By Donald V. Watkins ©Copyrighted and Published on July 29, 2018
On October 3, 2017, U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town tapped Lloyd Chandler Peeples, III, as the new First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. This is the office’s number two post.
With this announcement, a “pizza man” took charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Birmingham. Town, who lives in Huntsville, Alabama, rarely works in the Birmingham office. As a result, Town has delegated nearly all of his job duties to Peeples while he quietly tends to the political needs of the Republican Party’s oligarchy in Alabama. In 2016, Town openly campaigned for Senator Richard Shelby and was rewarded in 2017 with a presidential appointment to his current job.
As the First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Lloyd Peeples supervises the Criminal, Civil, Appellate and Administrative Divisions and handles administrative matters, in periodic consultation with Town. Peeples worked as a federal prosecutor in Birmingham from 2003 until 2012, handling a variety of fairly routine civil and criminal matters. Peeples left the U.S. Attorney’s Office in February 2012 to assist in managing his father’s manufacturing business. Following his father’s death in 2013, Peeples took over as chairman of the board and chief executive officer and served in that capacity until December 2016. In 2017, Peeples was running a pizza business in Homewood, Alabama called “Your Pie” when Town gave Peeples his “dream” job.
Peeples, who was born in Dothan, Alabama, attended the private Walker School in Marietta, Georgia. After graduating in 1991, Peeples attended Washington and Lee University, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1995. Peeples obtained his law degree from Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in 1998. Peeples worked as a judicial clerk and in private practice in Birmingham before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Birmingham as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 2003.
Tilting at Windmills
Within a couple of weeks after assuming his job as First Assistant U.S. Attorney’s job, Lloyd Peeples opened a grand jury investigation into my international energy businesses and me. He assembled a posse of prosecutors, FBI agents, IRS officials, and other law enforcement agents who work everyday on gathering, reviewing, and analyzing every aspect of my business and personal affairs. Peeples started by looking into the same allegations of “securities fraud” that were leveled against me in a September 1, 2016 lawsuit by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He sent for and received the entire SEC file in my case.
On July 13, 2018, the SEC surreptitiously announced in a court filing that the agency would be dropping all of the allegations in its lawsuit, except for a bogus claim of "fraud" involving three loans from Charles Barkley to my companies. With this announcement, the SEC’s lawsuit plunged from a $6 million sensationalized case to a $2.1 million dud lawsuit. By the end of the case, the SEC's lawsuit will likely be dismissed in its entirety. Furthermore, Barkley is still one of my business associates.
The SEC’s abandonment of its primary claims represents the second time these baseless allegations have been leveled against me in a highly public fashion and later dropped. The first time this scenario occurred was when a former professional football player for the New York Jets sued me for alleged “securities fraud” in 2013. The lawsuit was splashed all over the Internet. In 2017, he quietly and voluntarily dismissed his case, with prejudice. This individual is still one of my business associates.
Lloyd Peeples was undeterred when he learned that a New Jersey federal grand jury, which was led by career federal prosecutors with specialized training in investigating and prosecuting economic crimes, reviewed the same “securities fraud” allegations in 2015 and closed its investigation in early 2016 after finding no wrongdoing on my part. Peeples, who lacks credible training or substantial trial experience in prosecuting economic crimes, decided he could do a much better job of investigating me than his New Jersey counterparts.
A Propensity for “Twisting” Evidence and Facts Until They Become “Lies With Legs”
The New Jersey federal prosecutors never designated me as the “target” of their six-month grand jury investigation. Lloyd Peeples departed from applicable Justice Department guidelines and made me a “target” of his investigation on day one. This designation provided Peeples with the "cover" he needed to use aggressive "Blitzkrieg" techniques in investigating me.
Peeples and members of his posse routinely misrepresented the evidence and facts in my case to the grand jury. They have also misled grand jury witnesses and have attempted to build a circumstantial case based upon false witness statements and grossly manipulated witness testimony.
In March, Peeples tried to block me from appearing before the grand jury. When I finally got the opportunity to appear before the grand jury in April, I discovered that Peeples and his posse had engaged in far greater “twisting” of evidence in my case than I had ever witnessed as a former prosecutor or defense attorney in any case. This "twisting" continues today. Additionally, Peeples knowingly, deliberately, and repeatedly withheld exculpatory evidence in his possession from grand jurors who were seeking the truth.
When I looked into Lloyd Peeples’ personal history, I realized that he has a propensity for “twisting” evidence and fabricating facts until he can give birth to “lies with legs.” What is worse, Peeples does not care about creating false narratives because, in his mind, the end result justifies the means he must use to reach it.
A Darker Side of Lloyd Peeples
Lloyd Peeples’ background reveals clues on why he cheats to win. This is a man who has an axe to grind with women and minorities. Additionally, Peeples’ success in law and business has been anything but stellar. Now, he is free to use a powerful government platform and vast sums of taxpayers’ dollars to impose his political and personal will.
In a November 1994 article he wrote on "Coeducation" as a senior editor for W&L Spectator (a student-run news magazine with far right-wing views), Lloyd Peeples shed some light on who he really is. Peeples criticized the University’s efforts to create “more programs and workshops about date and acquaintance rape.” He opined that, “courses on women’s studies, more housing, a student center, more aggressive hiring of female faculty and administrators, and the other sorts of recommendations made in the [University’s Coeducation Review Committee] report are going too far.” Peeples further observed that “[t]he school should not feel that it has to provide every single thing that women and minorities claim would make them happy.” He concluded the article by reminding the Washington and Lee University family to view the report “with a grain of salt and decide where to go from here, remembering that there [are] lies, damn lies, and facts.”
In the U.S. Attorneys Office, Peeples has mastered the art of creating and using “lies” and “damn lies” to drive his warped personal and political agendas.
Peeples’ November 1994 article was accompanied by a companion piece written by Doug Burns, Ray Craig, and Jeffrey Laborde titled, “White Males: The Label, The Dilemma.” The article’s promotional tag line claimed that, “[t]he civil rights movement has gone astray and has created a very hostile environment for white males.” Charitably speaking, the article was a clarion call for the protection of white males at a time when America was trying to diversify its workforce.
What is more, in the May 1994 issue of W&L Spectator, Lloyd Peeples penned an essay that sided with the Singapore government’s imposition of a caning punishment for 18-year-old American teenager Michael Fay for spray painting cars in the country, which was considered an act of vandalism under Singapore law. The court in Singapore lowered the number of caning strokes administered to Fay from six to four following heavy pressure from President Bill Clinton to show leniency. Yet, Peeples praised Singapore’s severe punishment of Fay and suggested that America should follow suit. In doing so, Peeples rebuffed claims from international human rights groups that Singapore was a “police state” and salivated over the severity of Michael Fay punishment.
When Jay Town, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate for his job, handed his duties over to Lloyd Peeples, who was hired away from a pizza restaurant to effectively serve as the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, there was no Justice Department vetting of Peeples’ derogatory remarks about women and minorities, or about his close association with colleagues and friends who held extremist views toward African-Americans in the workplace.
Finally, Lloyd Peeples has failed to disclose any of this pertinent character and background information to the grand jury that is sitting in my case. Based upon his words and deeds, Peeples' motivations in my case are anything but pure.
Stay tuned for more shocking information about Lloyd Peeples and the deal he cut with Jay Town.
PHOTO: Lloyd Peeples ran a "Your Pie" pizza restaurant in Homewood, Alabama before he took over the U.S. Attorneys Office in Birmingham in October 2017.
