.

Image: A downed DISH receiver by frankieleon. CC BY 2.0.

On January 10, 2024, only three-and-a-half weeks after Ergen sent his money to Biden, and while the fraud suit was still pending, DISH received $50 million in taxpayer funds when the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced an $80 million round of five grants. The other four grantees divided the remaining $30 million in grant money.

A mere two days after the $50 million grant, the attorney for Vermont Telephone, which had triggered the DOJ’s initial action against DISH, complained that the DOJ was putting pressure on Vermont Telephone to enter into “an unethical settlement” or it would dismiss the suit:

The move to dismiss the case scrapped plans to depose the Ergens about their knowledge of the allegedly fraudulent scheme, prompting Vermont Telephone’s attorneys to accuse the Justice Department of political interference.

“[I]t appears that the effect — if not the purpose — of the DOJ’s rush to seek dismissal of this case is to protect Mr. Ergen from being questioned under oath,” Ross wrote in a Feb. 8 letter to the lead DOJ attorneys handling the case, according to a copy reviewed by The Post.

“We do not believe it is a coincidence that Mr. Ergen, his wife (who also is scheduled to be deposed next week), and DISH’s Political Action Committee collectively contributed in excess of $5 million to Democratic candidates and causes between 2008 and 2022,” he added.

“With the upcoming election, this case looks like just the latest example of the DOJ’s two-tiered justice system under which the well-heeled, politically connected are treated one way, while everyone else is treated differently.”

The last item in this chronology is that on March 8, the DOJ moved to dismiss the case. You can read more details about the whole case, from its inception to the motion to dismiss, in this New York Post article. Indeed, the article is worth reading as an expose about how corporate money and politics work in D.C., with most money flowing to Democrats but surprisingly large sums keeping individual Republicans afloat.

As I noted at the start of this post, just because there seems to be a connection between things, that doesn’t mean there is a connection. The chronology suggests that, once Ergen started throwing large sums of money at a sitting president whose re-election campaign is in trouble, that same president told his Department of Justice to lay off his good friend. It could just be, though, that the case has been kicking about for years so that the DOJ decided it was time to unload it because it was hogging resources without any discernable benefit to the American people.

But as always, timing is everything, and the appearance of impropriety can be just as powerful as actual impropriety. We’ve long known that Garland’s DOJ is driven by politics, not principle. Now, we have the strong suggestion that it can be bought, too.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/the_doj_sued_dish_network_for_3_3_billion_but_dismissed_the_suit_after_its_chair_donated_to_biden.html