Jessica Garrison and Luther Strange
A transcript of a hearing in Jessica Medeiros Garrison's defamation lawsuit against me shows she lied under oath, falsely stating that I reported Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange was the father of her son.Garrison has made similar comments in the press, for an article in the fashion magazine Marie Claire and related stories at al.com and Yellowhammer News. But this is the first time we've been able to show that she, an attorney, lied under oath in a court of law.
The transcript recently came into our possession due to proceedings in one of two federal lawsuits we have filed related to my unlawful incarceration ("The Jail Case") and the wrongful foreclosure on our home of 25 years in Birmingham ("The House Case"). A defendant in "The House Case" filed a transcript of testimony from Garrison and Strange in her defamation suit, which resulted in a $3.5-million default judgment in her favor -- even though I never received notice of her default application or hearing, meaning the judgment is void and can be attacked as such at any time.
In his testimony, Strange did not mention the parentage of Garrison's child. But Garrison mentioned it and claimed I had reported Strange was the biological father of her son. A review of all relevant posts here at Legal Schnauzer shows I never made any such claim. In fact, I interviewed Garrison's ex husband, Tuscaloosa City School Board president Lee Garrison, and quoted him saying the child is his. (The transcript, dated March 19, 2015, is embedded at the the end of this post.)
On pages 56-57 of the transcript is this exchange between Garrison and her attorney, Bill Baxley:
Q. Did [Shuler] write -- did he make innuendos about you being paid when you were giving birth to your son?
A. Yeah, that -- there was a blog post at some point where I remember walking away thinking he is trying to make people believe that the birth of my son -- that the payment, that lump sum lieutenant governor's campaign payment that I told [Strange] to hold and just pay when all the bills -- he tried to make it sound like that was some type of payment tied to the birth of my son.
Q. Did he make innuendos about who the father of your child was?
A. Right, right, as if that were Luther's son and that was some type of -- I don't know how you phrase it, but something to do with -Q. Was that true?
A. No, no, no, not true at all.
There you have it: With Bill Baxley's help, Jessica Garrison perjured herself regarding my reporting on her relationship with Luther Strange and the birth of her son. Why does that matter? An order from Judge Don Blankenship in the defamation case suggests almost all of Garrison's $3.5-million award was based on alleged posts about Luther Strange being the biological father of her son. Except there are no such posts at Legal Schnauzer.
The post Garrison had in mind probably was this one, dated May 29, 2013 and titled "Strange's 2006 Payments To Former Campaign Aide Coincided With Pregnancy And Birth Of Her Son." From the post:
Luther Strange paid almost $19,000 to a former campaign aide after he lost the 2006 lieutenant governor's race in Alabama. The payments appear to mirror those that Strange, as attorney general, now claims constitute a crime by former state senator Lowell Barron and his former campaign aide.
Strange's payments to Jessica Medeiros Garrison coincide with her pregnancy and the birth of her child in early 2007. . . .
The indictment against Barron indicates the attorney general's office built its case against Lowell Barron on three theories related to Alabama's campaign-finance and ethics law: (1) Barron made the payments to Rhonda Jill Johnson after a losing campaign in 2010; (2) Barron, therefore, could not claim the payments were reasonably related to performance of his official duties; (3) The payments were personal in nature.
Public records show the attorney general himself made payments to Jessica Medeiros Garrison after a losing campaign in 2006. That means the payments could not have been "reasonably related to performing the duties of the office held," and therefore must have been personal in nature.
Let's review: The post says Strange's payments to Garrison, after a losing campaign, coincided with her pregnancy and the birth of her child in early 2007. All of that is true, and Garrison does not deny it in her defamation-case testimony. I note that Strange's payments after a losing campaign suggest the payments were "personal in nature" -- and that is a legal phrase taken directly from the Lowell Barron indictment, prepared by Strange and his staff.
Nowhere does the post state, or even suggest, that Strange is the biological father of Garrison's child.
Here is how the post in question ends:
Were the 2006 payments to Jessica Medeiros Garrison and her company personal in nature? Well, she was pregnant at the time the payments were made -- and she gave birth to Michael Lee Garrison on March 27, 2007.
Again, the legal question is this: Were the Strange payments to Garrison personal in nature? That's the very issue Strange's office raised against Lowell Barron, and that's why my post is written the way it is.
This is, after all, a blog about legal issues -- and that's what this post is about. It says nothing about, directly or indirectly, the parentage of her son. But Jessica Garrison later would lie under oath and claim that it did.
The Strange-Garrison transcript includes a lot of interesting information, and we will address that in upcoming posts.
(To be continued)
Garrison-strange, testimony in default hearing by Roger Shuler on Scribd
