Horne, Thomas play “Oh yeah?” “Oh yeah?”

by David Safier

OK, this is fun.

Tom Horne's law firm filed reports with the Arizona Corporation Commission that had a teeny little omission about an earlier bankruptcy.

Reports filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission from 1997 to 2000 for Horne's law firm show that when asked if any partner in the firm had ever been a partner in a business that went bankrupt, Horne checked "no" and signed the form.

In fact, Horne was the president of T.C. Horne & Co., an investment firm that went bankrupt in 1970 and led to him receiving a lifetime trading ban from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Oops. Actually, it's not such a teeny little omission after all, since Horne was the president of the law firm and he was also the one whose previous company went bankrupt.

What will we tell the Ed Supe's school children all over Arizona? That he skipped his character education classes when he was in school?

Horne, of course, has an answer. The bankruptcy was at an investment firm he started ages ago, when he was in law school.

"I didn't think about it because it was 40 years ago," he said.

Horne might have trouble passing the math part of the AIMS test, 5th grade level. He "didn't think about it" from 1997 to 2000 when he filed the reports. That's more like 30 years after the bankruptcy, not 40 years. The fact that this is surfacing in 2010 isn't part of the time line.

What will we tell the Ed Supe's school children all over Arizona? That he lied a second time with that 40 year figure, or he can't do simple subtraction?

Now here's where the story turns into a bit of political pot-calling-the-kettle-black humor. Andrew Thomas gets all righteous on Horne.

Horne's opponent in the Republican primary, Andrew Thomas, said the circumstances surrounding the bankruptcy should disqualify Horne from holding the state's top law-enforcement job.

"The attorney general is the chief defender of the public when it comes to fraud and white-collar financial crimes," said Thomas, the former Maricopa County attorney. "I've prosecuted plenty of con artists, and Tom Horne unfortunately falls on the other side of that list."

You tell 'em Andrew Thomas!

Oh, by the way:

The FBI is reportedly investigating possible abuse of prosecutorial power in Thomas' handling of criminal cases against two county supervisors and a Superior Court judge.

Sounds like a fight just broke out on the playground of the Juvenile Detention Center.