« previous | MUCK HOME | next »
House Panel to Seek Hearing with Jailed Alabama Ex-Gov
The House Judiciary Committee will seek to hold a hearing where ex-Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL), currently in a federal prison after conviction on bribery charges, will testify before the committee. A spokesperson for the committee told me that the panel has notified the Justice Department and the Bureau of Prisons of their intent, and that the official request to the Department would be forthcoming. The spokesperson said that the committee was hoping to hold the hearing sometime this spring.
The committee has already held one hearing on Siegelman's case, a hearing that featured one of Siegelman's former defense lawyers, Doug Jones. Jones testified that prosecutors had told him in 2004 after the collapse of one prosecution against Siegelman, that Justice Department officials had ordered them to "take another look at everything." An effort which ultimately resulted in the successful second prosecution -- a prosecution full of holes as 60 Minutes showed in its report last month.
Josh
Zachary
Get the Attorney who implicated Rove and have them both testify side by side with Siegelman. Rove wouldn't be able to claim executive privilege here. Maybe the Governor and his son wouldn't hurt either. Has any frame up smelled as bad or has been as skanky as this? All with DOJ complicity in Alabama and DC with the White House close behind. Pitiful.
March 27, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Better late than never. This should have happened several months ago.
March 27, 2008 12:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
About time, but I guess better late than never.
March 27, 2008 12:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a pleasant surprise! As long as we're talking dream scenarios, I'd like to see Rob Riley called to testify before the committee. Jill Simpson has already provided testimony and records showing she had contact with RR and I wonder how much he would deny under oath.
March 27, 2008 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone who puts an man in jail falsely should automatically be put in jail for double the amount of time he intended for his victim. This would be an awesome deterrent to all right wing morally and politically corrupt republicans who think the only thing that can go wrong is having a jury not believe their bullshit. Society would then be safe from these liars and bullies and decent people could go about their business with confidence in the system.
March 27, 2008 12:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Solzhenitsyn wrote about a prosecutor in the USSR whose motto was "Give me a man and I'll make a case."
These are the kind of prosecutors we have at DoJ today. Their procedure is: first, select the target of the investigation, then find the evidence. If the case is thrown out, as occurred with Siegelman, try again with a friendlier judge. The same approach has brought down Gov. Spitzer, and the DoJ hasn't even charged him yet; it wrote highly prejudicial and scandalous material about him in a complaint against other invididuals, then disclosed the identity of "Client 9". Who knew that being a prosecutor for a Republican administration could be such fun!
March 27, 2008 1:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Although I am not convinced re Spitzer (it's hard to argue that's not largely a self-inflicted wound - I mean, c'mon, the Republicans hardly had to do anything but look and see what he was up to), the Siegelman prosecution is another story entirely. The conflicts of interest on the prosecution team are staggering. Moreover, the the prosecutors tried three times to make the charges stick before a jury finally convicted. And this notwithstanding the fact that it was an "honest services" fraud case, one of the most capacious and broadly-defined "crimes" in Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Historically, the DOJ is a crown jewel of the federal government. Only after Bush leaves the White House will the public be able to fully assess the damage that his administration has done to this institution.
March 27, 2008 1:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
The problems are selective prosecution and leaking material designed to convict Spitzer in the "court of public opinion" rather than bring him to trial. (And it's doubtful he'll ever be charged with anything, since they haven't managed to dig up any evidence that he broke any financial laws, and charging on the Mann Act alone isn't going to happen.)
Remember, the US Attorneys were fired for refusing to pursue cases against Democratic officials and pursuing ones against Republicans. So a Democratic official apparently being guilty isn't enough to prove it's not political, especially when we have no federal investigation of a prominent Republican (Vitter) for the same "crime."
March 27, 2008 2:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wait a minute---can you do this? I've never heard of a convict testifying before. Well, apparently you can, but this is interesting to a layperson like me.
What are the odds of DOJ agreeing to this? Part of me thinks that they'll say yes--letting Siegelman testify is doable, in Mukasey's mind. The danger, of course, would be that Siegelman has new information to share. But what's M going to do, say no? He has to weigh the backlash from that against the risks involved with letting Siegelman speak.
I think Mukasey's in a tough spot with this one, because everyone knows it stinks to high heaven, but in order to become AG he promised to do everything in his power to protect the president from scrutiny, and that means he has to make this case go away. He could try and ride it out until it becomes the next AG's problem. That way Bush can't blame him for anything that happens down the road. But if you think about it, the really smart thing for him to do would be to appoint a hack special prosecutor. That would give him a cover story, allow everyone to say "no comment on investigations," and make the whole thing disappear. That's what I'd do--put an Alice Fisher type on it and let it gather dust for as long as possible.
March 27, 2008 1:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Rove wouldn't be able to claim executive privilege here."
Are you serious? Of course Rove and Shrub would claim executive privilege - executive privilege has no limit!
March 27, 2008 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
What will Congress do when Mukasey gums this to death? Nothing.
Congress should just save themselves the humiliation with the hope that Obama wins the election and is inaugurated (since those are largely unrelated in recent history).
March 27, 2008 1:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
If by chance BO gets to be president I predict he will pardon all of the Bush henchmen in order to "move forward" and not relive the past gory Repub years. He will accept all the powers that Bush has scribed out of the constitution and move all the dirty stuff to the scrap heap of history. All the while Bush will travel the world telling everyone what a great leader he was, while having no threat of prosecution and reap in millions in speaking fees from all his worldly friends. Unless Bush pardons everyone on the way out the door!
March 27, 2008 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see any reason why Congress can't seek Siegelman's testimony. Siegelman is not launching a collateral attack on his conviction. Rather, the Judiciary Committee of the House, exercising the authority of a coequal branch, is affirmatively telling an agency of the executive branch what it is going to do. There is no legal bar. Any resistance posed by the administration is pure politics.
March 27, 2008 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bush pardoning Siegelman makes a lot of sense too, if you think about it.
S never gets to clear his name publicly--keeping him neutralized in Alabama politics--but most importantly it would preclude an investigation into DOJ, the B'ham USA office, etc.
March 27, 2008 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope they impeach the judge who refuses to release the transcripts of the trial, thus preventing an appeal, a year after the end of the trial. The refusal to release the transcript is as odious as false imprisonment, and the refusal to allow 45 day bail after the 'judgement' was delivered. Get the judge, get Rove, and get the DoJ that allowed this travesty.
March 27, 2008 3:26 PM | Reply | Permalink