ustxtxb_obs_1989_06_16_50_00004-00000_000.pdf

Jim Mattox: Two Inquiries Continued from cover Sinclair, who has been sentenced to 13 years for fraud and conspiracy in the 1-30 scandal, but is seeking to get his term reduced by testifying against Faulkner and the others in Lubbock. The trial, which began February 21, is expected to end about midsummer, or possibly somewhat sooner. Mattox is not mentioned in the 88-count indictment against Faulkner and his six codefendants, nor has the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Association made any move to recover the $200,000 Mattox received. He has not been challenged on the matter in any court or, for that matter, in any serious forum except the Dallas News. Nevertheless, the $200,000 he received shadowed opening statements in the case in Lubbock, and last April 19 the subject surfaced in the open court record, even though nothing about that has been published until now. Faulkner said, in a deposition he gave in an unrelated case in 1986, that the Faulkner Fountains promotion, from his proceeds from which he gave Mattox the $200,000, was the last deal he pulled off along Interstate-30 east of Dallas. “I was making a million dollars out of it,” Faulkner said, “but I wasn’t going to .keep any of it. I was giving it to some other people. . . . I had made all the money I felt like I wanted.” “I can tell you about a piece of land that I made some money on and shared with Mr. Mattox’s family,” Faulkner also told the examining lawyer. “I think he made a couple of or his family made a couple hundred thousand dollars on that one.” Faulkner explained that, after ascertaining from his cousins who owned the 21.5 acres in question that they would sell it cheap, he told Clifford Sinclair what he could buy it for, “and [Sinclair] said, because he was a land syndicator . . . ‘I’ll give you a million dollars if you could buy that piece of property that cheap.’ ” In his 1986 story revealing the $200,000 Mattox received from Faulkner, Pusey quoted briefly from the 835-page transcript of Faulkner’s testimony, particularly this passage: Q: How would Mattox make any money on that kind of transaction? A: Because I put him put him in the deal. Q: Why did you do that? A: So his family would make some money. Q: Why did you want to do that? A: Because I’m a nice man. Q: Any other reason? A:No. At another point Faulkner volunteered: A: Jerry and Janice are very close people to me, along with Jim, and I just thought it would be nice if he made some money on something. Q: Jim Mattox? A: Janice and Jerry. Q: And Jim? A: And Jim. . . . Because I felt like you know, they are a family, so, you know. The examining lawyer, Mark S. Werbner of Dallas, then asked Faulkner if he had had “any idea how the three of those Mattoxes would divide” the money, but the discourse took a diversionary turn and the question was lost. Faulkner’s good friend, the attorneygeneral elect, did nothing to earn the $200,000, Faulkner averred in 1986. Q: [Mattox and the other recipients of part of Faulkner’s profit] didn’t do anything, and they got money because you wanted it, correct? A: I think they would have been willing to do anything I asked them to. Q: But the people that got money didn’t do anything to earn that money, did they? A: No, sir. Again, Werbner pressed the tender question. Q:What did Mr. Mattox do to earn it? A: I don’t recall him doing anything. Q: Why did you pay it to Mattox’s family instead of directly to him? .. . A: I thought Mr. Mattox’s family would get the benefits of it, Jane [apparently a reference to Janice Mattox] and Jerry. Q: But you wanted to hide that it wasn’t going directly to Jim Mattox, right? A: No, I didn’t want to hide that. Q: Why didn’t you give it to Jim Mattox? A: Mr. Werbner, me and Mr. Mattox has been in land and made money before. It ain’t no hide from Jim you know, hide it from the world. Faulkner would not concede to Werbner that the $200,000 he gave Mattox was a gift. Q: So wouldn’t it be fair to say It was a gift of money . . .? A: The facts are there, and I don’t agree that it was just a gift. Q: Why not? .. . A: You know, you say “gift,” you know, as if if, you know, I just don’t. I think a gift is something that if I wrapped you up a present and brought it and said, “Here, Mark, here is you a gift,” that’s a gift. You know, I think they [Mattox, the Rev. Bill Glass, and certain other recipients] were in a transaction with me. Now, I might have selected who to be in the transaction, but they were in a transaction with me. ‘MONIES FOR. CERTAIN PEOPLE’ CLIFFORD SINCLAIR, Faulkner’s former associate now turned state’s evidence, testified last April 19 at the Lubbock trial that in 1982, during a conversation at Faulkner’s heliport in Dallas, “Mr. Faulkner gave us different figures . of monies he wanted to come out of that property for certain people.” During his three-hour opening statement to the jury in Lubbock on February 21, the first day of the months-long trial, the lead federal prosecutor, Terence Hart, had outlined the prosecution’s explanation of the role of land flips in what the government contends was a massive conspiracy to loot savings and loan institutions of millions of federally insured dollars. Such flips, Hart told the jury, serve to raise artificially the price of land to justify huge loans from the S&Ls and to conceal the involvement of the original land promoters. But, he continued, there was a third purpose: the land flips Are “a method to distribute proceeds. If the defendants . . . decide that they want somebody in particular to make some money, they are inserted in the chain of title, the price of the land is raised, and he makes a certain amount of money whatever they deem him to make.” In this presentation Hart sought to foreshadow, in the jurors’ minds, evidence he would seek to present concerning the attorney general. By opposite token, the defense lawyers prepared to maintain that with Mattox and then-Governor-elect Mark White showing up at Faulkner’s ritual Saturday morning breakfast at the Circle Grill on 1-30, naturally the defendants assumed the 1-30 promotions were all right. Dan Guthrie, Jr., the lawyer defending Kenneth Cansler, told the jury in his opening statement on February 21: “Here Ken Cansler, the assistant football coach trying to learn real estate, goes to a Saturday morning breakfast, and who is there on any given 4 JUNE 16, 1989