If Former Vice President Joe Biden Doesn’t Win, Delaware Democrats Can Point the Finger at One Person: Andre Bouchard
I told you so, folks! You heard it here first. You can’t go around doing, what I clearly see, as stealing $250 million and not expect to be held accountable for it! Andre Bouchard has led his band of cronies, happily, as I see it, milking a very-profitable, not-at-all “dysfunctional” and, in fact, quite successful company for millions upon millions of dollars. Did they think no one was watching? Did they think no one would see this injustice happening over the past few years?
You read it here first folks and now you’re reading about this story EVERYWHERE! CBS, Bloomberg News, U.K.’s Daily Mail (see below). This story is not only getting national headlines, it’s getting international headlines and it’s being talked about as the Democratic debates are about to heat back up and Delaware’s own Joe Biden and Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren are both part of this international story!
You can’t have $250 million being siphoned off over the past few years from a very successful company without serious ramifications. While that money may have gone from TransPerfect to many lawyers associated with Andre Bouchard, and his comrades– Bob Pincus of Skadden Arps, Kevin Shannon of Potter Anderson, and Stephen Lamb of Paul Weiss — and now that missing money is now sparking a controversy the likes of which Delaware has never seen before! Folks, as I see it, we owe all of this negative attention and unflattering notoriety to Chancellor Andre Bouchard.
What’s happening is Shirley Shawe, the 79-year-old shareholder at TransPerfect and mother of CEO Philip Shawe, is fighting the “Good Ole Boy’s Club” and taking on the role of an Anti-Chancery Court, Corruption activist. By doing so, she’s holding former Vice President and current 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden accountable for his blind support of Bouchard’s Chancery Court.
This isn’t the first time she has taken on Chancery Court Corruption. Here are two examples of Shirley Shawe turning to the airwaves to fight Delaware Chancery Court corruption:
I’ve been forewarning about this, pounding the table, and demanding action from the legislature for the last few years. In my opinion, Chancellor Bouchard is undermining our State’s reputation and is detrimental to our entire state economy. I applaud fellow senior-citizen Shirley Shawe for having the courage and grit to take on the establishment cronies.
As always, your feedback is welcome!
Republican businesswoman behind $500,000 Joe Biden attack ads explains she was furious he supported ‘corrupt’ Chancery Court that dissolved her business costing her millions
Political unknown Shirley Shawe paid for the TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire to show next week
Shawe shared with DailyMail.com the ad is to ‘raise public awareness to the serious issues plaguing America’s most powerful business court’
It is the largest third-party attack ad spend so far in the 2020 campaign
The ad includes a 2005 exchange between then Senator Biden and Elizabeth Warren – at-the-time a Harvard professor – as they discussed bankruptcy reform
But the ad dices up the dialogue between the two and suggests that they were speaking on the Chancery Court
Transcripts from the hearing reveal that Biden had just misspoke and confused bankruptcy courts with the Chancery Court, a point he later clarifies
Both Warren and Biden have called for the ad to be pulled from the air
Shawe seems to be angry about a business dispute that impacted her son in 2015, more than ten years after the political exchange took place
By MATTHEW WRIGHT FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and KEITH GRIFFITH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 14:52 EDT, 29 August 2019 | UPDATED: 16:15 EDT, 29 August 2019
A Republican entrepreneur who released a perplexing ad decrying Joe Biden’s relationship with the Delaware Chancery Court has explained that she was angry at the presidential candidate for supporting the court that dissolved her business – costing her millions.
Shirley Shawe told DailyMail.com that she released the misleading advert as a means to ‘raise public awareness to the serious issues plaguing America’s most powerful business court.’
‘I was a personal victim of ageism, sexism, and corruption at the hands of Delaware Chancellor Andre Bouchard over the last five years; my constitutional rights were trampled and my private property was seized by a Delaware government body and put up for auction-and part of the justification for this was my age,’ she claimed in a statement to DailyMail.com.
She added the behavior was ‘typical of the “Old Boy’s Club” that runs Delaware.’
‘The Chancellor turned simple board deadlock into a 3 year occupation of the company I am part owner of, and caused over $250 million to be spent on the case, much of which directly benefited his social circle in Delaware.
Bouchard was sworn in as Chancellor in 2014, five years after Biden ended his time as Senator of Delaware and almost a decade after the footage Shawe used in her advert.
Shawe clarified that she sought to ‘encourage the candidates to drive reform’ with her ad that correctly identifies Delaware as getting an ‘F’ grade from the 2015 State Integrity Investigation that looks at ‘state government accountability and transparency.’
The ad includes a 2005 exchange between then Senator Biden and Elizabeth Warren – at-the-time a Harvard professor – as they discussed bankruptcy reform.
‘The Delaware court is too male, too white and anything but open,’ the ad’s narrator asserts in the advertisement.
In the ad, Biden speaks on how the Chancery Court are open and calls it ‘outrageous’ to suggest otherwise.
The clip then shows Warren ‘responding’ and seemingly pointing out how the Chancery Court impacts Delaware workers.
But, the clip actually chops up Warren’s entire comment and fails to contextualize Biden’s comment – especially once he realizes that the conversation is about bankruptcy courts and not the Chancery Court.
A transcript from the hearing shows that Biden realized his mistake and focused on Bankruptcy. Chancery was only ever mentioned in his initial comment.
‘Employees of companies like Enron literally cannot go to Delaware and hire local counsel, which the Delaware bankruptcy court requires of them before they can make an appearance, and that effectively cuts thousands of small employees, pensioners and local trade creditors out of the bankruptcy process,’ Warren said in the entirety of her quote. ‘If they can’t afford it, they are not there.’
Both Biden and Warren demanded the ad to be pulled, with the former Vice President declaring that the advert mischaracterized his remarks.
Shawe shared that she was ‘disappointed’ by the politicians reaction but added that it was not ‘unexpected’ for Biden to respond in that way ‘given his home state court’s attempt to silence me and treat me as less than a person for years.’
She continued: ‘It is typical of the “Old Boy’s Club” that runs Delaware.’
‘For Ms Warren, I suspect the Senator doesn’t yet fully understand how the Chancery Court harmed me and our 5000 workers worldwide. If she researches this case more deeply, I believe she will understand the facts and may have a different view.’
The Republican apparent endorsement of Warren – as seen on the ad – happens to just fall on that particular issue. Shawe said ‘who knows’ when commenting on who she would support for other issues and added that she and Warren agreed on this particular one.
‘The court needs to be brought up to 2019 and needs transparency,’ she stated. ‘I will keep fighting for that. This is just the first in a planned effort to drive awareness.’
Shawe’s grudge seems to stem from a costly legal battle that her son’s translation company, TransPerfect, fought in Delaware’s chancery court in 2015.
‘Two years after the case has ended, my company is still be billed outrageous sums per month by Skadden Arps, the Chancellor’s and the Chief Justice’s former employers,’ said the businesswoman. ‘We are required to pay these bills by court order, yet we are not allowed to see them, or even know what this work is for.’
She plans to run the television ad in early primary states Iowa and New Hampshire next week in what is the largest third-party attack ad spend so far in the 2020 presidential race.
The ad eschews mainstream campaign issues and instead focus on the Chancery Court, a legal system which Shawe blames for a business dispute that hurt her son’s company.
‘The Delaware court is too male, too white and anything but open,’ the ad’s narrator intones.
The 60-second ad shows Biden during a 2005 Senate hearing, in which he debated Elizabeth Warren, then a Harvard law professor.
The ad accuses Biden of defending the Chancery Court as Warren attacks it.
The transcript of the hearing shows that Warren was actually speaking about the bankruptcy courts, a separate forum of equity law, but Biden became briefly confused and referred to chancery court.
Delaware’s Court of Chancery oversees business disputes, though not bankruptcy, which is a federal matter.
The state’s chancery court has great influence due to the large number of companies that are incorporated in Delaware, which has business-friendly laws.
Both Biden and Warren, who are among top contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, have called for the ad to be pulled.
‘The ad misrepresents Vice President Biden’s position in this exchange from 2005 by manipulating footage to suggest he means one court when he means another,’ Biden campaign national press secretary Jamal Brown told CBS News in a statement.
‘It’s a clear reminder of the way that third-party money poisons our politics with false attack ads, and it has no place in this race,’ he continued.
Warren also spoke out against the ad, even though it seems to cast her in a heroic light.
‘Elizabeth does not believe individual donors should have an outsized influence in this primary, and has consistently said that Super PACs or individuals with the means to finance ad campaigns on their own should stay out of the primary,’ her deputy communications director Chris Hayden said.
Shawe’s grudge seems to stem from a costly legal battle that her son’s translation company, TransPerfect, fought in Delaware’s chancery court in 2015.
In a landmark case, the head of the Delaware Chancery, Chancellor Andre Bouchard, ordered the dissolution of the company even though it was not in financial distress, but because its co-owners could not get along.
The court-ordered decision to sell TransPerfect came in 2015 after a chancellor concluded the feuding CEO’s Philip Shawe and Elizabeth Elting were ‘hopelessly deadlocked’ over significant matters and business decisions.
Shirley Shawe owned 1 percent of the company at the time of the forced sale, which resulted in her son Philip Shawe gaining ownership by bidding in the public auction.
Shirley Shawe launched a crusade against the chancery courts, however, lobbying lawmakers to banned forced sales like the one of TransPerfect.
‘When a judge makes a precedent and makes a ruling to just sell a privately held company, then why would other people be motivated to start a company and why would they be motivated to incorporate in the state of Delaware? If someone is just going to take their private property?’ Shawe told WMDT-TV in 2017.
Shawe has said through a spokesperson that she is a Republican and did not intend to boost Warren with her ad.
She has vowed to run to run the TV ads in spite of the candidates’ protests, and has also reportedly ordered print newspaper ads on the subject.
What is a Court of Chancery?
Chancery courts began with petitions to the Lord Chancellor of England, and developed into a parallel legal system along with common law courts.
Chancery dealt with issues of equity, or what is fair, rather than matters of law, and had a looser set of rules to speed to pace of proceedings.
Instead of judges, they had chancellors, and had jurisdiction over trusts and estates, guardianship over children and ‘lunatics’.
They also handled lawsuits requesting something other than financial damages, such as an order requiring a party to perform a specific act.
Some states in the early U.S. republic replicated this dual legal system, but the two systems were merged in England in 1875.
Today, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court operates as a court of equity at the federal level, and several states maintain separate court systems for matters of law and equity.
Delaware, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Tennessee still make a distinction between a ‘court of law’ and chancery court.