Paul Flannery was interviewed by cleveland.com reporter Andrew J. Tobias for his story on the FBI search warrant executed in the federal bribery investigation of Cliff Rosenberger, Ohio’s former House Speaker. In response to a months-old public records request, state legislative officials released copies of a subpoena and a search warrant federal investigators delivered to them in late April. Paul was asked to provide his insights, as a former federal prosecutor who prosecuted high profile, public corruption matters, regarding the search warrant documents made public. Read the full article here.
The article provided: “But going beyond describing what they took, an attachment to the search warrant, signed by a federal magistrate judge in Cincinnati, lays out the federal crimes federal agents believe Rosenberger and a group of lobbyists for the payday-lending industry committed, and identifies them as targets of the investigation. Paul Flannery, a former federal prosecutor who now practices privately in Cleveland, said he was surprised to see the news media was able to obtain such detailed information through a public-records request. ‘In this instance, the records were so specific that in order to specify which records they wanted, it essentially required them to identify the people that were the subject of the investigation,’ he said.”