We now know that the federal employee alleging government misconduct in the Ted Stevens case is a special agent with the FBI, according to a heavily redacted version of the agent’s complaint released today.
While working on Operation Polar Pen — the wide-ranging probe into public corruption in Alaska whose most prominent catch has been Ted Stevens — the agent “witnessed or learned of serious violations of policy, rules, and procedures as well as possible criminal violations.”
Among the agent’s more eye-popping charges — which you can read here — is that an unnamed government employee “accepted multiple things of value from sources,” including “drawing/artwork, house-hunting assistance and employment for ___.”
TPMmuckraker can’t help but wonder how the artwork in question compares to Ted Stevens’ salmon statue — one of the unreported gifts that led the government to prosecute the elderly senator in the first place.
Another of the agent’s charges: that a member of the DOJ Public Integrity Section “inappropriately created [a] scheme to relocate [a] prosecution witness that was also subpoenaed by defense during trial.” This charge — which involves witness Robert Williams, the manager of the makeover of the Stevens family chalet — also emerged during the trial.
And it looks like the government is playing the role of the ill-prepared pupil yet again in the case, as Judge Emmett Sullivan points out in a fairly devastating footnote accompanying the complaint. (Keep in mind here that the complaint was due to be posted on the publicly available electronic docket at 4 p.m. today):
Despite having had the Court’s redactions for nearly 48 hours, the government contacted the Court at 3:00 p.m. on December 22, 2008, an hour before posting, with additional requests for redactions. …The remaining two [of the government’s] requests pertain to an individual’s name that was not redacted by the government in the government’s own proposed redactions. [emphasis Sullivan’s]
This is from the same crack government team whose major typo — in the official indictment — was caught by the jury during deliberations.