As you know, Judge Jed Rakoff wanted answers to specific questions about the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch (BAC) saga, which seems to never end. One big issue for the judge was why former general counsel Tim Mayopolous was fired toward the end of 2008. In some quarters, the view has been that he was fired because he was advising the bank to disclose (disclosure news) some massive losses at Merrill Lynch ahead of the Bank of America shareholder vote on the deal. This may well be the view of Andrew Cuomo, who seems to be more agreeable to this line.

In any case, in a court filing, Bank of America (Bank of America news) is sticking to its guns. It reiterated its view that Mayopolous was fired because the bank wanted to retain Brian Moynihan, who is now the CEO. Recall Moynihan wanted to leave until Ken Lewis gave him the general counsel job. The issue is whether that decision was made to basically silence someone who was agitating internally. This would have been a good cover story. We'll see where this goes. 

For more:
- here's the filing courtesy of the Wall Street Journal
- here's a Reuters article

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