House Judiciary Sets Date for Siegelman HearingA House Judiciary panel plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday looking at allegations of politically-motivated prosecutions, including the case of former Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL) and likely the suspicious cases against a Wisconsin bureaucrat that an appeals court called “beyond thin,” and against a Democratic coroner in Pennsylvania.
Siegelman’s lawyers have long contended that the case stemmed from a political vendetta against the Democratic governor in a Republican-dominated state. Documents recently obtained by Time give traction to this claim, showing that investigators ignored allegations from a state lobbyist of wrongdoing by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and former state Attorney General William Pryor, but still initiated an investigation into Siegelman.
The Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson, who first triggered the national coverage of the Siegelman case with her affidavit implicating Karl Rove in the prosecution, spoke with judiciary committee investigators earlier this month. According to the transcript, Simpson described a second instance that fingers Rove in the Siegelman prosecution. There is no word yet if she will testify at next week’s hearing.