Siegelman Blasts DoJ and Judge In 'Final' Reply Seeking Hearing
Read at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-kreig/siegelman-blasts-doj-and_b_294164.html
Don Siegelman finally took off the gloves today against his prosecutors and ... the federal appeals court ordered the former governor
Yes the corrupt republican thugs that Bush appointed are still in office, still doing their dirty work. They are pissed that Siegelman has fought back every step of the way & are now trying to have him re-tried before the same crooked Bush judge. Additionally they are asking this judge to tack on an additional 20 yrs for a non-crime. Based on what I have read Judge Fuller is a corrupt, vindictive SOB at best. How obscene does this case have to get before our so-called justice dept decides to do something about the thugs that Bush put in office. Why hasn't Obama removed these attorneys? Why hasn't Holder paid the slightest attention to these cases? Entire families are being destroyed by these criminal U.S. attorneys and YES, Karl Rove! It could just as easily be you if our legal system continues to be used to prosecute & imprison political opposition.
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Email, phone, fax the whole damn Congress!
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ - Clicking on the state it will bring up a page with all elected members of congress, their phone, fax and email links.
Showing posts with label Don Siegelman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Don Siegelman. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Don Siegelman Appeal..Last year Don Siegelman spent the holidays in a cold and lonely cell far from home.
It could happen again.
Don was not a wealthy man to begin with and now through no fault of his own, he owes millions of dollars in legal fees. Having no income during the nine months he was in prison, plus not being able to work full-time since his release, has caused financial stress for his family.
A donation of $5, $10, $50 or more from any of your readers can help him get get past the hard times he and his family are going through - and it will let him know that we still care.
You can donate to Don Siegelman's legal defense fund here, via paypal
http://www.donsiegelman.net/donations_page_paypal.html or by sending a check by mail.
Siegelman Legal Defense Fund
P. O. Box 430116
Birmingham, Alabama 35243
Also, writes Don Siegelman, "the U S Congress must be encouraged to vote Rove in Contempt to uncover the truth! Please log on now to www.ContemptForRove.com to send your message to Congress."
If anyone on this list has a user account at the Daily Kos, you can supportthis fund raiser by voting it up so it has a shot at hitting the rec list.Thanks, Bruce Wilsonhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/25/65640/261/1015/666139
Statement From Don Siegelman]
I am now engaged in two important fights: One for my own freedom and the other to see that Karl Rove in brought to justice. I need your financial help to keep these fights going.
The government has reportedly spent over 40 million dollars to prosecute me. I have pulled virtually everything out of my life's saving to fight these false charges. I need you to give generously. My Legal Defense Trust Fund can take donations of corporate, PAC, foundation or personal money of any size.
While I am fighting for my own freedom, the U S Congress must be encouraged to vote Rove in Contempt to uncover the truth! Please log on now to www.ContemptForRove.com to send your message to Congress.
This fight must be won to unravel the injustices that have been perpetrated against our democracy.
With your help, Karl Rove and his accomplices will be held accountable for their abuse of power.
Thank you,
Don Siegelman
Governor of Alabama 1999-2003
From 1999 to 2003 Don Siegelman was the popular Democratic Governor of Alabama... until what a bipartisan array of politicians including Wesley Clarke and Republican Former US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh have criticized as a politically motivated effort, tied to Karl Rove and also connected to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, that convicted Siegelman of dubious felony charges and sent him to federal prison. [ you can read and watch CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Time, Rolling Stone and New York Times coverage of Don Siegelman's story, at Don's website ]
A bipartisan group of 52 former states attorneys general have filed a legal brief on Siegelman's behalf, in the appeals case to come before the 11th Circuit Court this December 9th.
But even if Don Siegelman is exonerated rather than thrown back in federal prison the legal fees for Don's years-long legal battle has consumed his entire retirement saving account plus an additional borrowed $900,000.
As Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane eloquently write,
For most Americans, the very concept of political prisoners is remote and exotic, a practice that is associated with third-world dictatorships but is foreign to the American tradition. The idea that a prominent politician -- a former state governor -- could be tried on charges that many observers consider to be trumped-up, convicted in a trial that involved numerous questionable procedures, and then hauled off to prison in shackles immediately upon sentencing would be almost unbelievable.
But there is such a politician: Don Siegelman, Democratic governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003. Starting just a few weeks after he took office, Siegelman was targeted by an investigation launched by his political opponents and escalated from the state to the federal level by Bush Administration appointees in 2001. [full Raw Story investigation with timeline, on the Siegelman prosecution]
http://www.donsiegelman.net/Pages/MAIN/aboutdon.html
Monday, April 07, 2008
Karl in a Corner
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002812
Karl Rove likes to compare himself with Mark Hanna, the powerful industrialist and senator in the waning nineteenth century who is often credited with the transformation of American political campaigns. Hanna showed that money could be a powerful tool to sculpt the nation’s political course. He raised $3.5 million for the 1896 campaign of his friend, William McKinley–up to that point an unimagined sum–and he brought in a campaign staff of 1,400, crafted leaflets, did the first direct mailings, devised the notion of surrogate speakers, and refined the notion of political messaging. When I have spoken with Rove’s friends and his competito
rs in Texas, Alabama, and other states where he refined his skills, I usually hear a litany of praise. “Karl is a master tactician,” they say. They turn almost immediately to his uncanny ability to spot and target “his voters,” and his use of direct mailing and other techniques. One Texas philanthropist described bringing Karl Rove in to work with her board in raising money for a museum as the “smartest thing I ever did.”
But then we come, very quickly, to the dark side of the genius of Karl Rove. In 1970, Rove, using a fake ID card, entered the campaign office of Alan J. Dixon, a candidate for Treasurer of Illinois. He stole a box of Dixon’s campaign letterhead and used it to solicit homeless people to attend Dixon’s campaign events, promising free food and alcohol, and disrupting the events.
George H.W. Bush fired Rove after discovering that he had planted a story with his friend columnist Robert Novack attacking chief Bush presidential campaign fundraiser Robert Mosbacher.
But all of this is minor. The graver matters go to the tactics he embraces. In a strategy memorandum he wrote in 1986 for Texas Governor William Clement, Rove quoted Napoleon: “The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack.”
But what were the elements of the “audacious attack?” As James Moore documents in his political biography of Rove, Bush’s Brain, politicians who faced Rove in election contests had recurrent problems.
One was rumor campaigns questioning their sexual orientation, adulterous liaisons and similar tawdry matters. Prime examples of this were the rumor campaign launched against Texas Governor Anne Richards suggesting she was a lesbian, and even more pointedly, the curious telephone push-polling during the decisive 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, suggesting that John McCain had fathered a child in an adulterous relationship with a black woman (McCain and his wife have an adopted daughter from South Asia, whose photograph with her father was circulated in connection with these insinuations).
Second, Rove’s opponents would regularly find that they had suddenly become the target of a criminal investigation, and details concerning the investigation would be aggressively fanned to the press. Rove mastered this technique in a contest for the Texas Agriculture Commissioner’s post that he managed for now-Governor Rick Perry.
Third, and probably the most characteristic of the Rovian tools—“swiftboating.” Rove would cultivate groups which were arguably distant from the campaign proper which would run extremely well funded vitriolic ad hominem attacks on the adversary. The most vivid display of the technique, and indeed the case that produced a new verb for the English language, was the use of military veterans to attack John Kerry over his military record in Vietnam. For a candidate who abandoned his station as a Air National Guard Reservist, refusing to take a physical, and refusing combat service to launch a massive attack on a war hero with a silver star and host of other medals was, well, “audacious.” And ultimately very effective.
These days, Karl is taking a bit of heat over his involvement in the Siegelman case. As I noted in a recent on-air discussion with Dan Abrams, nearly every stone you overturn looking through this case reveals traces of Karl Rove. Rove was serving as campaign advisor to William Pryor, who, as a rabidly partisan Alabama attorney general, launched the investigation into Siegelman almost as soon as he was sworn in as governor. Rove’s close friend and associate William Canary was advising a Republican running against Siegelman, and busily raising money for him as his own wife, Leura Canary, pursued a criminal investigation against Siegelman as U.S. Attorney. A Republican campaign worker disclosed internal discussions about using a criminal prosecution to take out Siegelman, and Rove’s name appeared at every turn, uttered by a person close to Rove. And then the same source, Jill Simpson, described some of her own interactions with Rove in a 60 Minutes segment, followed by another interview on MSNBC’s Dan Abrams show. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the Washington angle…
Rove seems suspiciously concerned about the Simpson allegations, and he’s striking back. The curious thing is that he’s using many of his darker tactics to do so, a move which could well serve in the end to strengthen Simpson’s accusations.
As usual, the Rove approach involves surrogates in the media and the blogosphere. In what may be a sign of desperation, however, Rove is making many of the attacks himself, or is leaving a clear set of fingerprints behind.
Take Rove’s interview in the current issue of the men’s fashion magazine GQ. Here’s how Bush’s brain responds to a query about the Simpson allegations:
[rolls his eyes] Will you do me a favor and go on Power Line and Google “Dana Jill Simpson” [the Republican lawyer who told 60 Minutes that Rove asked her to take a picture of Governor Siegelman cheating on his wife]? She’s a complete lunatic. I’ve never met this woman. This woman was not involved in any campaign in which I was involved. I have yet to find anybody who knows her. And what the media has done on this… No one has read the 143-page deposition that she gave congressional investigators—143 pages. When she shows up to give her explanation of all this, do you know how many times my name appears? Zero times. Nobody checked!
Q: Then how did this happen?
Rove: Because CBS is a shoddy operation. They said, “Hey, if we can say ‘Karl Rove,’ ‘Siegelman,’ that’ll be good for ratings. Let’s hype it. We’ll put out a news release on Thursday and then promo the hell out of it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.” And Scott Pelley—the question is, Did [60 Minutes correspondent] Scott Pelley say to this woman, “You say you met with him. Where? And you say that he gave you other assignments earlier. When did he begin giving you assignments, and what campaigns did you work with him in? What evidence? I mean, this woman, she said she met with him: Okay, you met with him—where? Did you fly to Washington?” Now she says that she talked to me on the phone and she’s got phone records. Of calls to Washington and Virginia. But what’s Virginia? I don’t live in Virginia. And it’s 2001. What is in Virginia? It’s not the Bush headquarters; that was in Austin, Texas. What is in Virginia? So—but look, she’s a loon.
Note Rove’s thematic line: Simpson is “a complete lunatic… a loon.” It apparently gets worse than this. In the original interview, as reported in at-Largely, Rove apparently made scurrilous insinuations about Simpson’s family life and her relationship with her children. GQ made the wise decision to strike them from the published text.
But we should keep one fact in sharp focus: the allegations that Jill Simpson makes are all things that Rove has done, and been caught at, in innumerable other campaigns. They belong to his established modus operandi. And vehement denials are another part of the Rove rapid response pattern.
Rove talks about telephone calls to Virginia and denies that they could relate to his dealings with the Bush campaign and transition team. But public records show that the Bush-Cheney transition effort was headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
Rove tells us that CBS, the nation’s leading news broadcaster, is a “shoddy operation.” But Powerline, a rightwing blog site with close ties to Rove, famous for its vicious political attacks, is the ultimate source for information. Powerline can, of course, be counted upon to come through for Rove in a pinch, and that’s exactly how they’re being used here.
It’s true that the deposition taken of Simpson did not include discussion of Simpson’s accounts of dealings involving Rove other than the now-famous discussion with Rove’s pal William Canary right after the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial contest. But as Rove knows, that issue was covered exhaustively in the investigator’s examination and by several national journalists, not just CBS.
Today, the editors of the Tuscaloosa News call this just right:
Rove can hardly afford to hurl around accusations of shoddy operation. Ethics and morals mean little to him. He has proven time and again that he will do anything to get his way in politics.
And John Mashek at U.S. News & World Report, looking at the evidence of Rove’s involvement in the Siegelman matter, put it this way:
Rove’s methods are a direct contrast to the conduct of two now deceased GOP consultants of the past, John Deardourff and Bob Teeter. Deardourff was the TV ad specialist, while Teeter did the polling and strategizing. As a team, they played to win, but they operated with class and integrity. Rove has neither.
What’s gotten Karl worked into a lather? It’s simple. Jill Simpson and the United States Congress are saying exactly the same thing: Karl, if you’re so clear about this, then certainly you will have no problem appearing in response to a Congressional subpoena, swearing an oath and answering questions–just as Simpson did. Moreover, Congress wants to ask him just the same questions that GQ asked, and that he happily answered. How does Rove explain agreeing to be interviewed by a fashion magazine, but refusing to answer the same questions when formally posed by Congress? And certainly Rove should also turn over documents and answer questions about them, just as Jill Simpson did. Rove’s conduct in chatting up the media but refusing to testify before Congress on the same subjects has certainly been audacious. It’s also been stupid.
Karl’s taunts hurled at CBS are designed to get CBS to put all its cards on the table before Karl goes out wading any further into what he obviously recognizes is a minefield. It’s not that he doubts that CBS did their investigation and confirmed Simpson’s credibility. He knows that they did. And he’s frantic to discover exactly what the evidence is.
Rove has a fundamental problem. His denials will not stand up under scrutiny. And worm and evade as he may, he can’t avoid that simple fact. Which is another reason for us all to say we’re dying to hear Karl Rove’s views about the Siegelman case—as soon as he’s placed under oath and agrees to submit to questioning about them.
In the meantime, tune in tonight for CBS 60 Minutes. (Full disclosure: I have been repeatedly interviewed for the program’s Siegelman coverage.) We’ll see a snippet or two from Scott Pelley’s recent interview with Governor Siegelman. And something tells me that Karl Rove will continue to figure prominently in this story.
Karl Rove likes to compare himself with Mark Hanna, the powerful industrialist and senator in the waning nineteenth century who is often credited with the transformation of American political campaigns. Hanna showed that money could be a powerful tool to sculpt the nation’s political course. He raised $3.5 million for the 1896 campaign of his friend, William McKinley–up to that point an unimagined sum–and he brought in a campaign staff of 1,400, crafted leaflets, did the first direct mailings, devised the notion of surrogate speakers, and refined the notion of political messaging. When I have spoken with Rove’s friends and his competito
rs in Texas, Alabama, and other states where he refined his skills, I usually hear a litany of praise. “Karl is a master tactician,” they say. They turn almost immediately to his uncanny ability to spot and target “his voters,” and his use of direct mailing and other techniques. One Texas philanthropist described bringing Karl Rove in to work with her board in raising money for a museum as the “smartest thing I ever did.”
But then we come, very quickly, to the dark side of the genius of Karl Rove. In 1970, Rove, using a fake ID card, entered the campaign office of Alan J. Dixon, a candidate for Treasurer of Illinois. He stole a box of Dixon’s campaign letterhead and used it to solicit homeless people to attend Dixon’s campaign events, promising free food and alcohol, and disrupting the events.
George H.W. Bush fired Rove after discovering that he had planted a story with his friend columnist Robert Novack attacking chief Bush presidential campaign fundraiser Robert Mosbacher.
But all of this is minor. The graver matters go to the tactics he embraces. In a strategy memorandum he wrote in 1986 for Texas Governor William Clement, Rove quoted Napoleon: “The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack.”
But what were the elements of the “audacious attack?” As James Moore documents in his political biography of Rove, Bush’s Brain, politicians who faced Rove in election contests had recurrent problems.
One was rumor campaigns questioning their sexual orientation, adulterous liaisons and similar tawdry matters. Prime examples of this were the rumor campaign launched against Texas Governor Anne Richards suggesting she was a lesbian, and even more pointedly, the curious telephone push-polling during the decisive 2000 Republican primary in South Carolina, suggesting that John McCain had fathered a child in an adulterous relationship with a black woman (McCain and his wife have an adopted daughter from South Asia, whose photograph with her father was circulated in connection with these insinuations).
Second, Rove’s opponents would regularly find that they had suddenly become the target of a criminal investigation, and details concerning the investigation would be aggressively fanned to the press. Rove mastered this technique in a contest for the Texas Agriculture Commissioner’s post that he managed for now-Governor Rick Perry.
Third, and probably the most characteristic of the Rovian tools—“swiftboating.” Rove would cultivate groups which were arguably distant from the campaign proper which would run extremely well funded vitriolic ad hominem attacks on the adversary. The most vivid display of the technique, and indeed the case that produced a new verb for the English language, was the use of military veterans to attack John Kerry over his military record in Vietnam. For a candidate who abandoned his station as a Air National Guard Reservist, refusing to take a physical, and refusing combat service to launch a massive attack on a war hero with a silver star and host of other medals was, well, “audacious.” And ultimately very effective.
These days, Karl is taking a bit of heat over his involvement in the Siegelman case. As I noted in a recent on-air discussion with Dan Abrams, nearly every stone you overturn looking through this case reveals traces of Karl Rove. Rove was serving as campaign advisor to William Pryor, who, as a rabidly partisan Alabama attorney general, launched the investigation into Siegelman almost as soon as he was sworn in as governor. Rove’s close friend and associate William Canary was advising a Republican running against Siegelman, and busily raising money for him as his own wife, Leura Canary, pursued a criminal investigation against Siegelman as U.S. Attorney. A Republican campaign worker disclosed internal discussions about using a criminal prosecution to take out Siegelman, and Rove’s name appeared at every turn, uttered by a person close to Rove. And then the same source, Jill Simpson, described some of her own interactions with Rove in a 60 Minutes segment, followed by another interview on MSNBC’s Dan Abrams show. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the Washington angle…
Rove seems suspiciously concerned about the Simpson allegations, and he’s striking back. The curious thing is that he’s using many of his darker tactics to do so, a move which could well serve in the end to strengthen Simpson’s accusations.
As usual, the Rove approach involves surrogates in the media and the blogosphere. In what may be a sign of desperation, however, Rove is making many of the attacks himself, or is leaving a clear set of fingerprints behind.
Take Rove’s interview in the current issue of the men’s fashion magazine GQ. Here’s how Bush’s brain responds to a query about the Simpson allegations:
[rolls his eyes] Will you do me a favor and go on Power Line and Google “Dana Jill Simpson” [the Republican lawyer who told 60 Minutes that Rove asked her to take a picture of Governor Siegelman cheating on his wife]? She’s a complete lunatic. I’ve never met this woman. This woman was not involved in any campaign in which I was involved. I have yet to find anybody who knows her. And what the media has done on this… No one has read the 143-page deposition that she gave congressional investigators—143 pages. When she shows up to give her explanation of all this, do you know how many times my name appears? Zero times. Nobody checked!
Q: Then how did this happen?
Rove: Because CBS is a shoddy operation. They said, “Hey, if we can say ‘Karl Rove,’ ‘Siegelman,’ that’ll be good for ratings. Let’s hype it. We’ll put out a news release on Thursday and then promo the hell out of it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.” And Scott Pelley—the question is, Did [60 Minutes correspondent] Scott Pelley say to this woman, “You say you met with him. Where? And you say that he gave you other assignments earlier. When did he begin giving you assignments, and what campaigns did you work with him in? What evidence? I mean, this woman, she said she met with him: Okay, you met with him—where? Did you fly to Washington?” Now she says that she talked to me on the phone and she’s got phone records. Of calls to Washington and Virginia. But what’s Virginia? I don’t live in Virginia. And it’s 2001. What is in Virginia? It’s not the Bush headquarters; that was in Austin, Texas. What is in Virginia? So—but look, she’s a loon.
Note Rove’s thematic line: Simpson is “a complete lunatic… a loon.” It apparently gets worse than this. In the original interview, as reported in at-Largely, Rove apparently made scurrilous insinuations about Simpson’s family life and her relationship with her children. GQ made the wise decision to strike them from the published text.
But we should keep one fact in sharp focus: the allegations that Jill Simpson makes are all things that Rove has done, and been caught at, in innumerable other campaigns. They belong to his established modus operandi. And vehement denials are another part of the Rove rapid response pattern.
Rove talks about telephone calls to Virginia and denies that they could relate to his dealings with the Bush campaign and transition team. But public records show that the Bush-Cheney transition effort was headquartered in McLean, Virginia.
Rove tells us that CBS, the nation’s leading news broadcaster, is a “shoddy operation.” But Powerline, a rightwing blog site with close ties to Rove, famous for its vicious political attacks, is the ultimate source for information. Powerline can, of course, be counted upon to come through for Rove in a pinch, and that’s exactly how they’re being used here.
It’s true that the deposition taken of Simpson did not include discussion of Simpson’s accounts of dealings involving Rove other than the now-famous discussion with Rove’s pal William Canary right after the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial contest. But as Rove knows, that issue was covered exhaustively in the investigator’s examination and by several national journalists, not just CBS.
Today, the editors of the Tuscaloosa News call this just right:
Rove can hardly afford to hurl around accusations of shoddy operation. Ethics and morals mean little to him. He has proven time and again that he will do anything to get his way in politics.
And John Mashek at U.S. News & World Report, looking at the evidence of Rove’s involvement in the Siegelman matter, put it this way:
Rove’s methods are a direct contrast to the conduct of two now deceased GOP consultants of the past, John Deardourff and Bob Teeter. Deardourff was the TV ad specialist, while Teeter did the polling and strategizing. As a team, they played to win, but they operated with class and integrity. Rove has neither.
What’s gotten Karl worked into a lather? It’s simple. Jill Simpson and the United States Congress are saying exactly the same thing: Karl, if you’re so clear about this, then certainly you will have no problem appearing in response to a Congressional subpoena, swearing an oath and answering questions–just as Simpson did. Moreover, Congress wants to ask him just the same questions that GQ asked, and that he happily answered. How does Rove explain agreeing to be interviewed by a fashion magazine, but refusing to answer the same questions when formally posed by Congress? And certainly Rove should also turn over documents and answer questions about them, just as Jill Simpson did. Rove’s conduct in chatting up the media but refusing to testify before Congress on the same subjects has certainly been audacious. It’s also been stupid.
Karl’s taunts hurled at CBS are designed to get CBS to put all its cards on the table before Karl goes out wading any further into what he obviously recognizes is a minefield. It’s not that he doubts that CBS did their investigation and confirmed Simpson’s credibility. He knows that they did. And he’s frantic to discover exactly what the evidence is.
Rove has a fundamental problem. His denials will not stand up under scrutiny. And worm and evade as he may, he can’t avoid that simple fact. Which is another reason for us all to say we’re dying to hear Karl Rove’s views about the Siegelman case—as soon as he’s placed under oath and agrees to submit to questioning about them.
In the meantime, tune in tonight for CBS 60 Minutes. (Full disclosure: I have been repeatedly interviewed for the program’s Siegelman coverage.) We’ll see a snippet or two from Scott Pelley’s recent interview with Governor Siegelman. And something tells me that Karl Rove will continue to figure prominently in this story.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Court of Appeals Sets Governor Siegelman Free
Court of Appeals Sets Governor Siegelman Free As Congress Calls Siegelman to Testify in Continued Probe of Political Prosecutions
Scott Horton March 27, 2008
Today was a news double-header for former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. In an order issued by the Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Siegelman’s request to be set free pending his appeal was granted. The court noting that it had reviewed the decision of District Court Judge Mark Fuller for “clear error” and had considered legal issues de novo stated that:
Siegelman has satisfied the criteria set out in the statute and has specifically met his burden of showing that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact.
Meanwhile in Washington, the House Judiciary Committee made clear that it was far from finished with its probe into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case.
Committee investigators express concern about the Justice Department’s continuous obstruction of efforts to investigate political influence in the Siegelman case and a group of others in which prosecutors have adopted unprecedented theories in an effort to take down prominent Democrats. In the Siegelman case, Justice Department officials have refused to provide evidence under oath, claiming privilege, they have answered written queries with misleading and openly false statements, and they have refused to turn over documents requested by the Committee. Attorney General Mukasey has been repeatedly asked by members of both the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee to examine the extraordinary evidence of misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Montgomery and Birmingham, and he has declined to do so. The Justice Department’s stonewalling has thus been complete, top to bottom, and in view of the Justice Department’s refusal to engage in basic self-policing, Congressional oversight is urgently needed. The Judiciary Committee has now concluded that it has no alternative but to require that Siegelman appear before it. The Judiciary Committee has received tens of thousands of appeals from citizens around the country demanding that it take action to hold the Justice Department to account for its misconduct–much of this occurring after CBS News’s 60 Minutes and MSNBC’s Dan Abrams ran a series of exposes revealing extremely troubling misconduct in the course of the prosecution.
Here is the Associated Press’s account:
The House Judiciary Committee has asked the Justice Department to temporarily release former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman from prison to testify before Congress in early May about possible political influence over his prosecution.
A spokeswoman for the committee said Thursday that Siegelman, who is serving more than seven years in a Louisiana prison, would travel to Washington under guard of the U.S. Marshals Service. She said Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, wants to hear directly from Siegelman because lawmakers are having trouble getting information elsewhere, including from the Justice Department.
The AP also reported that Attorney General Michael Mukasey had indicated he would seek to block the Judiciary Committee’s efforts to have Siegelman testify. That was consistent with prior Justice Department decisions aimed at gagging Siegelman and preventing disclosure of Justice Department misconduct in his case. Mukasey’s opposition was mooted when the Court of Appeals directed his release.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002739
Scott Horton March 27, 2008
Today was a news double-header for former Alabama Governor Don E. Siegelman. In an order issued by the Court of Appeals in Atlanta, Siegelman’s request to be set free pending his appeal was granted. The court noting that it had reviewed the decision of District Court Judge Mark Fuller for “clear error” and had considered legal issues de novo stated that:
Siegelman has satisfied the criteria set out in the statute and has specifically met his burden of showing that his appeal raises substantial questions of law or fact.
Meanwhile in Washington, the House Judiciary Committee made clear that it was far from finished with its probe into allegations of prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case.
Committee investigators express concern about the Justice Department’s continuous obstruction of efforts to investigate political influence in the Siegelman case and a group of others in which prosecutors have adopted unprecedented theories in an effort to take down prominent Democrats. In the Siegelman case, Justice Department officials have refused to provide evidence under oath, claiming privilege, they have answered written queries with misleading and openly false statements, and they have refused to turn over documents requested by the Committee. Attorney General Mukasey has been repeatedly asked by members of both the House and the Senate Judiciary Committee to examine the extraordinary evidence of misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s offices in Montgomery and Birmingham, and he has declined to do so. The Justice Department’s stonewalling has thus been complete, top to bottom, and in view of the Justice Department’s refusal to engage in basic self-policing, Congressional oversight is urgently needed. The Judiciary Committee has now concluded that it has no alternative but to require that Siegelman appear before it. The Judiciary Committee has received tens of thousands of appeals from citizens around the country demanding that it take action to hold the Justice Department to account for its misconduct–much of this occurring after CBS News’s 60 Minutes and MSNBC’s Dan Abrams ran a series of exposes revealing extremely troubling misconduct in the course of the prosecution.
Here is the Associated Press’s account:
The House Judiciary Committee has asked the Justice Department to temporarily release former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman from prison to testify before Congress in early May about possible political influence over his prosecution.
A spokeswoman for the committee said Thursday that Siegelman, who is serving more than seven years in a Louisiana prison, would travel to Washington under guard of the U.S. Marshals Service. She said Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, wants to hear directly from Siegelman because lawmakers are having trouble getting information elsewhere, including from the Justice Department.
The AP also reported that Attorney General Michael Mukasey had indicated he would seek to block the Judiciary Committee’s efforts to have Siegelman testify. That was consistent with prior Justice Department decisions aimed at gagging Siegelman and preventing disclosure of Justice Department misconduct in his case. Mukasey’s opposition was mooted when the Court of Appeals directed his release.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/03/hbc-90002739
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