Brooks' first mailer went out on Wednesday, and the second one yesterday. Here is the text of her attack:
Phil Steck Defended Illegal Arms Dealers
Phil Steck represented a convicted arms trafficker. He made our community more dangerous by putting an illegal arms dealer back on the streets.
Steck even worked to reduce the sentence of an Albany gang leader.
Below these charges (and beneath the faceless cardboard man which most men and many women voters are frankly insulted by) she cites two cases by name and docket number, both from the mid 1990's. I wished I was still a paralegal student with access to LexisNexis so I could check things myself. Her second mailer repeated the same attack, only without the sourcing, but with bigger letters, and another appearence by the Invisible Man.
Yesterday, as the second mailer hit women's mailboxes again, the Steck campaign released this statement in response to Brooks's baseless attacks:
As an attorney practicing in Federal Court, and as a former prosecutor with knowledge of the criminal law, Phil Steck has accepted cases for indigent defendants assigned to him by Federal judges. The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires the Federal Court to provide an attorney to defendants who lack the resources to hire one. Mr. Steck assisted the Court in fulfilling its Constitutional duty by accepting these assignments.
As a lifelong Democrat, Mr. Steck certainly believes in the constitutional right to counsel. Apparently, Ms. Brooks would side with Republicans who have sought for decades to undermine that right. Her commitment to the Constitution is obviously shallow and political.
Beyond showing no respect for the Constitution, Ms. Brooks has her facts wrong. Mr. Steck did not represent any of the three defendants cited by Ms. Brooks, who in fact were represented by other attorneys. In one of the cases cited by Ms. Brooks, Mr. Steck represented a co-defendant who actually cooperated with the Government and received a lesser sentence due to his cooperation on the Government's initiative. There is no basis in fact for her charge that Mr. Steck worked to have dangerous criminals released.
Emphasis added
It's worth noting that former U.S. Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales under George W. Bush were trying to get rid of the Constitutional right to counsel. You know, the part when the cop says "You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, you will be assigned one in court" as part of your Miranda Rights if you're ever arrested.
The more common term for this kind of legal work is pro bono, which all lawyers are required to accept in order to maintain their license to practice law. As an attorney herself, Tracey Brooks should know this damn well. Yet she chose to exploit women voters in her gender-based campaign in an attempt to scare women into voting for her on September 9th.
In my experience, women are much smarter than that. In Tracey's latest television ad, she claims that "Phil Steck's attacks are misleading and false," yet no specific facts are presented to back up this case, only a corny close-up of a whistle-blowing, bug-eyed referee. And in my recently posted interview with Phil Steck, he talks about his time as a narcotics prosecutor in Manhattan and in Renssellaer County during the time that Tracey Brooks was still a Republican. So Phil Steck probably removed far more dangerous criminals from city streets than Tracey Brooks ever has.
The fact is that Tracey Brooks is the one who is placing out attacks that are misleading and false, as well as insulting to both the male gender and to the intelligence of women. I see it as a sign of desperation on the part of a floundering campaign. After this, what little respect I had for the Brooks campaign has now diminished to zero. |
