Did Judge Martin Feldman (not to be confused with comedian/actor Marty Feldman) who blocked the moratorium on deep water drilling in the gulf own stock in the very company that owned the rig that blew up? Yes he did. And yet he refused to recuse himself from deciding that the deep water drilling should continue even as the BP well continued spewing oil in the largest oil spill in US history.
Several environmental groups had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman to withdraw from the case because of his investments in several oil and gas companies. But he refused.
Judge Feldman may not be owned by BP, but according to his financial disclosures he does own stock in Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that blew up and caused the Obama administration to request a temporary time-out on deep water drilling to figure out how they can be made safer.
The oil companies who sued the Obama administration over its 6-month oil moratorium (and won) couldn’t have had a better friend on the bench than the man who decided the case, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman:
According to Feldman’s 2008 financial disclosure form, posted online by Judicial Watch [pdf], the judge owned stock in Transocean as well as five other companies that are either directly or indirectly involved in the offshore drilling business.
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Conflict of interest? Since when is owning stock in the companies that a Judge is deciding the fate of a conflict of interest? So while he may not be the same Marty Feldman who starred in Young Frankenstein, he has mad a horror show out of the justice system by treating it like the comedy that this system is quickly becoming.
