He was getting even with an evil corporation.
Multimillion-dollar Democratic donor and Obama fundraiser Mikal Watts was indicted on fraud charges this week. Federal prosecutors say his class-action suit against BP after the oil spill was built in part on phony clients.
Watts’ attorney said the charges “are related to allegations that Watts committed fraud or forgery when he claimed to represent 44,000 clients in litigation against BP PLC,” as the Associated Press puts it.
Watts, according to FEC records, has given $2.3 million to Democratic causes and candidates over the years, including nearly $90,000 to Barack Obama. He also bundled at least $500,000 for Obama and hosted multiple fundraisers in his San Antonio mansion for Obama.
He has his own basketball gym on his property, and in 2012, he held a $35,800-a-plate fundraiser there, in a nod to the president’s “love of basketball,” as Watts put it. In 2008, he was on Obama’s National Finance Committee.
Watts has visited the Obama White House three times, according to visitor logs.
Obama, since 2010, has fought to change the law that limits some of BP’s liability — a policy change that would directly profit plaintiffs’ lawyers suing BP.
Watts was also the primary patron for Democratic rising star Julian Castro, having made possible Castro’s first mayoral run in San Antonio by paying the budding politician a “referral fee” of at least 1 million dollars, as my colleague Byron York wrote in a piece on Castro last year.