Siegelman Speaks

In a follow-up piece, Don Siegelman himself appeared on 60 Minutes last night. For those of you just tuning in, Siegelman was the Democratic Governor of Alabama until being accused and eventually convicted in a bribery scandal. The evidence was so thin, and the prosecution so suspect, that Siegelman was actually released from jail pending appeal. And last night, he pointed the finger squarely at the unequal justice of the Bush Administration and in particular a certain political operative.

Siegelman was in prison in February when he watched the original 60 Minutes broadcast with other inmates.

In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley, he describes the jailhouse reaction to the broadcast: "Well immediately people were standing up, sayin', 'You got screwed.' And I'd say, 'Well, you know, I think there were a lot of ya'll that got screwed.' And then, one guy stood up and said, 'No, I was guilty. You got screwed.' "

Using different words, a federal appeals court raised the same possibility, agreeing that his "appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact likely to result in reversal" of his conviction.

Siegelman was once the most successful Democrat in Alabama. He claims his prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice was influenced by the president's former political advisor, Karl Rove.

"What we need," Siegleman says, "is Karl Rove to get himself over to the Judiciary Committee and put his hand on a Bible and take an oath and give testimony. And he can either tell the truth or take the Fifth. Either one will satisfy me."

We of course know how adept this Congress has been at getting Bush Administration officials to submit testimony, but in this case, they are investigating the circumstances surrounding the Siegelman case. When you have the prosecution's star witness admitting to have practiced his testimony over and over to make sure he got it right, when you have a Republican lawyer stating that Karl Rove personally instructed her to get dirt on Siegelman, and when you have the collected wisdom of seven-plus years of Justice Department politicization and intervention, it's hard for Congress not to notice. Remember that this is the same Administration that decided they had an exemption to the Fourth Amendment. There's absolutely no reason to believe that those wiretaps were used for strictly terrorism-fighting purposes. We have too much evidence to the contrary.

The Justice Department's inspector general is investigating whether a career attorney in the department was dismissed from her job because of rumors that she is a lesbian. The case grew out of a larger inquiry into the firings of U.S. attorneys and politicization at Justice under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...

Hagen received the highest possible ratings for her work as liaison between the Justice Department and the U.S. attorneys' committee on Native American issues. Her final job evaluation lists five categories for supervisors to rank her performance. For each category, a neat X fills the box marked, "Outstanding." And at the bottom of the page, under "overall rating level," she also got the top mark: Outstanding.

The form is dated February 1, 2007. Several months before that evaluation, Hagen was told her contract would not be renewed.

60 Minutes Does Siegelman

CBS' story on the Don Siegelman case last night was fine for a 9-minute television expose, but of course it isn't possible to take in all of the contours. Scott Horton, who has doggedly followed this case for Harper's, and who was interviewed for the story, adds a little more context.

...the show was dominated by one of 52 former attorneys general from 40 of the 50 states who have called for a Congressional probe of the conduct of the Siegelman case, former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods. He leveled a series of blistering accusations at the Bush Administration’s Justice Department. With the Alabama G.O.P. this evening issuing a near-hysterical statement in which it characterizes the CBS broadcast—before its transmission—as an anti-Republican attack piece, it was notable that Woods, like the piece’s other star witness, is a Republican. Not just any Republican, either. Grant Woods is co-chair of the McCain for President leadership committee, and a lifelong friend and advisor to the presumptive 2008 G.O.P. presidential candidate. Woods is also godfather to one of the McCain children.

Attorney General Woods has this to say about the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of Siegelman: “I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of.”

In other words, not being able to beat Siegelman at the polls, Woods believes that his own party corruptly used the criminal justice process to take out an adversary. This is an extraordinary, heavy accusation. Not something that a senior Republican would raise easily about his own party. And the facts back the accusation up, beginning to end.

Siegelman allowed HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy to remain on an oversight board on which he had already served, and in return Scrushy gave money to a noble effort to improve education in the state of Alabama, an effort Siegelman approved of. That's literally the reason that Siegelman is in a jail cell right now. This is the kind of thing that, were it actually considered bribery, would put every politician in America in jail. The case hung on this idea that Siegelman walked out of a meeting with Scrushy with the check, a baseless lie spouted by a criminal on Siegelman's staff, and the Justice Department KNEW it was a lie and yet continued the case. 60 Minutes tried to talk with the accuser, a man named Nick Bailey, but the DoJ refused to authorize the interview (he's in a federal prison).

The prosecutors nabbed him and then told him he could get a light sentence if he worked with them to nail Siegelman, their real target. This very process is a perversion of the justice system, which as former U.S. Attorney Jones very properly says, requires that prosecutors investigate crimes and not people. But it gets still worse. Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy’s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.

Horton also notes that CBS has plenty more on this case:

CBS conducted dozens of interviews and has much more that it hasn’t shown. The additional footage concerns the Canary team—husband Billy who advised the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidates against Siegelman, and wife Leura Canary, whose prosecution of Siegelman was essential to the G.O.P.’s efforts to secure the Montgomery statehouse. And they have much more on the inexplicable conduct of federal Judge Mark Fuller, appointed by George W. Bush, a former member of the Alabama G.O.P.’s Executive Committee, and a man who publicly stated that Siegelman had a grudge against him—but who refused to recuse himself from the case.

Apparently, the show was kicked off the air in portions of Alabama, for what the station claimed were "techincal" difficulties (this was refuted by CBS National). This station is owned by Republican Party backers. Ho-hum.

I don't know if the 60 Minutes story will act as a defibrillator, to bring the Siegelman story back to life. I sincerely hope it does. Karl Rove deserves to go down for illegitimizing the cause of justice in this country.

UPDATE: Siegelman's lawyers call for a special prosecutor.

TV Alert

They buried it on the same night as the Oscars, but 60 Minutes will be airing the Don Siegelman story on Sunday. Siegelman, the Democratic former governor of Alabama, is sitting in a jail cell right now for trumped-up reasons, almost certainly orchestrated by Karl Rove and his charges. Jill Simpson, a former Republican campaign worker, has powerful evidence of this travesty of justice, and she'll go on the record in the story:

A former Republican campaign worker claims that President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, asked her to find evidence that the Democratic governor of Alabama at the time was cheating on his wife, according to an upcoming broadcast of "60 Minutes."

Jill Simpson, who has long alleged that Rove may have influenced the corruption prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman, makes the claim against Rove in a broadcast scheduled to be aired Sunday, according to a statement from CBS.

Simpson testified to congressional investigators last year that she overheard conversations among Republicans in 2002 indicating that Rove was involved in the Justice Department's prosecution of Siegelman. She has never before said that Rove pressed her for evidence of marital infidelity in spite of testifying to congressional lawyers last year, submitting a sworn affidavit and speaking extensively with reporters [...]

According to the CBS statement, Simpson says Rove approached her at a 2001 meeting, when Siegelman was still governor.

"Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman?" reporter Scott Pelley asks.

"Yes," Simpson replies.

"In a compromising sexual position with one of his aides," Pelley says.

"Yes, if I could," she responds.

Simpson said she is speaking out because Siegelman's seven-year sentence on corruption charges bothers her, the release said. She said she found no evidence of an affair.

Karl Rove has dodged a lot of bullets in his day, but the entire operation is on the line with this Siegelman story. This involves the US Attorneys scandal, as the real meaning of that scandal was about directing federal prosecutors to bring charges against Democrats and politicize the Justice Department. It involves Rove's project to build a permanent Republican majority through implementing all of the federal agencies at his disposal. It involves the entire impetus of the Bush White House. Kagro X has a fantastic post detailing the implications here.

This really demonstrates the lengths to which Bush-Cheney's hyper-politicized Department of Justice can go. If they can railroad the actual governor of a state into prison and have pretty much nobody really sit up and take notice, what does that say about the extent of the damage to the country? Not just the DOJ (which is a goner), but about the supposed watchdogs of the media, who've been in large part either cowed into silence, or distracted by an endless stream of shiny objects?

Seriously, this means they can do this to anybody.

But worse than that, it means that anybody who finds themselves under scrutiny by the federal government now has license to charge that they're being politically targeted. Because if this can happen as Horton describes it happening, all bets are off. It has all the ingredients of the complete and total undoing of all federal law enforcement capability for the foreseeable future [...]

That's the true measure of the damage the Bush-Cheney "administration" has caused. It's no longer just your basic looting of the Treasury. Dollar-based corruption we at least understand. But corruption of the actual mechanisms of the government itself? Corruption not meant to enrich, but to corrode public trust in the only system we have for actually holding corrupt officials to account?

We're now looking at federal law enforcement so grossly politicized that even a landslide victory for the opposition party might not be able to root the corruption out.

I'll be TiVoing on Sunday night. You should too. 52 former state Attorneys General have signed letters in support of re-opening the Siegelman case and investigating the politicization. You should do what you can to help them.

... I should add that this is something that Digby talks about a lot: the right appropriating the critiques of the left. You can bet that if a President Obama or President Clinton tries to get rid of some corrupt Republicans buried deep inside the federal agencies, the bloody shirt of "politicization" will be waved. They poisoned the well of impeachment to innoculate themselves of that potential action, they're sure to use "voter fraud" claims to try and illegitimize elections, and then this. It's something I hope we're thinking about.