Bad news for Trent Lott's brother-in-law Dickie Scruggs:

Timothy Balducci, a co-defendant in the federal bribery case against plaintiffs attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy and to cooperate with the government....

Federal prosecutors have alleged that Mr. Balducci earlier this year approached state Circuit Court Judge Henry Lackey on Mr. Scruggs's behalf and offered to pay him $40,000 for a favorable ruling in a civil case.

Balducci could prove a formidable cooperator. After all, in a conversation with Judge Lackey (one taped by investigators), he said:

[Dickie Scruggs] and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where...where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same.

Not the guy you want talking to the feds.

From the Politico:

Lott had said he has heard the various rumors regarding his decision to retire, but said the real reason is that which he publicly declared at his first press conference in Pascagoula, Miss. - it was just time for him to leave the Senate.

"I have heard everything," said Lott "That it was a health problem, that it was a sex problem, that it was a problem with his brother-in-law. None of that is true, not even close."

Lott said he has spoken to Scruggs, who he is husband of his wife's younger sister, just once since the indictment. Lott said Scruggs "is still my friend," and he suspects that the well-known lawyer became enmeshed in "a sting" by the FBI.

Being an author of legal thrillers, John Grisham knows a sophisticated bribery scheme when he sees one. And frankly, he seems a little disappointed in his fellow Mississippian and friend Dickie Scruggs. Or at least that's the impression one gets in reading his comments about his friend's predicament to The Wall Street Journal:

"This doesn't sound like the Dickie Scruggs that I know," Mr. Grisham said yesterday. "When you know Dickie, and how successful he has been, you could not believe he would be involved in such a boneheaded bribery scam that is not in the least bit sophisticated."

As we detailed last week, the indictment alleges plenty of boneheadedness. Would a villain in a Grisham book be so dumb as to refer to a bribery payment as "the package?" Surely not. Is he wrong to expect at least as much from his friends?

It's been an eventful week for the Lott clan. On Monday, Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) announced that he'd be retiring late this year. The next day, FBI agents raided the law office of his brother-in-law, Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. Yesterday, Scruggs, his son, and three associates were indicted for bribery.

Scruggs is a hotshot plaintiff's lawyer who famously cleaned up from lawsuits against big tobacco. His recent business has focused on Katrina-related litigation, especially against State Farm Insurance.

He'd better have a great criminal defense lawyer, because the indictment from the U.S. attorney for Mississippi's Northern District is devastating (you can read it here).

Here's the basic scheme: after Scruggs led a $80 million settlement between State Farm and hundreds of clients, an attorney who had formerly worked with Scruggs disputed the $26.5 million chunk of that settlement to Scruggs' law group. Scruggs wanted his money, and he and his associates decided that the best way to get it was to bribe the county judge presiding over the case, Henry Lackey. But Lackey went to the feds as soon as Scruggs' associates made the overture. He wore a wire. And things went downhill from there. For instance, here's what a lawyer working for Scruggs said to the judge, according to the indictment:

"...[M]my relationship with Dick [Scruggs] is such that he and I can talk very private [sic] about these kinds of matters and I have the fullest confidence that if the court, you know, is inclined to rule... in favor... everything will be good.... The only person in the world outside of me and you that has discussed this is me and Dick [Scruggs].... We, uh, like I say, it ain't but three people in the world that know anything about this...and two of them are sitting here and the other one...the other one, uh, being Scruggs...he and I, um, how shall I say, for over the last five or six years there, there are bodies buried that, that you know, that he and I know where...where are, and, and, my, my trust in his, mine in him and his in mine, in me, I am sure are the same."

The indictment is replete with similarly, um, problematic quotations. There are plenty of mentions of the "package" and the "order" among Scruggs' associates (apparently conversations on tapped phones). In October and November of this year, Scruggs, through his associates, paid the judge $40,000 (and intended to pay $10,000 more). And when it came time for the order to be prepared, the indictment quotes one of Scruggs' associates as saying to two others (one of them Scruggs' son), "we paid for this ruling; let's be sure it says what we want it to say."

It's like I said: it doesn't look good for Scruggs. As for Lott, there's no indication that he had anything to do with the scheme. Whether the impending indictment, which seems to have caught Scruggs very much by surprise, had anything to do with his sudden retirement, remains (like the many other competing theories) unclear.