Farther Along (Gwen Moritz Editor’s Note)

I see in the godless liberal fake news media that President Trump is eager to answer questions from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the completely corrupt decorated Marine veteran who was the longest serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover.

I don’t know whether the president will ever answer investigators’ questions, but the thought of Donald Trump being under oath in something other than a civil case (or bankruptcy) reminded me of one of the greatest letters I’ve ever received. It came in the mail three years ago from someone who called himself Anonymous. Anonymous encouraged me to investigate the alleged misdeeds of a certain public official — and to “put him under oath and see how he starts to ‘squeal.’”

Oh, to have the power to subpoena people who could answer my burning questions and then force them to speak under oath!

Some of the questions I still want answered date back a decade and more:

► How, when and where did John Glasgow die? Does any living person know the answer to that?

► Who truly lost money invested with M. David Howell, and who actually made money off of the Ponzi scheme that collapsed in 2002?

► Why did Kevin Lewis sell phony improvement district bonds to his own bank? Defrauding other banks makes a certain amount of sense, criminally speaking. But defrauding oneself does not. But I’ll probably never get an answer. By pleading guilty to bank fraud, federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Register No. 26446-009 limited how much we learned about his fraud scheme worth more than $40 million.

Some of my questions are evergreen:

► What is Stephens Inc.’s annual revenue? That one gnaws at me every year when it comes time to produce our list of the state’s largest private companies.

► Are there really local churches that ask their members to submit copies of their W2 forms for the purpose of monitoring tithes? That’s a rumor I’ve heard for nearly 20 years, but no one ever claims to know exactly which churches those might be. It would make a great story if it were actually, y’know, true.

And then there are questions about current events that we may learn the answers to by and by:

► Is Michael Lamoureux, former president pro tempore of the Arkansas Senate, the unnamed “Senator C” in the plea deal that federal prosecutors made with Jerry Walsh, former director of South Arkansas Youth Services at Magnolia? That’s the conventional wisdom, and if it’s true, I’ve got some other questions.

► Has state Sen. Jeremy Hutchinson — aka “Senator A” — persuaded the feds that he really didn’t do anything wrong? In Rusty Cranford’s plea agreement, Senator A was described as one of the legislators whom the lobbyist and health care executive bribed, but Hutchinson’s lawyer says he was paid for legal work performed and nothing else.

► How did Rusty Cranford zero in on legislators who were open to his criminal overtures? His spidey sense has to be pretty good to have found at least four lawmakers (Micah Neal, Jon Woods, Eddie Cooper and Hank Wilkins IV) who were willing to be on the take.

► Where did Jon Woods get the sports memorabilia that impressed Micah Neal so much that he would promptly join in the corruption? I have this slightly sicko fantasy that the baseball bat signed by Pete Rose and the autographed photo of Michael Jordan were purchased from our friend John Rogers, federal Bureau of Prison Inmate Register No. 51602-424. And that both are fake.

► Who blew the whistle on Cranford and the whole General Improvement District kickback scheme? There are various theories floating around, and someday I hope to thank the person(s) who did Arkansas this incredibly valuable service.

Some heathens may not recognize the headline on this column as the title of a great Stamps-Baxter shape-note hymn that I find myself humming more often lately. Attributed to William Buel Stevens, it starts like this:

“Tempted and tried, we’re oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long;

While there are others living about us,

Never molested, though in the wrong.

Farther along we’ll know more about it,

Farther along we’ll understand why;

Cheer up, my brother, live in the sunshine,

We’ll understand it all by and by.”

Email Gwen Moritz, editor of Arkansas Business, at GMoritz@ABPG.com and follow her on Twitter at @gwenmoritz.