On Aug. 27, holdover officials from the Bush Justice Department filed 226 pages arguing that former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and his co-defendant have presented no evidence since their 2006 bribery convictions that justifies a hearing or new trial.
No evidence?
As too often in the past, DoJ officials look like they're exaggerating to block justice and to protect themselves. By seeking to imprison Siegelman for 20 additional years, DoJ clearly seeks to end public debate about Alabama’s most prominent Democrat. He held that distinction for years, at least until he narrowly lost re-election in 2002 following still-mysterious Election night switches of 6,000 votes out of his column in a rural county after polls closed.
The all-out federal criminal prosecution launched against Siegelman in 2004 remains the centerpiece of unresolved evidence that Karl Rove used DoJ to target Democratic officials nationwide. In-depth public scrutiny of the DoJ's high-ranking prosecution teams risks revelations about similar problems in hundreds of other disputed DoJ investigations that altered the nation’s political map during the Bush years.
In the long run, however, DoJ risks even more – including public confidence that it's protecting our rights to fair elections and trials – if it shirks its responsibility to endorse a full hearing to clear the air.
New evidence since Siegelman’s 2006 trial includes claims of judicial bias and corruption, plus DoJ political prosecution orchestrated by Rove, judge-shopping, jury tampering, failing to comply with prosecutor recusal, firing a DoJ whistleblower, and suppressing evidence that DoJ tried to blackmail its central witness against Siegelman with a sex scandal.
Also, 75 former state attorneys general ─ the chief law enforcers from more than 40 states ─ made a bipartisan filing that is unprecedented in U.S. legal history to argue that Siegelman committed no crime by appointing a donor to a state post.
Siegelman’s convictions centered on his 1999 request to HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to donate to a non-profit foundation to improve Alabama’s funding for education via a state lottery.
Scrushy arranged two donations to the foundation. Siegelman reappointed Scrushy to an unpaid state board on which he’d served under three previous governors. A jury that reported deadlock finally found guilt on 7 of 32 bribery-related charges. The defendants received lengthy prison terms and heavy fines.
Last year, Siegelman, now 63, was released on appeal bond after a CBS 60 Minutes exposé about his prosecution. Scrushy, 53, remains in prison, with each of his convictions stemming from the donations to the education foundation that Siegelman helped create to counter millions in spending by casino owners secretly allied with gambling opponents.
Alabama’s Republican Party sniped at CBS reporting. But former National Press Club President Robert Ames Alden, a Washington Post editor for 48 years who supervised coverage of many major stories before his retirement in 2000, found the coverage compelling. “The Siegelman prosecution,” Alden tells me, “is one of the worst miscarriages of justice that I’m aware of in the past half century in America.”
Denial Under Oath?
DoJ’s most recent filing falsely told presiding federal judge Mark Fuller that Business Council of Alabama CEO William Canary has denied under oath to the House Judiciary Committee that he schemed with “Karl” to remove Siegelman from Alabama politics. But no committee record exists of such a sworn statement, as noted by Alabama reporter Roger Shuler.
Canary, a former Republican National Committee chief of staff, is well-known in relevant quarters of DoJ. Many “loyal Bushies” remain in power after eight years of employment practices that included mid-term firings of U.S. attorneys who failed to use their powers for political prosecutions. News reports and litigation show that the Bush DoJ also relied heavily on politics in hiring and promoting career staff.
Canary is a longtime Rove ally who advised Alabama's current Republican governor in his successful 2002 gubernatorial campaign against Siegelman. Canary’s wife Leura, shown below in her official photo, is Alabama’s U.S. attorney for the office that is prosecuting Siegelman. She remains in power despite the nation’s tradition that its 93 U.S. attorneys resign after a change of presidents.
Most of those accused of framing Siegelman deny claims by the defense, whistleblowers and investigative reporters. But none of the denials have been in public under oath and subject to cross-examination. Some have been comments to the press, and many others have been in affidavits that can avoid key issues.
Rove and Harriet Miers, the highest-ranking of the Bush White House advisors accused of improperly interfering at DoJ, were interviewed in private this summer by House Judiciary Committee staff and a Congressman from each party. But the interview rules did not require an oath. Upon release of the transcripts Aug. 11, Rove claimed vindication in his Wall Street Journal column.
A Real Probe Needed
But Rove and Miers asserted memory loss many times on key questions during their interviews, and Rove misled his Journal readers by falsely claiming that Alabama whistleblower Dana Jill Simpson has never testified.
An attorney, Simpson voluntarily testified in 2007 under House Judiciary Committee staff cross-examination. Behind closed doors, she swore that a prominent fellow Republican predicted in early 2005 that Siegelman would be re-indicted later that year after collapse of the government’s first case against him. Also, she swore that she heard that Siegelman’s new prosecution would be steered to the Bush-nominee Judge Fuller, who “hated” Siegelman and would “hang” him.
Rove’s spin on these kinds of post-conviction issues shows why this summer’s interviews should be just a first step in a more thorough probe and public hearing. The Justice Department should live up to its name by welcoming cross-examination of witnesses under oath before a fair judge. Questions about this case and so many like it around the country will not be forgotten simply by imprisoning the defendants. Others care deeply, both because of defendant rights and our own. My next articles will explore growing concerns around the country about such matters, including those being voiced by Republicans and libertarians. The national magazine for paralegals Know just published my in-depth profile Dissed and Dismissed about the courageous paralegal Tamarah Grimes, an Alabama Republican fired by DoJ in June after she went through official whistleblower channels in 2007 to allege DoJ prosecution misconduct in the Siegelman case. In the meantime, I read HuffPost comments with great interest and look forward to learning your suggestions (including, yes, your criticism) and ideas for next steps.Follow Andrew Kreig on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AndrewKreig
Murray Waas: Former U.S. Attorney condemns Bush White House Interference with Corruption Probe
With the 2006 mid-term elections approaching, a top aide to Karl Rove warned Harriett Miers that a Republican congressman's re-election was in serious jeopardy. Newly published emails show what happened next.
Free Don Siegelman!
http://donsiegelman.org/
One more example: Legal Times has now reported that this DoJ has dropped the perjury charges against Bradley Schlozman. (http://legaltimes.typepad.com/blt/2009/09/holder-declines-to-prosecute-schlozman.html)
Thus—having done likewise for Ted Stevens, and vote-rigger James Rubin, and certain other tainted Bush Republicans up in Alaska--Obama's "justice" team has now summarily absolved a fervent party op who lied to Congress re: his efforts to politicize.... the DoJ! He did such work, specifically, in furtherance of BushCo's vast campaign to fix US elections, and thereby rule _despite_ the votes' will.
So, first, we all should give Brad Schlozman a big hand, however grudgingly, because he (and his cohorts) clearly did an aces job, since the (ostensible) Obama/Biden DoJ is still Bush/Cheney's—which also is to say, Karl Rove's.
And then, having given them the credit that they're due, let's tell the DoJ just how we feel about this latest blow in favor of the gang that plans to steal its way back into power in our next few elections. Let's tell them that there is NO justice in a system that continues to torment the innocent (who happen to be Democrats)—Don Siegelman, Oliver Diaz, Paul Minor, Sue Schmitz and many others—while letting criminals (who happen to be Bush Republicans) walk free.
You can email the DoJ at AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.
MCM
One figure stands out here, Leura Canary, appears to stand behind the scenes, pulling strings in the U.S. Justice Department office, now furiously pulling dead cats out of a hat to defend here and her husband's interests against disclosures that the Siegelman trial was a series of shams.
There is a huge amount of disgraceful business- and political-interest maneuvering still going in her office. I am very, very disappointed in the Obama DOJ for not taking responsibility; there are people in jail, other people's lives are being destroyed TODAY by failure of DOJ to even review available documents and testimony.
If the new people in DOJ feel they can improve their relationships with the many Bush appointees still in southern states, accepting false testimony from those people, depose them in private not under oath, permitting them to make questionable statements and not following up on them, yes, is very polite. But then, as a law officer you do not need to be polite in saying "stop thief" more than a couple of times, particularly if the thief is damaging not only property but is doing bodily harm.
Personally, I find it hard to continue to accept the Holder DOJ as too busy or too polite. Now DOJ just looks bad.
Query, if I with more than 35 years of federal trail/appellate civil litigation experience can be targeted by the government and courts for exercising my federal statutory rights and deprived of access to an impartial court and civil jury trial to stop malfeasance--what is either an inexperience attorney or a layman father to do to protect their rights against malfeasance by the government and courts? (see, (http://www.liamsdad.org/others/isidoro.shtml; and http://home.earthlink.net/~malfeasance).
Our Republic cannot survive the unbridled tyranny of government attorneys and judges’ use of cronyism to deny access to an impartial court, and then surreally placed themselves above and beyond the law. We need only recall the sorry use of acts by German judges, lawyers, and law schools to permit Hitler and the NAZI’s to power.