And by a Republican attorney. This will be interesting to watch.
In the rough and tumble of Alabama politics, the scramble for power is often a blood sport. At the moment, the state’s former Democratic governor, Don Siegelman, stands convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges and faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison. Siegelman has long claimed that his prosecution was driven by politically motivated, Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys.
Now Karl Rove, the President’s top political strategist, has been implicated in the controversy. A longtime Republican lawyer in Alabama swears she heard a top G.O.P. operative in the state say that Rove “had spoken with the Department of Justice” about “pursuing” Siegelman, with help from two of Alabama’s U.S. attorneys.
According to the affidavit, William Canary, GOP operative and Riley campaign advisor (and now President & CEO of the Business Council of Alabama), told a group on a conference call that there was no need to worry about Siegelman’s election challenge because “his girls” would take care of it. “His girls” being, apparently, his wife Leura Canary, the US Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, and Alice Martin, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. Canary also allegedly said that “he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman.”
It looks like he got what he wanted.
Both U.S. attorney offices subsequently indicted Siegelman on a variety of charges, although Leura Canary recused herself from dealing with the case in May 2002. A federal judge dismissed the Northern District case before it could be tried, but Siegelman was convicted in the Middle District on bribery and conspiracy charges last June.
Wow! I’d always considered the Siegelman/Scrushy prosecution legitimate. In fact, my only problem with Richard Scrushy going to jail any time soon is that he should have already been there — and stripped of his assets — because of the fraud he perpetrated at HealthSouth. This report makes me take a second look. It would be much easier to refute these allegations if the Bush administration hadn’t made the Justice Department its own political playground. And if Karl Rove weren’t a complete sleazeball willing to do literally anything to win.
ADDENDUM: Here’s an interesting tidbit. The affidavit alleges that Terry Butts, attorney for Riley and former Supreme Court Justice, was in on the conference call. Would that be the same Terry Butts who later served on Richard Scrushy’s defense team?
Danny has also posted on this story at Doc’s Political Parlor. And Left In Alabama has some good background on Rove’s ongoing influence in Alabama politics (see the comments).
I suppose it could be both. He did the bad things, and they only went after him cause he wasn’t a Republican. Like the “everybody else was speeding, but the cop only pulled me over” line of defense.
The “my girls” part absolutely cracks me up. I can just see all these lady lawyers in their dark suits and closed-toe pumps, singing “Three Little Maids From School.”
The “my girls” part absolutely cracks me up. I can just see all these lady lawyers in their dark suits and closed-toe pumps, singing “Three Little Maids From School.”
I can see his wife taking off her closed-toe pump and whacking him upside his sexist head.
I’ve heard for several years now that Siegelman had enough opponents who were determined to get him on something. But all this makes me wonder…?
Always recall the Rove influence in Alabama politics. Mark Kennedy vs. Harold See, whisper campaign, wasn’t it…?
HOLY SMALL WORLD! from the Left in Alabama link — Dana Jill Simpson! I gotta call that woman, ain’t seen her in years…!
I seem to remember Ingram (It was Ingram, not Kennedy) running television ads claiming that See wasn’t qualified because he never passed the bar (um, he was a LAW PROFESSOR–Hello!). I also remember ads making vague allegations about See’s divorce. Ingram ran one of the slimiest campaigns ever–and THAT’s saying something in Alabama!
Um, Susan? You might want to check this out:
“A typical instance occurred in the hard-fought 1996 race for a seat on the Alabama Supreme Court between Rove’s client, Harold See, then a University of Alabama law professor, and the Democratic incumbent, Kenneth Ingram. According to someone who worked for him, Rove, dissatisfied with the campaign’s progress, had flyers printed up—absent any trace of who was behind them—viciously attacking See and his family. “We were trying to craft a message to reach some of the blue-collar, lower-middle-class people,” the staffer says. “You’d roll it up, put a rubber band around it, and paperboy it at houses late at night. I was told, ‘Do not hand it to anybody, do not tell anybody who you’re with, and if you can, borrow a car that doesn’t have your tags.’ So I borrowed a buddy’s car [and drove] down the middle of the street … I had Hefty bags stuffed full of these rolled-up pamphlets, and I’d cruise the designated neighborhoods, throwing these things out with both hands and literally driving with my knees.” The ploy left Rove’s opponent at a loss. Ingram’s staff realized that it would be fruitless to try to persuade the public that the See campaign was attacking its own candidate in order “to create a backlash against the Democrat,” as Joe Perkins, who worked for Ingram, put it to me. Presumably the public would believe that Democrats were spreading terrible rumors about See and his family. “They just beat you down to your knees,” Ingram said of being on the receiving end of Rove’s attacks. See won the race.
“
Kathy, if you keep throwing facts back at these people, they will quit reading your blog.
My opinion is that many officials have done or are actively doing things that push the envelope of legality. Most are never indicted for it. The DOJ can’t prosecute everything and ideally they would go after the most serious offenses first and most of the nickle and dime crooks would get a warning, but not much else. The Siegelmam/Scrushy case probably makes the grade, since there was a lot of money involved. What boggles my mind and clouds the whole issue is that, according to this article, the Bush DOJ investigates 7 times more Democrats than Republicans. I just cannot believe that either party has such a monopoly on corruption. From Appendix A of the same source, here are the Alabama state and local officials investigated from 2001 to 2006:
And further down in the article I linked:
“Some of Kennedy’s campaign commercials touted his volunteer work, including one that showed him holding hands with children. “We were trying to counter the positives from that ad,” a former Rove staffer told me, explaining that some within the See camp initiated a whisper campaign that Kennedy was a pedophile. “It was our standard practice to use the University of Alabama Law School to disseminate whisper-campaign information,” the staffer went on. “That was a major device we used for the transmission of this stuff. The students at the law school are from all over the state, and that’s one of the ways that Karl got the information out—he knew the law students would take it back to their home towns and it would get out.” This would create the impression that the lie was in fact common knowledge across the state. “What Rove does,” says Joe Perkins, “is try to make something so bad for a family that the candidate will not subject the family to the hardship. Mark is not your typical Alabama macho, beer-drinkin’, tobacco-chewin’, pickup-drivin’ kind of guy. He is a small, well-groomed, well-educated family man, and what they tried to do was make him look like a homosexual pedophile. That was really, really hard to take.”
mooncat, very interesting list. Thanks for posting it.
Jeff, that’s just poisonous. Nothing is too low for Rove.
Sorry the list is such a mess. I accidentally hit Post before I was really finished.
“According to someone who worked for him. . .”
Well now there’s a verifiable source. And Joe Perkins is the king of sleezeball tactics in Alabama. I’d hardly call him credible on the issue of ethical campaign tactics.
Alabama’s Democrats (like joe Perkins) are fond of blaming their losses in judicial races on Karl Rove and supposedly ‘dirty tactics” so they don’t have to take responsibility for the fact that that brand of jackpot justice alienated the vast majority of Alabama’s voters.
Read the Simpson affidavit here: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/docs/rove-affidavit/?resultpage=1&
Both parties have pulled the same dirty tricks over the years. This IS politics. And wrong is still wrong.
The really interesting thing about the affidavit is that it appeard to have been filed because Simpson thought Butts had a conflict of interest. NOT because she thought the charges were politically motivated.
Overlooked in all of this is that the ball got rolling on Siegelman’s history of corruption by Eddie Curran’s reporting for the Mobile Register. I DOUBT Karl Rove had anything to do with that.
Eddie seems pretty untamable, but I would put nothing past the folks who run the Press Register. (”Mobile Register” no longer—that’s such a limiting name.)
2002 is when the conversation happened? That is before the prosecution of Siegelman in Birmingham that Martin bungled so badly it had to be dismissed by the Chief Judge in her district.
2002 was after William Canary paid off Martin’s campaign debts. http://alelections.blogspot.com/2006/01/guest-blog-by-siegelman-aide-chip-hill.html It looks like Canary’s girl owed him, even if that meant she had to bring a bogus prosecution to keep Karl Rove happy. (Is that what kept Martin on the “safe” list during the firing of “incompetent” United States’ Attorneys despite the fact that she personally lost the lay down prosecution against Richard Scrushy in Birmingham?)
When Martin flamed out, Canary’s other girl prosecuted Siegelman, but failed to convict him on any counts in the massive indictment except for the few that permitted the Jury to also convict a reviled Alabama figure, Richard Scrushy, the founder of Healthsouth whose prosecution was also bungled by Martin. Siegelman was convicted of bribery in charges that didn’t involve any personal gain to him and that placed Scrushy on a board that previous and unprosecuted Republican Governors had appointed him to. The Government has now asked a Republican Judge to put Siegelman in jail for thirty years, ten more than for Scrushy who sure enough wrote out a gigantic check and paid a bribe. Apparently, Siegelman is big cheese compared to Scooter Libby who only invoked enough prosecutorial wrath to warrant a three year recommended sentence from the Government.
Perhaps the kicker? This story about Martin firing a black prosecutor & being sanctioned just this year for engaging in racial discrimination and retaliation when she fired this lawyer. http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/070107/rehire.shtml U.S. Attorneys’ can only hire a new prosecutor when an existing one leaves.
Let’s get this straight — Did Martin go trump up the firing of a black prosecutor to make way for her to have the space to hire Matt Hartt, an employee of the Alabama Attorney General’s office with a less than stellar resume for ethics and a penchant for going after Democrats?
The 60 Minuute story on Governor Siegelman not only proves that Governor Siegelman is a political prisoner. The people involved in prosecuting this sham of a case against him should be investigated and thrown in prison.
The best of luck and may God bless Governor Siegelman.