Dan Abrams interviewed former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman tonight on MSNBC's The Verdict. Siegelman laid out a plausible trail from his political prosecution back to Karl Rove, asserting that "Karl Rove's fingerprints are all over this case" and "Do we have the knife with his fingerprints on it? No, but we've got the glove and the glove fits."
Here's the scenario as I understood Siegelman to describe it:
1) In 1994, when Karl Rove was in Alabama "trying to stealing his first election" Siegelman voluntarily testified against Rove's client, (Bill Pryor?) who also has links to Canary.
2) In 1999, Rove's client (Attorney General Pryor?) initiated an investigation into Gov. Don Siegelman.
3) In 2001, Leura Canary, Bill Canary's wife, becomes the U.S. Attorney for the middle district of Alabama and she starts a federal investigation. Bill Canary was Rove's business associate and political partner.
Raw Story has a timeline here, although it doesn't quite jibe with the dates Siegelman quoted.
Pryor, Rove and the Canaries appear to have significant relationships. They had reason to dislike Gov. Siegelman and want him out of the way. Once Bill Pryor became AG, and especially once Leura Canary became U.S. Attorney, the means was at hand to do just that. It's certainly a plausible scenaro, and in a perfect world Pryor and Canary would have totally recused themselves and stayed out of the case to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Which they did not do.
ABRAMS: We asked this question to his attorney: Will Karl Rove agree to testify if Congress issues a subpoena to him as part of an investigation into the Siegelman case? The answer we got — “Sure.”
But that's a qualified "sure,"
What Rove's attorney said was: "Sure. Although it seems to me the question is somewhat offensive. It assumes he has something to hide - even though Gov. Siegelman's uncorroborated assumptions aside - there's literally no credible evidence whatsoever to substantiate his charges."
Siegelman clearly didn't believe Rove would respond to a subpoena -- "let's don't waste any time. ... Let him put his hand on the bible and either tell the truth, or lie under oath or plead the 5th."
Abrams asked if Siegelman was surprised by this statement that Rove would agree to testify before the Judiciary Committee. I'll be surprised if he does. I'm not surprised he would say that without getting a subpoena."
He also expressed a preference to see some of the Alabama connections in this case called before Congress before Rove is called to testify. I'm guessing Bill Pryor, Bill Canary and perhaps Leura Canary or even Jeff Sessions. The Sessions link comes through Lanny Young's statements reported in Time Magazine.
It would be great to see the Judiciary Committee really sink their teeth into this thing and unravel the whole story. I think it would shed much needed light on the U.S. Attorney/selective prosecution business. Damn, I wish Democrats had a really active candidate running against Jeff Sessions this year. He might end up deeper in this mess than anyone imagined.
Scott Horton has a roundup of Siegelman developments over at No Comment. He offers yet another explanation for Judge Mark Fuller's conduct in this case:
The third is that the appeal, when it does go forward, is going inevitably to focus just as much on the misconduct of Mark Fuller as it does on Don Siegelman. Why did he fail to recuse himself when he bore a grudge against Siegelman? Why did he fail to disclose his tight associations with the Alabama G.O.P., including his service on the G.O.P. Executive Committee, and his involvement in campaigns against Siegelman? Why did he fail to disclose that, in a case brought by the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department, it was sitting on a 39-page attorney affidavit laying out allegations of criminal wrongdoing by Fuller? Why did he fail to disclose that his personal wealth and livelihood rests on a stack of recently secured contracts, prominently including contracts with the Department of Justice? All of this puts an insufferable stink around the whole case and mandates both that the conviction be set aside and that a new judge be installed to hear the case. And it explains why Fuller is prepared to do anything to put some sticks in the wheel to slow down the progress towards an appeal.
In addition, according to Horton's sources Louis Franklin will be giving fewer interviews and perhaps more careful ones in the future. Someone at the DOJ has wised up to the fact that the more you talk the more you reveal, intentionally or not. Clearly, there are aspects of the Siegelman case that some players want to bury in a deep, dark place.
Glynn Wilson has a very good article in The Nation today. The Siegelman case has a lot of twists and turns, but this article lays it all out in an easy to follow narrative. If you have ignored this case because you thought it was just a can of worms -- give it one more chance and go read this article. He provides more background info on Jill Simpson than I have seen anywhere else.
"The reason I did what I did is because I believe everybody has a Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial," she said then. "I did not believe Mr. Siegelman or Mr. Scrushy got a fair trial."
Since Simpson came forward in May, she has not exactly been embraced as a truth-teller by the local press in Alabama--and she has been isolated and assaulted by the very Republicans she once helped. In September she told House Judiciary Committee staff that her law practice and her family members have suffered a backlash. "It has been very stressful," she testified, "and it's been difficult for my family." She says business at her law firm has dried up since she went public about political collusion in the prosecution of Siegelman.
It's hell being a whistleblower -- especially when you are going up against the folks who control the state and federal governments. It's nice that some people are conscientious enough to make the sacrifice, even when they know they'll be slammed if they speak out.
Poor Bob Riley. Big, bad Artur Davis said some mean old stuff at Tuesday's Congressional hearing on Selective Prosecution and made the Governor angry.
"When it gets to the point where he says he believes that the governor of Alabama went to Washington, met with the Justice Department, convinced them to put the resources into a conspiracy to get Don Siegelman, that is so far-fetched, that is so totally wrong that I'm disappointed that someone like Artur Davis could possibly believe that," Riley said in his first extended interview on the Siegelman case.
...
"For anyone, including Artur Davis, to think that the governor or the governor's office played a part in that is absurd," Riley said. "It not only will change my relationship with Artur Davis, it's going to be hard for me to have the respect I have had for him in the past in the future, because now he is accusing me, he is accusing the governor of something that I think in his heart he knows never happened."
Riley is on the verging on a promotion to Whiney-Ass-Titty-Baby with these protests, but he's already in the Needs-Ears-Cleaned-Out category, because Davis' offending remarks sound pretty benign to me.
"Politics influenced this case. That's the irresistible conclusion based on the facts. Washington politics. Karl Rove politics. And finally, the politics that says if I can't beat your ideas, if I can't have confidence that I can beat you at the ballot box, maybe I can do it the old-fashioned way and just destroy you and destroy your reputation."
The Congressman made no mention of the Governor, or of his son, who felt the need to submit a sworn affidavit Tuesday morning. What set Bob Riley off? Maybe it's the idea that Democrats, andthepress, have finally caught on to the Republican wheeze of winning by any means at all -- the ballot box if you can and the courts if you can't. That strategy worked in Florida in 2000, in Alabama in 1994 and they tried and failed in Washington in 2004. I'm not even including the vote to impeach Bill Clinton which was all about overturning the will of the voters -- then-Congressman Riley voted in favor of that. You can probably remember other examples.
Based on the testimony we heard Tuesday, Don Siegelman is not an isolated case of a Democrat being investigated and prosecuted by federal authorities while Republicans in similar circumstances are ignored. Selective prosecution certainly seems to have flourished across the nation under Republicans. Instead of wasting his energy on anger, maybe Riley should be worried that there will be reckoning one of these days, and his party will be the one with a tarnished reputation. Maybe that's why he's suddenly giving interviews to the Birmingham News and trying to control the spin on this story.
At the Congressional hearing on "Allegations of Selective Prosecution: The Erosion of Public Confidence in Our Federal Justice System" yesterday, Congressman Artur Davis mentioned a recent article in Time Magazine reporting that Lanny Young told investigators he made illegal contributions, not only to former Governor Don Siegelman, but to Republicans Jeff Sessions and Bill Pryor as well. Seemingly, prosecutors weren't interested in hearing about that -- they wanted to hear about Don Siegelman. Davis asserted this preferential interest in Siegelman wrongdoing indicated selectiveness on the part of the Department of Justice.
Unwilling to let that "selectiveness" charge stand, writers for the Birmingham News talked to someone who was involved in the case:
Just one day before the House Judiciary Committee holds a hearing (9 am Central, webcast here) on selective prosecution, Rep. Artur Davis (D, AL-07) writes that justice should not be used as a political tool. From the Montgomery Advertiser:
Without a doubt, the claims around Siegelman, most of which the jury disbelieved but some of which the jury credited, are as depressing as the misconduct he alleges led to his prosecution. Government cannot ever be for sale, and our Legislature should pass comprehensive reforms sharply limiting state campaign contributions; furthermore, the state should end Alabama's bipartisan tradition of influence peddling by enacting conflict of interest rules precluding governors from appointing contributors to state boards.
What I return to, however, is my moral conviction that the criminal justice system cannot be twisted into a weapon to eliminate or discredit political enemies. I have heard a few suggestions that there is a "no harm, no foul" rule, that if a defendant is actually guilty of wrongdoing, that an improper motivation is mitigated. I cannot agree.
If prosecutorial discretion is laced with any improper bias, from partisanship to race to self-interest, the results will be consistently more wrong than right -- and good people will have one more reason to shy away from a public life.
Notice that Rep. Davis also called for the Alabama legislature to enact real campaign finance reform for state offices and for rules that would prohibit the Governor from appointing large contributors to state boards. Good stuff.
I'm not sure what to make of this report from the Birmingham News that in 2002, Rob Riley had a sworn affidavit alleging possible voter fraud by Siegelman supporters.
Rob Riley took the claims so seriously that he forwarded the allegations to the attorney general's office. Riley described the claims to a young lawyer in that office named Troy King, who was handling recount issues for then Attorney General Bill Pryor.
...
King on Friday said he didn't recall receiving a copy of Spivey's affidavit, but Rob Riley called him in November 2002 about the allegations. "Rob and I talked about what Eddie knew," King said.
He said he contacted Deputy Attorney General Richard Allen, who assigned two investigators to interview Spivey.
Essentially, they had concluded there was no need for the office to take any action based on his statement," King said.
Rob Riley was and is the Governor's son, Troy King has since been appointed (and later elected) Attorney General, Richard Allen is Governor Riley's Corrections Commissioner and Eddie Spivey, the man who signed the 2002 affidavit acquired a $37,520-a-year job working security at the governor's mansion and was hired by Troy King as an investigator. Those quoted by the News maintained that Spivey's hiring had nothing to do with the affidavit.
It looks like the Siegelman case is about to run under some interesting Republican doors. Chief among them, that of Alabama's junior Senator, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III. From Adam Zagorin in the latest issue of TIME Magazine:
On may 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.
Young alleged that he made donations to Jeff Sessions and Bill Pryor, both in cash and by reimbursing employees and other third parties who wrote checks to Sessions and Pryor. Is it selective prosecution when the full force of the U. S. Attorney's office was used to investigate and prosecute Don Siegelman based on Young's testimony, but "none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted." Looks fishy.
Early in the investigation, in November 2001, Young announced that five years earlier, he "personally provided Sessions with cash campaign contributions," according to an FBI memo of the interview. Prosecutors didn't follow up that surprising statement with questions, but Young volunteered more. The memo adds that "on one occasion he [Young] provided Session [sic] with $5,000 to $7,000 using two intermediaries," one of whom held a senior position with Sessions' campaign. On another occasion, the FBI records show, Young talked about providing "$10,000 to $15,000 to Session [sic]. Young had his secretaries and friends write checks to the Sessions campaign and Young reimbursed the secretaries and friends for their contributions."
Reimbursing someone for a donation to a political campaign is illegal. That is one of the offenses alleged against Norman Hsu, lately in the news, and recipients of his "bundled" donations can't give them back fast enough. Zagorin doesn't indicate that Jeff Sessions or Bill Pryor returned any of Lanny Young's money.
Allegations like these are very interesting to the DOJ and the press when Democrats are on the receiving end of suspect contributions. Obviously, the DOJ wasn't interested in where Sessions' and Pryor's money came from. Will the Alabama press give them a pass as well?
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