Another State AG’s Pay-to-Play Racket Takes a Hit

A Nevada judge this week ordered state Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto to pay the legal and discovery costs of a mortgage processing provider she and a private-sector class-action law firm from Washington, D.C., had unsuccessfully sued for fraud, supposedly on behalf of Nevada residents.

But as this website, recent editions of the annual Judicial Hellholes report and the Wall Street Journal have previosuly documented, the real motivation of the litigation was self-interest on the part of Masto and the lawyers at Cohen Milstein, from whom she likely expected big campaign contributions had they managed to reap millions, as planned, from their speculative lawsuit.

Daniel Fisher of Forbes reports that “Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez in Las Vegas finally ordered the state and Cohen Milstein to provide evidence that LPS had violated consumer laws,  . . . and when [they] failed to do so she ordered sanctions.”

This puts the scheming Masto in a tight spot.  Either she’ll have to put Nevada taxpayers on the hook for what Fisher suggests will be the defendant’s “significant six-figure” legal bill.  Or she’s going to have to convince her rich political patrons at Cohen Milstein, the gang who drove this misguided litigation from the start, to dig into their own pockets for the reimbursement.

Whichever way Masto goes, she has foolishly and irresponsibly jeopardized both the integrity of her office and her political future.