Jailed Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman
In yet another Karl Rove election fraud special, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman rots in prison, victim of Rove's long-term plans to turn the US Justice Department into an arm of the Republican Party.
The case has a nasty political smell. From a Republican lawyer testifying for the defense linking the case against Gov. Siegelman to Mr. Rove personally, to the Justice Department asking he be sentenced based on charges he was acquitted of, the more you learn, the more this feels like a hit job.
Forty-four former state attorneys general have asked Congress to open an investigation including several prominent Republicans. Siegelman was denied bail and taken from the courtroom in shackles following his conviction, paraded in front of television cameras just in time for the evening news during a very tight election season, and has rotted in jail ever since while his appeal -- with many issues which legal experts agree are clearly legitimate -- moves forward.
Who implemented Karl Rove's plan? Alberto Gonzales, master of "I don't remember" and "I can't recall." Gonzales of course has not only been axed resigned, but remains the target of multiple investigations. The plan wasn't limited to Siegelman. He was simply one target. The entire firing of the US Attorneys remains designed to put pliable puppets in place so as to force voter fraud cases against Democratic leaning groups and anyone who comes close to winning in 2008 as per Rove's long standing practice. The Department of Justice are falling all over themselves to blame each other for the actual implementation. The original plan was simple -- and illegal.
Democracy Now!Gilly always used to tell me to stop worrying about electronic election fraud and worry about old-fashioned election fraud.
It now looks increasingly like he was a target of a political vendetta that reached into and involved the Department of Justice in a political prosecution. And, in fact, we had a really astonishing development in this case back in May, when a Republican lawyer, Jill Simpson, who had been involved in the electoral campaign of his Republican opponent, Bob Riley, filed an affidavit, in which she described a conversation she had participated in with a man named William Canary. Now, he's a native New Yorker, actually, referred to frequently by Alabamians as "the carpetbagger," who is a prominent Republican kingmaker in Alabama, the head of the Business Council of Alabama. And he stated in this conversation that he had talked to Karl, and Karl had spoken to the Department of Justice, and they didn't have to worry about Don Siegelman anymore. He was going to be taken care of. And he went on to say, "My girls are going to take care of Siegelman."
Well, in fact, the US attorney who brought the case against Siegelman is Laura Canary, his wife, and the action was also joined in an earlier phase by Alice Martin, the US attorney in the Northern District of Alabama, a woman, by the way, who is currently under investigation for perjury, who also is very, very close to Canary. So this linked the case directly to Karl Rove and to political motivation. We took -- spent a lot of time looking at Simpson's affidavit, her motivation, and found it was really fully corroborated all across the board.
One of the really unusual things here is that the judge handling the case -- by the way, the judge handling the case is a former member of the Executive Committee of the Alabama Republican Party who had an open and notorious grudge involving Governor Siegelman, so how he came to handle the case is another real stunning fact about this case. He denied bail pending appeal, and in these sorts of political cases -- in fact, he directed that Governor Siegelman be placed in manacles and handcuffs and taken before waiting television cameras to be shown on the evening news in Alabama, something that a number of Republican attorneys general I talked with described as "absolutely extraordinary."
The allegation that started all this was a study that was done by two professors at the University of Minnesota. They said there were seven prosecutions by this Justice Department of Democrats for every one by a Republican. And if we look at Alabama, it may be the strongest single example of this phenomenon. The Department of Justice went after prominent Democratic elected officials and disregarded corruption that surrounded Republican officials. And, you know, this is one of the real centers of the Abramoff scandal, with a mass diversion of funds and casino gambling money going into the coffers of the Alabama Republican Party, not investigated, not dealt with, not charged.
People at the top of the Justice Department and beyond that were deeply involved tracking and directing this case from the beginning. And the end of the day, I think we're going to see that trail lead back to Karl Rove and his office.
Karl Rove and the US Justice Department, currently a bought and paid for arm of the Republican National Committee, are bringing you election fraud old style...
Vote GOP or go to jail.
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