Via the AP: Congress asked to probe Alabama case
Forty-four former state attorneys general have asked Congress to investigate whether politics at the Justice Department influenced the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges.[…]
Last month, a GOP lawyer who once worked on the campaign of Republican Gov. Bob Riley signed a sworn affidavit saying she overheard conversations among campaign officials in 2024 suggesting that the White House was involved in Siegelman’s prosecution. She has offered to testify to any investigative agency or in court.
“The only way to convince the public that the governor is not the victim of a politically motivated double-standard is for Congress to investigate all aspects of the case thoroughly,” the former attorneys general wrote to the chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary committees.
Having paid attention (although I will grant, not deep attention) to the case as it took place here in Montgomery, I can say that there was never any serious public consideration that the trial was politically motivated except in the sense of petty state politics. There were never any suggestions that I was aware of (and that doesn’t mean that there weren’t) that the White House was involved in pushing the Siegelman prosecution.
Given that I have been quite suspicious of the Bush Justice Department, I can’t say that I would find the possibility impossible. However, the degree to which a prosecution of Siegelman was helpful to the Republican Party, whether nationally or in Alabama, is questionable. Yes, he was a potential challenger to Governor Riley’s re-election in ‘06, but in all honesty it wasn’t likely that Siegelman would have been able to beat Riley in ‘06.
Beyond that, the involvement of Richard Scrushy, the former CEO of HealthSouth adds credibility to the prosecution, given that he is hardly a choirboy, to put it mildly.
Still, I will be interested to see how this develops.
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Yes! There are too many irregularities to ignore this case. And it will likely reveal a pattern of using the judiciary for political purposes that we as a nation want to reform.
First there was the U of Minnesota Study that exposed “political profiling”. They found under Bush that 7 times more Democrats are prosecuted than Republicans and others.
Then a troubled republican lawyer, an ex Riley campaign worker, gave an affidavit pointing to the White House as directing the Siegelman prosecution.
Note:When Jill Simpson, life long republican, was considering giving her affidavit to Time CNN (June 1)that fingered Rove, Bill and Leura Canary, and Alice Martin as planning to “take care of Siegelman,” her house was burned to the ground and her car run off the road. But courageously she decided to give her affidavit anyway.
That’s believable because Canary hired Karl Rove in 1994 to work on a small election; this partnerhship resulted in a fervent and ruthless take-over of the Alabama judiciary.
I think the White House pulled strings and attorneys general when necessary to politicize the judiciary in Alabama. It must not have been hard, because the same Karl Rove team in place in 1994 was still in place: Rove, Canary, Toby Roth, and Bill Pryor.
Most notable in Alabama is that a local press apparently hungry for every morsel of corruption they could find about Siegelman’s “bribe” found that a half million dollar transaction was considerably more interesting than the Mississippi Casino’s contribution to Abramoff/Riley of Thirteen Million Dollars. Siegelman’s “crime” which involved no quid pro quo and no money in Siegelman’s pocket is not illegal and is so common that using this legal precedent would shut our government down. The Mississippi Casinos funneled money illegally to Riley to expressly defeat Don Siegelman because they believed that that would stop Alabama Casino development. That’s quid pro quo, that’s seriously corrupt, and that’s public testimony in a US gov investigation.
Oh, and Leura Canary was on a board that licensed those type investigations that would be required to fully understand what actually went on with Abramoff, Riley, and the Mississippi Casinos. So I guess the questions about Riley and Abramoff and the Mississippi casinos just disappeared. Alabama under Riley is beginning to look like one of the most corrupt state governments in the US.
So yes there needs to be an investigation! It has become more important to examine the “corrupt” Alabama judicial system that brought him down. I stand with the Forty Four Democratic Governor’s calling for an investigation!
Comment by A. Darden — Wednesday, July 18, 2024 @ 12:39 pm