Siegelman seeks answers, eyes Rove

March 29, 2008

Upon his release from prison yesterday, former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman sounded like a man intent on figuring out why partisanship apparently landed him behind bars for nine months.

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.”

Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, told the NYT, “There’s absolutely, positively, no truth to any of the allegations and literally no evidence for any of it.”

Really, Bob? “No evidence” at all?

I seem to recall Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson, answering questions under oath from House investigators, offering at least some evidence.

In the interview, first obtained by Time and released today by the committee, Simpson explains the context in which she knew what Alabama Republican operative William Canary meant on a campaign conference call in 2002 when he said “Karl” had gotten the Justice Department on Siegelman. Simpson told House investigators that the son of Gov. Bob Riley (R), Rob Riley, had told her about the conversations between Rove and Canary. From the transcript:

“But I knew from conversations that I had had with Rob that Bill Canary was very connected to Karl Rove. Additionally, there was some talk — and that’s not in my affidavit — about Karl had — about Washington; that Karl had it taken care of in Washington.”

The investigation into Siegelman didn’t lead to any prosecutions before he could run for re-election, so in 2005, Dana Jill Simpson said Rove went back to the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice to push for a more aggressive approach. (Apparently, there was a concern that the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama “messed up” the case that was supposed to keep Siegelman from running.)

Q: Okay. And did Rob give you the name of the person at — I’m just going to call it Public Integrity — that he thought he understood Karl Rove had spoken to?

[Simpson]: No, he said it was the head guy there and he said that that guy had agreed to allocate whatever resources, so evidently the guy had the power to allocate resources, you know.

Q: To the Siegelman prosecution?

[Simpson] Yes. And that he’d allocate all resources necessary.

“Literally no evidence” of Rove’s involvement in this controversy? Maybe someone ought to make Mr. Luskin a copy of the recent “60 Minutes” report.

As for Siegelman, he told the NYT that he was confident that the appeals court would see this case for the nonsense it is. 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.”

No point in trying to question Rove himself about any of this.

Executive privilege.

  • if we ever actually get around to holding all the bush administrations’ law breakers to account ..we’ll have to build a new prison just to have room hold all of them .. imo ..

  • Absolutely nothing will happen until 2009.

    I wonder what somebody like Mukasey is thinking. He’s not a longtime Bushie who owes his career to a partisan appointment. He’s earned the credentials to be Attorney General (even if one disagrees with the appointment). He must understand better than most the Constitutional rape that the Bush administration has been engaged in – and now he’s engaged in. Why does he go along with it? It’s not as if there is a “philosophy” or “cause” behind the Bush thuggery other than power and immunity for Bush and his friends. So he can’t be going along because he believes it’s the “right thing to do.” The only thing I can think of is that if there is a Supreme Court opening before Bush leaves office, Mukasey’s got first dibs and his actions (non-actions?) are his way of protecting his place in line. But that window of opportunity is nearly closed. I can’t imagine a Supreme Court appointment getting approaved before Bush leaves office. So now what does he do? Live with his deal with the devil? Or, fight the devil in a battle of redemption?

  • Jkat said:
    if we ever actually get around to holding all the bush administrations’ law breakers to account ..we’ll have to build a new prison just to have room hold all of them .. imo ..

    True that. We should just free all the inmates with simple possession charges and replace them with these real crooks. We should not put them all in one prison though. Spread them out among the friendly inmate population.

  • Unfortunately, they’ll get away with it. I think it’s highly unlikely that a Obama or Clinton Justice department will go after them. A time of national healing and putting the past in the past and all. Now, congress might be another story but whether prosecutions will result, that’s doubtful, imho.

  • There was no “Fitzmas” since Rove was not nailed for his involvement in the Plame case. But if there is divine justice in this universe, we’ll all have a very joyous “Siegelmas” this year as we watch Rove go down for his illegal persecution of Don Siegelman. Schadenfreude never tasted so good.

  • Executive privilege does not cover conversation or correspondence between someone in the administration and someone outside of it. The Justice Department is not part of the “Administration. Rove can claim NO Executive privilege. He must answer for his actions or plead the fifth like Siegelman said.

  • that’s true dale .. we should definitely sread them out .. if we put them all together they’d have no one to butt-flick but themselves .. an the good lawd only knws what offspring such inbreeding would produce ..

    every hair on the back of neck stood up just thinkin’ of the possibilities ..to explain the horrible-ness of the vison.. think what a bush-cheney .. or a cheney-bush might look like .. uuh ..double uuh-gly oesn’t even get ya close does it .. ?

    🙂

  • Executive privilege does not cover conversation or correspondence between someone in the administration and someone outside of it. The Justice Department is not part of the “Administration.

    Huh? I thought the fourth branch of the government was the vice president’s office.

  • Karl Rove does not have executive privelege in doing things that were beyond the scope of his position. He is sunk. Too bad, Karl. I see why you resigned from the W.H.

  • I wonder what somebody like Mukasey is thinking.

    Hard to say, but someone might want to remind him of Elliott Richardson’s example during Watergate. It’s possible to be an Attorney General with a sense of ethics and justice at the same time.

  • By “absolutely no evidence, ” Rove’s lawyer may mean that all documentary evidence (emails, phone logs, written documents) have been “lost,” erased, destroyed, or hidden away in the same secret place Bush’s papers as governor of Texas ended up.

  • I’m not holding my breath, but I’m hoping this will finally put Karl Rove behind bars. And I will be ROFL.

    Jkat: “if we ever actually get around to holding all the bush administrations’ law breakers to account ..we’ll have to build a new prison just to have room hold all of them .. imo ..”

    No kidding. Pretty pathetic.

  • They’ll never pin it on the Slimy Rove (“Twas brillig and the slimy Rove did gyre and gimbel in the wabe,” ratfucking everything in sight). The e-mails have vanished and the hard drives are toast — andI have to think blackmail of some sort with respect to Mukasey. Slimy Rove’s job as Cheney’s enforcer was made so much easier by all the warrantless wiretapping, don’tcha know.

  • I went to high school with Bob Luskin and my ex-husband debated with him. According to my ex, Luskin is a Democrat.

  • What dur chimpfurher knows and when he knew it are appropriate questions for criminal trials here or war tribunals anywhere else in the world.

    It doesn’t really matter, otherwise – this is not about chimpy’s competence or intellegence – he is just a front, a tool for economic/political interests and the military-industrial complex. The real problems are far more systemic and embedded in the system.

    Eventually, we will need to do more than chatter bout the morons that get paraded in front of the camera. After all, the BIG TIME criminals behind this cabal know that you have to be very quiet when you steal!

  • According to my ex, Luskin is a Democrat.

    He might well be a Democrat, but that’s irrelevant. Washington defense lawyers don’t discriminate by political party. Bob Bennett represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment, but Caspar Weinberger during Iran-Contra and Paul Wolfowitz during the World Bank scandal.

    Whatever his politics, there’s ample evidence connecting Rove to this scandal and to suggest otherwise is beyond spin.

  • ”Twas brillig and the slimy Rove did gyre and gimbel in the wabe,”
    All mimsy were the karl roves?

  • As the truth finally begins to eke out from between the cracks and under the rocks, the Bushylvanians will finally begin to suffer the full weight of the consequences for their years of criminality. They created the “lesson” that the Law can be subverted if the profit is high enough; will they likewise expect the entire world to behave when they ask that bygones be bygones?

    They may expect, to be sure—but as to the world giving in to their whimpering, I think not.

    SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS, Bushies! Pass the guillotine….

  • The facts of case are almost beyond belief — but the shear number of Attorneys General and credible journalist sources (Abrams at MSNBC. 60 Minutes, various NYTimes reporters, etc.) that have followed this matter in support of Gov. Siegelman point up the seriousness and depth of prosecutorial misconduct that was perpetrated by Republican operatives in Alabama.

    From the selling of Iraq War, to the tax cuts for the wealthy at a time of massive public debt accumulation, to unjustified price protection for pharmaceuticals in the US market, to outrageous influence peddling by Abramoff, etc. — BushCo has jerked the United States around worse than if it was some kind of third rate banana republic.

    I wish Senator Pat Leahy and Congressman John Conyers success with getting testimony from Karl Rove, U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, and the entire corrupt prosecutorial team in Alabama.

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