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Alaska Rep. Says FBI Used Shifty Tactics
Muck accusations are flying the other way up in Alaska these days. A lawyer for former state Rep. Vic Kohring (R-AK) said the FBI had another former lawmaker who was secretly cooperating in the ongoing Veco probe pressure Kohring into pleading guilty to bribery.
From the AP:
Investigators normally are prohibited from contacting defendants once they have a lawyer.Kohring has pleaded not guilty to bribery and extortion charges despite what defense lawyer John Henry Browne contended was persistent pressure from the Justice Department to change the plea.
That pressure culminated recently, Browne said, when Kohring's former aide received a call from an aide in state Sen. Fred Dyson's office. The message, Browne said, was to take a plea deal.
It was only last week that Browne learned Dyson had been working with investigators since 2006. Details about the cooperation emerged in a related trial and showed that Dyson helped prosecutors persuade oil contractor Bill Allen to cooperate in the overarching investigation.
In July, Kohring's lawyers asked to push back his corruption trial for three months because it was going to take them that long to get through the mountain of physical and digital evidence the FBI collected against Kohring. The trial is slated to start on October 22.
Senator Dyson will be surprised to hear that he's a "former" lawmaker.
September 17, 2007 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Can't the AP get anything right? The allegation that investigators contacted a defendent other than through his lawyer is ridiculous on its face or, at the very least, completely unsupported by the remainder of the story.
Prosecutors initiate and bargain plea deals, not investigators. The story states "…when Kohring's former aide received a call from an aide in state Sen. Fred Dyson's office. The message, Browne said, was to take a plea deal."
So where is the prosecutorial, or investigative, application of pressure? On the aide in Dyson's office? Who then contacts a peer in Kohring's office and, in an ostensibly private conversation, says that Kohring should take a plea deal?
That's at least three steps—and possibly four steps—removed from the defendant and his counsel.
Weak, AP, but nice try. Send your reporter and editor back to journalism school, and have then spend some time studying 'the law' while they are at it.
September 17, 2007 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink