When I was writing my earlier posts on the insider trading case against Mark Cuban, I intentionally ignored the side story - the story involving an SEC Enforcement Attorney sending nasty emails to Cuban, at one point calling Cuban unpatriotic - “[e]ither you are really an anti-American ideologue or your allegiance to making money is significantly greater than your dedication to your country."
The reason I left the story alone is that it is really only a distraction from the insider trading issues. There is little chance that the rantings of an SEC trial attorney in Fort Worth Texas are going to have any impact on the decision to bring an insider trading case. And that is true even when the attorney threatens to bring Chairman Cox into the mix, which this attorney did.
Now the WSJ has the emails, or at least what it claims are the emails, between Cuban and the attorney. And lo and behold, this attorney is using his SEC email account to berate and chastise a private citizen! Now the threat to bring this to the attention of Chairman Cox takes on a slightly different twist. An SEC attorney, using his official SEC.gov email account sends threatening emails to the officer of a public company (which of course, is under the jurisdiction of the SEC) and then that officer is accused of insider trading, on what appears to be a flimsy factual complaint, of questionable legal merit.
Even more incredible, is that the SEC Attorney copied Chairman Cox on some of the early emails! Which might explain why the Chairman recused himself from the decision to bring the case against Cuban.
And while we are at it, can someone explain to me why an SEC Trial Attorney, who is obviously a rabid Mavericks fan, is spending his time at work drafting lengthy emails to the Mavericks owner, accusing him of being unpatriotic? At a minimum, it has got to be an unauthorized use of the computer and email account.
And when Chairman Cox learned, first hand, that this sort of conduct was going on, what did he do about it?
Law Blog - WSJ.com : A Maverick Exchange: The Emails Between Mark Cuban and Jeffrey Norris: "A Maverick Exchange: The Emails Between Mark Cuban and Jeffrey Norris"
