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Why Jared Woodfill should remove himself from the Planned Parenthood case—and drop out of the RPT Chair race

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You may want to stop reading right now if you plan to vote for Jared Woodfill for Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas. If you’re willing to stay with me on this and agree Mr. Woodfill—IMHO—should be asked some very tough questions, be asked if he should continue to represent David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt for their involvement in the Planned Parenthood investigation,—-

and be asked if misrepresenting facts to a Family Law Court qualify him to be elected Chairman—then you might wish to read some documents filed with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

It seems Mr. Woodfill cannot provide an explanation of funds discrepancies between ledgers & bank statements of the Woodfill Law Firm—(see pages 40 & 45 for highlighted text): Castillio Woodfill Priority 4

The Court finds that there are at least $140,449.36 of funds for which WLF has failed to provide an explanation or has been overpaid. The $140,449.36 is comprised of the following amounts:

  • $25,000.00 (amount required to be paid to Stewart & Hurst per Rule 11 Agreement, but was not paid)
  • $18,562.50 (amount overpaid due to errors set forth in June 30, 2014 invoice)
  • $64,808.33 (difference between IOLTA Bank Statement and IOLTA Ledger as of September 24, 2014)
  • $32,078.53 (difference between IOLTA Bank Statement and IOLTA Ledger as of September 30, 2014)

It seems Mr. Woodfill and an employee of the Woodlfill Law Firm acting on his behalf misrepresented to the Family Law Court that the Woodfill Law Firm was owed attorney’s fees when in fact it was not.

Thus, Woodfill, on behalf of WLF, misrepresented to the Family Law Court that WLF was due a higher amount of attorneys’ fees than what was actually owed. The misrepresentation was material: he overstated the past due amount by $46,701.47.

It seems a Settlement Agreement requires Jared Woodfill to pay a bankruptcy trustee the sum of $135,000 pursuant to the following payment schedule: (see pages 4 & 5) Woodfill settlment agreement

  1. $25,000.00 within 15 days after the Settlement Agreement is Approved by the Bankruptcy Court
  2. $20,000.00 on or before March 31,2016
  3. $20,000.00 on or before June 30,2016
  4. $20,000.00 on or before September 30,2016
  5. $20,000.00 on or before December 31,2016
  6. $15,000.00 on or before March 31,2017
  7. $15,00.00 on or before June 30,20l7

And it seems the settlement agreement does NOT release Woodfill from any malpractice claim his client (or perhaps soon to be former client) may have against him.

When will this be in front of a grand jury?

Do David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt have any idea they’re entrusting themselves, their families and their future to an attorney found by a judge to have provided material misrepresentations to a Court and could be sued for malpractice by a former client?

About Yvonne Larsen

Comments

  1. Mark Brown says

    From the court document, it looks like he took advantage of client in a messy divorce and swindled her out of $140,000 in funds. From the court document: “179. Given the transactions described above and the discrepancies between the IOLTA Bank Statements and the IOLTA Ledger, the Court finds that WLF has taken funds from the IOLTA account that have not yet been earned and, thus, several thousands of dollars have been unaccounted for. Indeed, based on the information provided at trial, there is at least $140,449.3632 in unaccounted funds and/or overpayments to WLF.”

  2. Ed Hubbard says

    This post and the attachment highlight questions about Jared’s fiscal management that have swirled around him for many years. The difficulty he had in covering the overhead for the HCRP were well-documented by the press, on this website, and by others during the last few years of his administration. As for his law firm, there were rumors for years within the legal community that his practice was over-extended and in need of money. Starting in 2012, around the time that the Woodfill, Pressler firm broke-up, there were public disclosures of the existence of creditor suits in New York alleging that Jared personally owed millions to the firm’s creditors under guarantees that he signed. Now we have these disturbing judicial findings and conclusions from a federal bankruptcy court..

    As I have said for several years, Jared is very effective advocate for conservative causes, and I would support him if he ran for certain non-executive political offices where he could put his talents to their best use. But his record shows that he should not hold an office that requires fiscal management of any kind. Steve Munisteri, Tom Mechler and the SREC have worked to hard since 2010 to fix the fiscal mismanagement of previous RPT administrations to now put the party at risk of another poor fiscal manager just when we need to be at the top of our game going into a Presidential election year.

    Please don’t elect Jared to the RPT Chair–not just for the sake of the party, but for his own sake, too.

  3. Stephen Stuhrenberg says

    This guy lacks integrity. He doesn’t appear able to keep his own affairs in order so why should we trust him to chair the Republican Party of Texas.