Mahony: High Stakes Herbalife Battle Ensnares Connecticut Politicos.

The Courant’s Ed Mahony reports on a story that will not be going away soon. It includes a collection of Connecticut mercenaries recruited to do battle on behalf of a financial Pershing Square Capital Management in its battle to do down Herbalife.

One never wants to be included in a 21st century federal investigation into alleged stock manipulation. That is a complicated minefield in which acts that are routine in political campaigns violate complicated securities laws. It does not take much for swaggering political folk to run afoul of the law.

Familiar names included in the ugly story in the early going on behalf of Pershing Square include Global Strategy, Democrat Tanya Meck, former state representative Evelyn Mantilla (D-Hartford), and Republican Chris Healy. Global Strategy issued a carefully worded statement that it is not “a target” of the investigation. That’s a term of art in federal law enforcement. One is usually not notified of the dreaded target status until an investigation is reaching a crescendo.

The usually voluble Enfield Republican town committee leader Mary Ann Turner takes a quiet turn in the tale. She signed one of the letters to Attorney General George Jepsen criticizing Herbalife.

People who declined the paid solicitors’ requests to sign letters are breathing easy, though investigators may be interested in the approach taken to induce them to lend their names to the canned epistles.

Pershing’s Bill Ackman’s Friday appearance on CNBC has to have discomfited his Connecticut contingent. Ackman declined to rule out the possibility that Global Strategy and its recruits made no false statements in their efforts to damage Herbalife. Sounds like they learn what the underpinnings of a bus look like.