In a federal court filing Thursday, a St. Albans fuel company accused Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) of using his government office to exact legal retribution against it for political purposes.
The company, R.L. Vallee, alleged that Sanders and his Vermont spokesman, Daniel McLean, sought to gin up a state prosecution and a class-action lawsuit after the company’s CEO, Rodolphe “Skip” Vallee, produced a television advertisement attacking Sanders and his family.
A week after Vallee released the ad in September 2014, according to documents and testimony obtained by the company’s lawyers, Sanders and McLean met with two members of the Vermont Attorney General’s Office to discuss the senator’s suspicion that the company engaged in anticompetitive practices. According to handwritten notes taken at the meeting by Assistant Attorney General Ryan Kriger, either Sanders or McLean suggested that the AG should “Bring [a] case just to make a point.”
McLean emailed Kriger several times in the coming weeks to ask whether Attorney General Bill Sorrell would take action. In the end, he did not.
In the following months, McLean regularly corresponded — sometimes using his personal email account — with attorneys from two firms interested in bringing a class-action lawsuit against R.L. Vallee, the documents show. McLean offered to provide the attorneys with data that Sanders’ office had obtained pertaining to gas prices in northwestern Vermont. In June 2015, the two firms filed a $100 million class-action lawsuit against R.L. Vallee and three other companies accusing them of price-fixing.
R.L. Vallee owns more than 45 gas stations in Vermont and neighboring states, mostly under the Maplefields brand. Skip Vallee is a prominent Republican donor who served as ambassador to Slovakia during president George W. Bush’s administration.
Thursday’s filing was the latest volley in the more than three-year-old price-fixing case. Last month, R.L. Vallee subpoenaed McLean to sit for a deposition and turn over potentially thousands of documents. Sanders’ office argued that the request was an over-broad “fishing expedition” and that Senate staffers could not be subpoenaed in their official capacities.
In Thursday’s filing, R.L. Vallee’s lawyers wrote that it “strains credulity that Mr. McLean’s official duties as a press aide for a United States Senator” include attempting to persuade the state attorney general to bring an enforcement action against a private company.
“Far from being a ‘fishing expedition’, R.L. Vallee has demonstrated a sufficient need to discover the extent and motivation of Mr. McLean’s (and the Senator’s) repeated apparent efforts to bring price-fixing and other antitrust enforcement actions against R.L. Vallee over a period of years,” the company’s lawyers wrote. “The Civil Action may well have been brought forward based upon political considerations, rather than actual evidence of an anti-competitive conspiracy. This would clearly tend to exculpate R.L. Vallee.”
Joshua Miller-Lewis, a spokesperson for Sanders, said that neither the senator nor McLean would comment on the matter.
Read the documents below:
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I do notice that Chittenden County is often 15 or 20 cents higher than the rest of the state, but when the lawsuit was filed in 2014 the prices in Chittenden County suddenly began matching the rest of the state…. then went back up again as people forgot about it. It smells like there is some price fixing going on.
If Vallee and the others are guilty of what they’re accused, does it really matter how we found that out (as long as it was discovered legally)? Sounds like Vallee is taking a page out of the Trump collusion playbook.
Suck it up, Skippy. You have been gouging Chittenden residents for years. You are what “free market capitalism” truly is: a fraudulent abuse of power and nothing less than legalized cannibalism.
Perhaps the bloated Grifter in Chief can get you a job in his criminal syndicate administration , maybe the Dept. of Energy since you seem to know as much as Rick Perry ( which is virtually nothing) about it except how to extract wealth from those at the bottom and transfer it to yourself .
Vallee is just trying to change the subject. Bernie is picking on him. But the profit margins he has enjoyed and the prices Chittenden County drivers have been paying are not consistent with honest competition.
Often those who extol markets and competition find a tilted playing field even more to their liking. It’s about time for a class action suit like this one to be challenging the scam. A big refund is in order.
Vallee has been ripping off the NW Vermont folks with his monopoly of gas stations for years. I would rather walk than buy gas from this guy. He has put up roadblock after roadblock for the planned Costco gas pumps in Colchester and tried to halt that with claims of environmental degradation.
This Millionaire has gone too far, and it would be great to see a total boycott of his gas stations.. I NEVER stop at a Maplefields because I do not want to support this sort of capitalistic exploitation..
While I am by no means a Skip Vallee supporter, and an infrequent Maplefield’s consumer, there are many baseless and speculative comments from folks who are apparently, completely ignorant of the benefits of free market capitalism. All in an effort to mindlessly bash someone who has successfully continued the family business. Clearly, liberals lose what little minds they have when someone is successful, when they should be thankful, as that free market capitalism is the means by which they squeeze every last tax dollar out of the working man, to support their liberal squandering.
“Sounds like Vallee is taking a page out of the Trump collusion playbook.”
No, I’d say an elected official who’s on the public payroll and who says “File a lawsuit [against a political rival]just to make a point,” is misusing the court system, misusing his office, and misusing the public payroll, i.e., is the one who’s taking a page out of the Trump collusion playbook.
Again, I am no supporter of Skip and his practices, but I am interested in what Sanders flunkies will say and what they have on file. Transparency is a double edged sword!!!
and Vallee is not used to playing dirty? Nice to see in the season of Scrooge- YOU ARE STILL ONE OF THE BIGGEST.
I have and always will boycott all Maplefields gas stations. I refuse to enrich Vallee and enable him in his slimeball tactics and right-wing extremist politics. Sorry Skip, but you do not deserve my hard earned cash when you undermine people in your community through your greed.
The documentation here shows that Sanders and his staff intentionally misrepresented what the FTC reported to them in 2012 in order to support Bernies attack on a group of family-owned businessses in Vermont. They lied to the public and the legislature and the press never dug deep enough to question these claims. You might not like Skip Vallee or the price you pay for gasoline, but you ought to be in favor of some kind of integrity by our elected officials.
I remember the “gas wars” of years past..On Riverside Ave, Shel Rd..wherever there was a group of gas stations..For some
reason, this now never happens..Gas prices are close to exactly the same anywhere in northwestern Vt.. Gas retailers have stopped competing. I thought Vallee and his right wing friends were all for free enterprise? Thanks Sen Sanders for doggedly looking into this…
Im no fan of Bernie Sanders but Valllee is a crook and everyone has known this for years.
“Valllee is a crook and everyone has known this for years.”
“Crook”? Please state whatever evidence you have for this accusation.
seriously how could you doubt a dude with this many popped collars lookin like a human donut in that wack-ass crocodile dundee hat. looks like he’s permanently stuck between canadian fashion and margaritaville