administrative leave. Then MacDonald
and his supporters occupied the tribal
offices and wouldn’t give them up, and
so the tribal council, at least the 50 or so
members who were determined to get rid
of this guy, started meeting in a different
place. They passed a law to create a special
prosecutor, and then quickly the Justice
Department solicited proposals. There were
several people I knew in that department
who contacted me and said, “Would you
guys be interested?” Because they knew we
had great criminal defense lawyers. We had
the criminal law background and we had
the Indian law background.
We got that contract. And it became
one of the most bizarre and exhausting
experiences of my life. It was huge. We had
to take on a lot of additional staff, we had
to do it very quickly. We had to do a lot of
investigation obviously first, but we finally
got complaints filed against MacDonald.
We filed three cases. The Big Boquillas
thing was an enormous transaction, and
we got a case filed on that. We also filed
what we called the bribes and kickbacks
complaint, which alleged a variety of
schemes in which people would come to
MacDonald seeking some kind of favor. And
he would say, “Well, you need to go see
my son, Rocky.” And Rocky had graduated
from ASU Law School but wasn’t really
practicing law. But he would then have
these people hire him on retainers of up to
$5,000 a month.
