Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolff?

Palau

A maverick lawyer makes waves in Palau.

By Ed Rampell

I SLANDERS, impeachment, arson, and attorney Martin Wolff apparently don’t mix. During his colourful career in California, Palau, Tonga, and Hawaii, the controversial lawyer’s critics have re ferred to him as “opportunistic”, “screwed up”, a “seeker of notoriety”, a “patholog ical liar”, and in Palau he was known as “Air-Wolff” and “Were-Wolff’ because of his confrontational tactics. His support ers, on the other hand, portray him as a maverick who fights for the little people.

Wolff who thrives on controversy and the publicity it generates recently made headline news in the Hawaiian me dia. Representing Hawaii’s 1000 Friends, a citizens’ watchdog group, Wolff won a judgement against Honolulu Mayor Frank Fasi for $U5483,000. Wolff charged that the Mayor had misappropriated public funds for the Waiola Estates housing pro ject to finance the unsuccessful guberna torial campaign of Andy Anderson in 1986.

Wolff currently is seeking to impeach Mr Fasi, now serving his fourth term as mayor.

Mayor Fasi, meanwhile, is filing for an appeal he feels will “completely vindi cate” him. Since the matter is under liti gation the Mayor has declined to comment, but in previous statements he has asserted his innocence and said, “I look forward to any impeachment attempt by Mr Wolff. I feel this is the fastest way to clear my name and point out the grievous error made in the Wailoa Trial.”

Shortly after the jury’s 10-2 verdict against the Mayor thrust Wolff into the limelight in mid-October, the media picked up on an even more sensational story. Leonard Appell a fellow attorney

whose disbarment Wolff sought was ar rested for allegedly plotting Wolffs mur der. According to the would-be victim, the bizarre case involved a Samoan hitman who was offered SUSSO,OOO by Appell to burn down Wolffs law offices and to kill the lawyer.

Wolff who claims that he is a Min ister for American evangelist Jimmy Swaggert’s Assembly of God went on to say the plot was foiled when the Samoan became a born-again Christian and con fessed the conspiracy. Honolulu police then placed a wire on the Samoan, Wolff says, and his opponent was bugged dis cussing the murder plans. Appell has pleaded guilty and was originally held on SUSI million bail: the court eventually lowered the bail to $lOO,OOO, which Appell met, and the attorney is currently free.

These are not the first times Martin Wolff has attempted to recall a public of ficial, nor of danger to his personal safety.

In 1985, the self-styled “Jew for Jesus” was directly involved in renegotiating the pro posed Compact of Free Association be tween the United States and Palau. Wolff claimed to enhance the financial status of Palauans in a so-called “improved Com pact” that also explicitly granted the US the right to override Palau’s nuclear-free constitution by not having to confirm or deny whether its ships in Palau were nu clear armed or powered. The Palau Su preme Court subsequently found the purportedly upgraded Compact unconsti tutional precisely because of this point. In late 1987 President Reagan certified the Compact, although the US Congress has not. Congress reconvened in mid-Janu

ary, and hearings on Palau, in addition to those held in December, were scheduled for early this year.

At the height of the Compact parleys, Wolff s jeep became the then latest target of terror in Palau when it was firebombed in November, 1985.

Wolffs neighbours, however, regard him as so obnoxious they suspect the fi rebombing was not politically inspired but, rather, the result of his chopping down a number of betel trees. They also point out that the junior high school dropout re ferred to himself as “Dr Wolff’, not be cause Wolff is an MD or PhD he is not but because like every lawyer, he is a dejuris doctor; few lawyers, however, use the appellation and it is considered rather pompous to do so.

When the revised Compact failed to pass, Wolff left Palau after less than a year there. But his record as a legal gadfly goes back to his practice in California. Al though Wolff relishes his image as a cham pion of the underdog, he is a conservative Republican and not since Lincoln has this party been known as a friend of the com mon man. Wolff has even gone to court to force his ex-wife to change her last name; he has further claimed that “she left me for another woman” and that “the only thing she left me after our divorce settlement was the jeep” which was burned in Palau.

Wolff s other controversial Pacific ac tivities extend to Tonga. The attorney says he is representing an Australian-born painter named Sune, who was appointed as resident artist by the Queen. According to Wolff, he filed and won a malpractice case against a fellow Honolulu lawyer for allegedly misrepresenting Sune. Wolff is also defending a group of Hawaiians at Hoae’ae near Pearl Harbor, who are ille gally squatting in a rural style village and currently facing eviction by developers. In addition, the Minister for the Assembly of God boasts about illegal “bible running” to atheistic China.

Martin Wolffs repeated patterns of be haviour are to assault officials with pro vocative tactics aimed at gaining media attention, then turning the publicity to his advantage by seeking public office: in Cal ifornia, Wolff sought a seat on the Cuesta College Board of Trustees in 1976 and 1981, and in Palau hoped to be appointed Spe cial Prosecutor to look into the massive corruption there. He is currently consid ering running for Honolulu City Prose cutor. Whether or not his campaign is successful, only the future will reveal whether Martin Wolff is historic or, as his critics suggest, merely histrionic. □

Attorney Martin Wollf considers himself a champion of the underdog; his critics say he’s a “seeker of notoriety