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Source: TIME.com
Friday, Nov. 14, 2008
By Adam Zagorin / Washington
Next month in Atlanta, a federal court will hear the high-profile appeal of former Alabama governor Don E. Siegelman, whose conviction on corruption charges in 2006 became one of the most publicly debated cases to emerge from eight years of controversy at the Bush Justice Department. Now new documents highlight alleged misconduct by the Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney and other prosecutors in the case, including what appears to be extensive and unusual contact between the prosecution and the jury.
The documents, obtained by TIME, include internal prosecution e-mails given to the Justice Department and Congress by a whistle-blower during the past 18 months. John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which investigated the Siegelman case as part of a broader inquiry into alleged political interference in the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys by the Bush Justice Department, last week sent an eight-page letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey citing the new material.
Conyers says the evidence raises "serious questions" about the U.S. Attorney in the Siegelman case, who, documents show, continued to involve herself in the politically charged prosecution long after she had publicly withdrawn to avoid an alleged conflict of interest relating to her husband, a top GOP operative and close associate of Bush adviser Karl Rove. Conyers' letter also cites evidence of numerous contacts between jurors and members of the Siegelman prosecution team that were never disclosed to the trial judge or defense counsel.
The letter to Mukasey is a signal that Democrats intend to probe what critics call the "dark side" of the Bush Administration even after it leaves office, according to congressional sources. Besides the Siegelman prosecution, such investigations could focus on the authorization of harsh interrogation methods and the role of Karl Rove and former White House aide Harriet E. Miers in the firing of U.S. Attorneys.
Siegelman was released on bail earlier this year after a federal court ruled that his appeal raises "substantial questions." But the issue that turned the case into a national controversy was the allegation of political bias. Critics, including a bipartisan group of 52 state attorneys general, have raised numerous questions, including the allegation that Siegelman was prosecuted at the insistence of Bush-appointed officials at the Justice Department and Leura G. Canary, a U.S. Attorney in Montgomery whose husband was Alabama's top Republican operative and who had worked closely with Rove for years.
When the House Judiciary Committee looked into the Siegelman affair earlier this year, the DOJ issued statements, placed in the Congressional Record, maintaining that the case had been handled only by career prosecutors, not political appointees, and that Canary had recused herself in 2002, "before any significant decisions ... were made."
But new documents furnished by DOJ staffer Tamarah T. Grimes tell a different story. A legal aide who worked in the Montgomery office that prosecuted Siegelman, Grimes first submitted her documents to DOJ watchdogs in 2007, and now finds herself in an employment dispute that could result in her dismissal. Grimes' lawyer had no comment.
The documents — whose authenticity is not in dispute — include e-mails written by Canary, long after her recusal, offering legal advice to subordinates handling the case. At the time Canary wrote the e-mails, her husband — Alabama GOP operative William J. Canary — was a vocal booster of the state's Republican governor, Bob Riley, who had defeated Siegelman for the office and against whom Siegelman was preparing to run again. Canary also received tens of thousands of dollars in fees from other political opponents of Siegelman.
In one of Leura Canary's e-mails, dated Sept. 19, 2005, she forwarded a three-page political commentary by Siegelman to senior prosecutors on the case. Canary highlighted a single passage, which, she told her subordinates, "Ya'll need to read, because he refers to a 'survey' which allegedly shows that 67% of Alabamans believe the investigation of him to be politically motivated." Canary then suggested: "Perhaps [this is] grounds not to let [Siegelman] discuss court activities in the media!"
Prosecutors in the case seem to have followed Canary's advice. A few months later they petitioned the court to prevent Siegelman from arguing that politics had any bearing on the case against him. After trial, they persuaded the judge to use Siegelman's public statements about political bias — like the one Canary had flagged in her e-mail — as grounds for increasing his prison sentence. The judge's action is now one target of next month's appeal.
"A recused United States Attorney should not be providing factual information ... to the team working on the case under recusal," Conyers wrote to Mukasey last week. Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said only that "the department will review the letter." A spokesperson for Canary said she had nothing to add.
Beyond providing the e-mails, Grimes has given a written statement to the Department of Justice that Canary had "kept up with every detail of the [Siegelman] case." If true, Conyers told Mukasey, this raises "serious concerns" because "it is difficult to imagine the reason for a recused [U.S. Attorney] to remain so involved in the day-to-day progress of the matter under recusal."
Last year Grimes gave the DOJ additional e-mails detailing previously undisclosed contact between prosecutors and members of the Siegelman jury. In nine days of deliberation, jurors twice told the judge they were deadlocked and could not reach a decision. After the panel finally delivered a conviction, allegations emerged that jurors had discussed the case in e-mails among themselves and downloaded Internet material — serious breaches that could have invalidated the verdict. But the trial judge ruled that the jurors' alleged misconduct was harmless.
The DOJ conducted its own inquiry into some of Grimes' claims and wrote a report dismissing them as inconsequential. But the report shows that investigators did not question U.S. Marshals or jurors who had allegedly been in touch with the prosecution.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. Marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described as reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans. Conyers commented that the "risk of [jury] bias ... is obvious."
What's more, when prosecutors conducted their own investigation of suspected improper conduct by jurors after the trial, two of them were interviewed, despite instructions from the judge that no contact with jurors should occur without his permission. Those interviews were not publicly disclosed until nearly two years later, when the head of the DOJ's criminal division belatedly wrote all parties, including the appeals court in Atlanta, to inform them.
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DOJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct — apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
In his letter to Mukasey, Conyers calls this additional juror contact "important information," noting, "It is startling to see such repeated instances of federal prosecutors failing to keep the defense apprised of key developments in an active criminal case." He might have added that the judge was, in some instances, apparently not in on the secret either.
Find this article at: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1858991,00.html
Source: The New York Times, NYTimes.com
June 16, 2008
Editorial
Don Siegelman, the former Alabama governor, is asking a federal appeals court to throw out his conviction on dubious corruption charges. His appeal has some surprising backers: a bipartisan group of 54 former state attorneys general has submitted a brief on his behalf. Congress is also investigating charges that Mr. Siegelman was politically targeted.
Mr. Siegelman was the Democrats’ strongest candidate to retake the Alabama governorship, and Congress has uncovered evidence that the United States attorney’s office in Montgomery — with possible White House input — may have decided to prosecute him to undermine his campaign. The former presidential adviser Karl Rove, who has been accused of pushing to have Mr. Siegelman indicted, has been subpoenaed by both the House and Senate, but has refused to testify.
While Congress examines those allegations, Mr. Siegelman is asking the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, to reverse his case on the law. Mr. Siegelman was accused of reappointing Richard Scrushy, then the chief executive of HealthSouth, to a health care board in exchange for a contribution to a referendum campaign for a state lottery.
Mr. Siegelman was convicted of bribery and related crimes and sentenced to more than seven years, and served nine months before being freed on appeal.
Laws against bribery must be used carefully. It is not a crime for an elected official to appoint a campaign contributor to a position. If it were, many ambassadors and judges — and the presidents and governors who appointed them — would be in jail. And partisan prosecutors would have far too much power to punish elected officials they did not like.
For an appointment to be illegal, there needs to be an express quid pro quo — something the prosecutors did not prove in Mr. Siegelman’s case.
Even the highly partisan Bush Justice Department appears to be losing confidence in its case. It originally appealed Mr. Siegelman’s sentence, hoping to add more than 20 years. It recently withdrew the appeal without explanation.
Congress should compel Mr. Rove to testify. And it should keep investigating this prosecution and what role crass politics may have played. While it does, the 11th Circuit should cast a skeptical eye on this case, based on the law and the facts.
Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
May 23, 2008
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee pressed its investigation of possible political influence in Justice Department prosecutions on Thursday by issuing a subpoena to Karl Rove, the former chief political operative at the Bush White House.
Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the committee chairman, said the subpoena was necessary because Mr. Rove had explicitly declined an invitation to appear voluntarily. Mr. Conyers and fellow committee Democrats say they want to question Mr. Rove about the dismissals of several federal prosecutors and ask whether he knows anything about the decision to prosecute former Gov. Donald E. Siegelman of Alabama, a Democrat.
Mr. Siegelman, who was convicted on a bribery charge, was released from prison in March pending an appeal after an appeals court ruled that he had raised “substantial questions” about his case.
Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, in a letter to Mr. Conyers this week, said the chairman was “provoking a gratuitous confrontation.” Mr. Luskin asserted that Mr. Rove would not appear because he had been directed not to do so by the White House. Although Mr. Rove has left the White House and is now a political commentator, Mr. Luskin said that Mr. Rove “in these matters is not a free agent” and must comply with instructions from the White House not to testify.
Mr. Conyers has argued that Mr. Rove may not himself invoke any privilege on behalf of the White House but that President Bush could do so.
Mr. Rove’s lawyer also noted that the House committee was engaged in a similar conflict with Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel, who has also declined to provide voluntary testimony about the dismissals of the federal prosecutors and has defied a subpoena. That issue has landed in federal court, and Mr. Luskin said the Rove matter should await the resolution of that case.
Mr. Conyers, in a letter to Mr. Luskin on Thursday, said that the request to Mr. Rove was wider than the one to Ms. Miers because it also sought information about the Siegelman prosecution.
Several Democrats have asserted that Mr. Siegelman’s prosecution was encouraged for political reasons by Republicans in Washington. Mr. Siegelman served nine months of a seven-year sentence before being released pending an appeal.
Mr. Rove has denied any role in the Siegelman prosecution in comments to journalists, but Mr. Conyers is seeking to put him under oath. The subpoena demands that Mr. Rove appear before the committee on July 10.
If he does not appear, as expected, House Democrats will have to consider issuing a contempt citation as they did for Ms. Miers.
Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
March 29, 2008
By ADAM NOSSITER
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, released from prison Friday on bond in a bribery and corruption case, said he was as convinced as ever that politics had played a leading role in his prosecution.
Speaking by telephone in his first post-prison interview, shortly after he had left the federal penitentiary at Oakdale, La., Mr. Siegelman said there had been “abuse of power” in his case, and repeatedly cited Karl Rove, the former White House political director.
“His fingerprints are smeared all over the case,” Mr. Siegelman said, a day after a federal appeals court ordered him released on bond and said there were legitimate questions about his case. He was sentenced to serve seven years last June after a guilty verdict on bribery and corruption charges a year earlier.
In measured tones after spending nine months at the prison, the former governor, a Democrat, said he would press to have Mr. Rove answer questions to Congress about his possible involvement in the case.
“When Attorney General Gonzales and Karl Rove left office in a blur, they left the truth buried in their documents,” Mr. Siegelman said, referring to Alberto R. Gonzales. “It’s going to be my quest to encourage Congress to ensure that Karl Rove either testifies, or takes the Fifth.”
Mr. Rove, who once ran judicial campaigns here and has long denied any involvement in the Siegelman case, could not be reached for comment Friday, but his lawyer, Robert Luskin, dismissed the accusation.
“There’s absolutely, positively, no truth to any of the allegations and literally no evidence for any of it,” Mr. Luskin said.
The House Judiciary Committee has already held a hearing on Mr. Siegelman and has called the former governor to testify at another.
On Thursday, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, ordered Mr. Siegelman released while he appeals his conviction, overturning an earlier decision by an Alabama federal judge who had ruled that the former governor should remain in jail. State Democratic officials have accused that judge, Mark E. Fuller, of playing politics because of his close ties to Republicans.
The investigation, trial and conviction of Mr. Siegelman, a veteran politician, has become a flash point for broader Democratic contentions that politics has influenced decisions by the Justice Department under President Bush, including the firings of several United States attorneys, and other federal prosecutions besides Mr. Siegelman’s.
In June 2006, a federal jury here convicted Mr. Siegelman of taking $500,000 from Richard M. Scrushy, the former chief executive of the HealthSouth Corporation, in exchange for an appointment to the state hospital licensing board.
The money was to retire a debt from Mr. Siegelman’s campaign for a state lottery to pay for schools, and his lawyers have insisted it was no more than a routine political contribution. They also cited the fact that Mr. Scrushy had served on the licensing board under three previous governors, as an indication that appointment to it could not have been deemed a reward.
Federal prosecutors say Mr. Siegelman was liable on the loan, and thus had a personal interest in the money.
The appellate court ruling said Mr. Siegelman had raised “substantial questions” in his appeal. That was seen by the former governor’s lawyers and other supporters as a signal that their central contention — that he was wrongly convicted for ordinary political activity — has hope of prevailing.
At least one legal expert, previously skeptical of Mr. Siegelman’s arguments, said he was “surprised” by the new ruling, which he characterized as unusual.
“It’s quite rare for the appellate court to substitute its view and displace everything that came before,” said the expert, Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law.
The ruling was “not a promise of reversal, but it should give him great confidence,” said Mr. Gillers, suggesting that the ruling could have been influenced by “contextual” factors like the firings of the federal prosecutors.
Speaking by telephone outside the prison, Mr. Siegelman said he had confidence that the federal appeals court, which now considers his larger appeal, would agree with his view of the case.
Otherwise, he said, “every governor and every president and every contributor might as well turn themselves in, because it’s going to be open season on them.”
In Alabama, the Siegelman case has inflamed partisan passions, with Republicans describing Mr. Siegelman’s term from 1998 to 2002 as deeply corrupt, and Democrats furious over what they depict as a years-long political witch hunt.
In a sworn statement, a Republican lawyer and political operative, Jill Simpson, told of hearing one of Mr. Rove’s allies here, William Canary, discussing Mr. Siegelman during the 2002 governor’s race, and saying “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.” The United States attorney here, Leura G. Canary, is married to Mr. Canary.
That statement has been the basis for a tide of speculation about possible conspiracies that continues to swirl here.
Mr. Siegelman has been one of this state’s most visible political figures for decades, having also served as secretary of state, attorney general and lieutenant governor. He was elected governor in 1998, but was narrowly defeated by a Republican in 2002, while he was under a much-publicized investigation.
Early Friday, the former governor completed his prison chores for the day — mopping a barracks area — and waited for his wife and son to pick him up for the eight-hour drive home to Birmingham, Ala.
“I was in prison,” Mr. Siegelman said afterward, when asked about his life at Oakdale. “I was treated like a prisoner. I’m not going to complain about the way I was treated.”
He added: “It feels great to be out. I wish I could say it was over. But we’re a long way from the end of this.”
Source: TIME.com
October 10, 2007
By Adam Zagorin/Washington
A Republican lawyer claims she was told that Karl Rove — while serving as President Bush's top political adviser — had intervened in the Justice Department's prosecution of Alabama’s most prominent Democrat. Longtime Alabama G.O.P. activist Dana Jill Simpson first made the allegation in June, but has now provided new details in a lengthy sworn statement to the House Judiciary Committee. The Committee is expected to hold public hearings on the Alabama case next week as part of its investigation of possible political interference by the Bush Administration in the activities of the Department of Justice.
Simpson said in June that she heard a close associate of Rove say that the White House political adviser "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, with help from two of Alabama's U.S. attorneys. Siegelman was later indicted on 32 counts of corruption, convicted on seven of them, and is currently serving an 88-month sentence in Federal prison.
If Simpson's version of events is accurate, it would show direct political involvement by the White House in federal prosecutions — a charge leveled by Administration critics in connection with the U.S. attorney scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. But her account is disputed; those who she alleges told her about Rove's involvement during a G.O.P. campaign conference call claim that no such conversation took place. Rove himself has not responded to Simpson's allegations, which are clearly based on second-hand information, and the White House has refused to comment while Siegelman's case remains on appeal.
Still, the Judiciary Committee plans to air Simpson's testimony as part of its probe into political involvement in federal prosecutions. TIME has obtained a copy of Simpson's 143-page sworn statement to the Judiciary Committee. She recalls conversations in early 2005 with Rob Riley, Jr., son of Alabama's current Republican governor, over his father's coming gubernatorial race, in which Siegelman appeared to be the top Democratic challenger. The younger Riley, she says, told her that his father and Bill Canary, the state's top Republican political operative and a longtime friend of Rove, contacted Rove in late 2004, after which he intervened with the Justice Department's Public Integrity section to push for criminal prosecution of Siegelman. Months later, in May 2005, Siegelman was indicted, setting off a chain of events that led to his imprisonment and the end of his political career.
Simpson also claims Riley, Jr., named the judge who would eventually be assigned to the case, and says Riley told her the judge would "hang Don Siegelman" because of a grudge against the former governor. She says he also specified one of the exact charges that Siegelman would later face. She says Riley, Jr., told her that Siegelman had conceded the close 2002 governor's race to his father only after being told he would no longer be subject to possible federal corruption charges.
Contacted by TIME, Riley said, "Ms. Simpson's statements have gone from being not only untrue to absurd and ridiculous." He added, "She has now gone way beyond her original affidavit, to make claims so important that it's inconceivable they would not have been included in her original statement."
Simpson also provided evidence aimed at refuting the younger Riley's claims, when the allegations first surfaced last June, that he barely knew Rove. This evidence includes a letter, over which a message is scrawled in what Simpson says is Riley's handwriting. The message reads, "To: Jill — I e-mailed this to (name redacted), Karl (signed) Rob". Simpson says Riley's reference is to Karl Rove. Riley counters that "Karl" refers to another lawyer. The president of the company whose case Riley was handling at the time said: "Rob Riley mentioned Karl Rove about four or five times as someone he was getting in touch with to help settle our business in Washington."
When the Judiciary Committee publicly examines the Siegelman case next week, sources close to the panel say that former Alabama U.S. attorney Doug Jones will likely be a witness. Jones had been Siegelman's lawyer until 2005, and says that in July 2004, he was told by federal prosecutors that only three areas of potential wrongdoing by the former governor were under investigation. Yet when Siegelman went to trial, he faced a 32-count indictment. "We on the defense believed that the case would soon be over, based on that conference with Federal prosecutors in July 2004," Jones said.
By late 2004, the same prosecutors had rethought the entire case. Jones claims he was told by one prosecutor that the reason for the change was that the Justice Department in Washington had ordered a "top-to-bottom review," revisiting all possible charges against Siegelman after more than three years of investigation. After that, Jones says, the case unexpectedly "kicked into high gear" as witnesses were called before a grand jury.
But Steve Feaga, a U.S. attorney who dealt with Jones, has a different recollection. "The offenses charged against Siegelman were the same ones we discussed all along with his lawyers," Feaga says. "The prosecution never conducted a top-down review at the direction of DOJ in Washington; that review was done at our own initiative."
The Judiciary Committee will examine the timing of prosecutors' top-to-bottom review of their case with the timing of Rove’s alleged intervention with the Justice Department. That's one reason Simpson was summoned before the Judiciary Committee last month to explain herself under penalty of perjury.
Source: Time.com
Thursday, Oct. 04, 2007
By Adam Zagorin
On May 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking "good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair, personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however, that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.
The case of Don Siegelman, the Democratic former Governor of Alabama who was convicted last year on corruption charges, has become a flash point in the debate over the politicization of the Bush Administration's Justice Department. Forty-four former state attorneys general — Republicans and Democrats — have cited "irregularities" in the investigation and prosecution, saying they "call into question the basic fairness that is the linchpin of our system of justice." The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's office strongly deny that politics played any part in Siegelman's prosecution. They say the former Governor, who recently began serving the first months of his more than seven-year sentence, got exactly what he deserved. But Justice officials have refused to turn over documentation on the case requested by the House Judiciary Committee, which scheduled a hearing on Siegelman's prosecution for Oct. 11.
Now TIME has obtained sensitive portions of the requested materials, including FBI and state investigative records that lay out some of Young's testimony. The information provided by the landfill developer was central to roughly half the 32 counts that Siegelman faced for allegedly accepting campaign contributions, money and gifts in exchange for official favors. (Siegelman was acquitted on 25 of those counts and convicted on seven. Young pleaded guilty to bribery-related charges and, in recognition of his cooperation with the government, received a short two-year sentence and fine.) But what Young had to say about Sessions, Pryor and other high-profile Alabama Republicans was even more remarkable for the simple fact that much of it had never before come to light.
The Young transcripts will probably add fuel to charges that the Bush Administration pursued selective justice in Alabama. Leura Canary, the U.S. Attorney whose office drove Siegelman's prosecution, is married to Bill Canary, Alabama's most prominent political operative and a longtime friend of Karl Rove's. In May an Alabama lawyer and Republican activist named Dana Jill Simpson gave a notarized statement that she heard Canary say Rove "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman, with help from two of Alabama's U.S. Attorneys. Bill Canary called her charge "outrageous," and other alleged participants in the phone conversation issued similar denials. (The White House declined to comment, citing Siegelman's pending appeal.) But last month Simpson testified behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee. Sources tell TIME that, under penalty of perjury, she repeated her allegations about Canary and Rove.
Alabama is as red a state as the clay in its earth. After the years of rule by Southern Democrats, Republicans have now taken up residence in the Governor's mansion, as well as most statewide offices and congressional seats. In the 1990s Rove helped orchestrate a G.O.P. near sweep of the Alabama Supreme Court.
In this new Republican landscape, Siegelman emerged as one of the few Democratic stars, winning the Governor's race in 1998. He lost the seat in a close and contested race in 2002, but polls in 2003 showed that he had a good chance of recapturing the governorship. Then came the first indictment from the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, charging Siegelman with using his position to rig a state bidding process. A judge dismissed the case in 2004 for lack of evidence. Just as Siegelman was preparing to run for Governor again, a second round of charges was brought in 2005 by the U.S. Attorney's office in Montgomery. His trial in 2006 overlapped with Alabama's Democratic primary, in which Siegelman had initially been a heavy favorite.
The investigation into Siegelman began as an inquiry into a contract held by Young to build a state warehouse in Alabama. Young was a well-liked figure in Montgomery who, by his own account, was in the habit of handing out cash, checks, rides on his private airplane and other goodies to members of both political parties. In return, he apparently hoped to receive favorable treatment for his garbage dumps and other lucrative state-related business.
Young testified that he had furnished Siegelman with an all-terrain vehicle and a motorcycle, lavishing money on the Governor and his aides. But he was an equal-opportunity influence monger. Early in the investigation, in November 2001, Young announced that five years earlier, he "personally provided Sessions with cash campaign contributions," according to an FBI memo of the interview. Prosecutors didn't follow up that surprising statement with questions, but Young volunteered more. The memo adds that "on one occasion he [Young] provided Session [sic] with $5,000 to $7,000 using two intermediaries," one of whom held a senior position with Sessions' campaign. On another occasion, the FBI records show, Young talked about providing "$10,000 to $15,000 to Session [sic]. Young had his secretaries and friends write checks to the Sessions campaign and Young reimbursed the secretaries and friends for their contributions."
If true, Young's statements describe political money laundering that would be a clear violation of federal law. In 1996, when Young said he had made the contributions, it was illegal to give a candidate more than $1,000 for a primary or general campaign. None of the individuals Young named as his intermediaries in making the donations are listed in Federal Election Commission records as contributors to Sessions' 1996 U.S. Senate race. "We have on record a $1,000 contribution from Mr. Young during the 1996 election cycle and no record of any other contribution from him," says a spokesman for Sessions.
Young also openly offered details about what he said were donations totaling between $12,000 and $15,000 to Pryor's campaign for state attorney general. Once again, Young had used the friends-and-colleagues maneuver. According to the FBI record, "Young advised that during Pryor's 1998 campaign, he contributed money through other individuals." Young named four people who "all wrote checks to Pryor's campaign and were reimbursed by Young for their contributions." At one point in the conversation, Young seemed particularly eager to tell all. "This was not just for the Governor's [Siegelman's] campaign," he told investigators. "It was also for the attorney general's campaign ... I gave you the example of five checks totaling $25,000. If I was there, I would write them out or just sign them, and they would fill in who it was to or whatever." According to Young, a top official on Pryor's campaign "would call and say, 'I need money for this, this or this,'" and Young would take care of the request. ("I do not have a recollection of the amounts that you describe as having been contributed by Lanny Young or his associates to my campaign," Pryor wrote in an e-mail to TIME.)
But it wasn't always as impersonal as handing over a stack of bills or checks. Among the illegal actions alleged in Siegelman's indictment was his acceptance from Young of thousands of dollars' worth of free T shirts and hundreds of specially embossed coffee mugs to give away as Christmas presents. The freebies were popular, said Young. "I had got them coffee cups and stuff before and shirts, and I had the same thing for Bill [Pryor]." Young estimated the value of the mugs at $13,000 to $15,000, and he even offered to share the extras with his inquisitors: "I've still got a case of his [Pryor's coffee cups] ... if y'all want to come get them." ("I don't think we want to touch them right now," an investigator replied.)
This evidence was heard by lawyers from U.S. Attorney Canary's office, representatives of Alabama's Republican attorney general and an attorney from the Justice Department's public-integrity unit in Washington. But in an unusual exercise of prosecutorial discretion, nearly all the payments and donations went uninvestigated. And when Siegelman's defense team, which had obtained Young's statements amid tens of thousands of documents provided in discovery, raised his accusations briefly in court, a judge quickly ruled them irrelevant.
Legal experts say prosecutors enjoy wide latitude in deciding whom to charge in criminal cases. But according to Laurie Levenson, a former assistant U.S. Attorney and a prominent expert in legal ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, there are limits. "Certainly prosecutors would face a professional obligation to check out or verify the allegations in this case," she says. "Not doing so would represent a potential abuse of prosecutorial discretion." The key, she adds, is whether prosecutors chose not to pursue evidence of criminal activity by Republicans because of political bias or a conflict of interest. Sometimes prosecutors have a more benign motive; they may simply verify that allegations are untrue or be unclear on how to categorize the offense or the relevant statute of limitations. Certainly in Young's statements about Sessions and Pryor, he did not allege a quid pro quo for his money laundering of their campaigns. And whatever the involvement of their campaigns, Sessions and Pryor both assert they were completely unaware of his confessed chicanery. But the U.S. Attorney's office chose to prosecute Siegelman in no small measure on the basis of Young's word and chose not to investigate Sessions and Pryor — or their campaigns — on the basis of that same word.
Several people involved in the Siegelman case who spoke to TIME say prosecutors were so focused on going after Siegelman that they showed almost no interest in tracking down what Young said about apparently illegal contributions to Sessions, Pryor, other well-known figures in the Alabama G.O.P. and even a few of the state's Democrats. "It just didn't seem like that was ever going to happen," said an individual present during key parts of the investigation. "Sessions and Pryor were on the home team."
That description is not just a metaphor: several of the lawyers involved in the Siegelman investigation were from Pryor's office and had worked for Sessions as well when he held the post. In such circumstances, say experts on legal ethics, it is nearly always incumbent on investigators to inform a third party and recuse themselves from further questioning to avoid a conflict of interest. In this instance, it appears the investigators chose not to recuse themselves but to simply ignore the allegations. (Steve Feaga, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Canary's office, says, "I'm confident that we investigated every viable federal crime and prosecuted them.")
The fact that most of Young's claimed contributions apparently went unrecorded raises the possibility that he never made them, that he was merely boasting. But it would also mean that he had lied to federal agents, which is a felony, and Young was never charged with that crime. If he had lied, that would also have diminished Young's credibility as a key government witness against Siegelman. One of Young's lawyers tells TIME, "There was never the slightest suggestion by prosecutors that the information my client provided about contributions to Sessions and Pryor was in any way untrue." The judge in the Siegelman case also seemed to find Young credible: he stated at sentencing that he had increased the sentencing guidelines for the Governor on the basis of a prosecution memo that alleged "systematic and pervasive corruption" and cited a "criminal relationship with Lanny Young."
The controversy surrounding the case in Alabama is not that Siegelman went to prison and his Republican colleagues didn't. Without an investigation or even questions being asked, it's impossible to know whether any of them committed illegal acts. The issue is that some of the same allegations that led to Siegelman's indictment never merited so much as a follow-up when raised in connection with Republicans.
U.S. Attorney Canary has vigorously rejected the suggestion of any political influence on the case. She has pointed out that the investigation of Siegelman originated not with her but with her Democratic predecessor as U.S. Attorney and in the office of Alabama's then attorney general, Bill Pryor. Moreover, she notes that she was in charge of the case for only eight months, long before indictments were handed down, and then publicly recused herself to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Yet Canary was in charge when Young spoke about his payments to the Sessions and Pryor campaigns and to other Alabama Republicans. At the same time, her husband's consulting firm, Capitol Group LLC, was being paid close to $40,000 to advise Pryor. A source who held a senior post in Canary's office during the long-running investigation into Siegelman says it's almost inconceivable that Canary would not have been informed of Young's charges against prominent Republican officeholders and candidates. Canary denied that to TIME. The fact that those charges were never looked at will only heighten suspicions that the Siegelman prosecution was a case of selective justice and that in the Bush Administration, enforcing the law has been a partisan pursuit.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1668220,00.html
Source: The New York Times, nytimes.com
September 10, 2007
Editorial Observer
By ADAM COHEN
Alberto Gonzales is out as attorney general, but there is still a lot of questionable Justice Department activity for Congress to sort through. The imprisonment of Don Siegelman, a former Democratic governor of Alabama, should be at the top of the list. Jill Simpson, an Alabama lawyer and Republican operative, is heading to Washington this week to tell Congressional investigators that she heard prominent Republicans plotting to use the United States attorneys’ offices to remove Mr. Siegelman as a political threat. The case should be the focus of a probing Congressional hearing this fall.
Mr. Siegelman was a major frustration to Alabama Republicans. The state is bright red, but Mr. Siegelman managed to win the governorship in 1998 with 57 percent of the vote. He was defeated for re-election in 2002 under suspicious circumstances. In the initial returns, Mr. Siegelman appeared to have won by a razor-thin margin. But a late-night change in the tallies in Republican Baldwin County gave the current governor, Bob Riley, a victory of a little more than 3,000 votes out of 1.3 million cast.
Mr. Siegelman has charged that the votes were intentionally shifted by a Republican operative. James Gundlach, an Auburn University professor, did a statistical analysis of the returns and found that the final numbers were clearly the result of intentional manipulation. Mr. Siegelman wanted to take back the governorship in 2006, but his indictment made it impossible.
If Ms. Simpson is telling the truth, she provides important support for Mr. Siegelman’s claim that his prosecution was political. In a sworn affidavit, she says she was on a phone call in November 2002 with Governor Riley’s son, Rob Riley, and Bill Canary, a Republican political operative whose wife, Leura Canary, is the United States attorney for Montgomery. According to Ms. Simpson, they were discussing the political threat Mr. Siegelman posed, and Mr. Canary said his “girls” — his wife and Alice Martin, the United States Attorney in Birmingham — would take care of Mr. Siegelman. Ms. Simpson said Mr. Canary also said the case had been discussed with Karl Rove.
Ms. Martin’s office prosecuted Mr. Siegelman, but the case fell apart after a federal judge cast doubt on the charges. Ms. Canary’s office then convicted him of charges for which he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In addition to the phone call, which has been reported, Ms. Simpson says she will tell House investigators about a second conversation with Rob Riley. In late January or early February of 2005, she says, in his Birmingham office, Mr. Riley told her that Mr. Siegelman would be re-indicted in Montgomery. He was indicted by Ms. Canary’s office in May 2005, and tried in May 2006, one month before the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Riley denies that the conversation occurred.
There are other red flags, besides Ms. Simpson’s testimony. Mr. Siegelman was convicted of appointing the businessman Richard Scrushy to a state hospital board in exchange for a contribution to a campaign for a state lottery to fund education. Elected officials, from the president down, appoint people who contribute directly to their campaigns without facing criminal charges.
Decisions about whether to bring this sort of public corruption case are extremely sensitive. A prosecutor must examine an official’s state of mind and decide if he intended the appointment to be in exchange for the contribution, or if he simply ended up appointing a contributor. The extraordinary sensitivity of these cases — and their ability to change the political balance of power in the country — makes it critical that prosecutors be nonpolitical and above reproach. In the current Justice Department, they have not been.
Mr. Siegelman’s case has disturbing parallels to the prosecution of Georgia Thompson, the Wisconsin civil servant wrongly convicted by the Justice Department of awarding a state contract to a Democratic contributor. Prosecutors tried to get Ms. Thompson, who spent four months in jail before being freed by an appeals court, to testify against Jim Doyle, the state’s Democratic governor.
Ms. Thompson refused — because, she made clear, there was no crime to implicate him in. But her trial was during his re-election campaign, and her conviction was used in anti-Doyle attack ads. It’s too early to say that her case and Mr. Siegelman’s were brought simply to elect Republican governors, but there is certainly evidence that they may have been.
The Bush administration insists that the United States attorney scandal is a non-scandal. But the Siegelman and Thompson cases are a reminder that when the power of the state to imprison people is put in the wrong hands, lives can be ruined and democracy can be threatened. Since the Justice Department refuses to appoint an independent prosecutor to examine whether these and other cases were politicized, Congress must provide the scrutiny.
