When Bob Riley stole the election from Siegelman in 2002 in the closest race in Alabama political history, (according to whistle-blower Jill Simpson, a Republican operative with close ties to the Rileys at the time) the Rileys threatened to use the legal system to investigate Siegelman if he ever ran again. So when he announced in 2004 that he would run again in 2006, the Karl Rove-Bill Canary political machine kicked into high gear to go after him. Canary's wife, Laura Canary, the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, then launched the investigation of Siegelman.
Even though the career prosecutors in the Department of Justice could not really find enough evidence to bring charges, and told attorney Doug Jones nothing was likely to result from the case, a ??top down ? review of the case was ordered from Washington after Rove, Bush's political adviser, had communications with people in the DoJ. That we know, even though the Birmingham News editorial page editors continue to deny it.
I have been asked numerous times by average people not on the hard right or left how it could be possible that the courts could be so corrupted in a case like Siegelman's that politics would trump truth and justice. It is perhaps hard to fathom, but just ask Paul Minor in Mississippi or any of the U.S. attorneys who were fired on orders from the White House for not being politically loyal enough. Rove was a student of Machiavelli, who wrote and told King Henry VIII that kings either rule by love or fear. Bush was not the kind of man who inspired love, so he had to rule by fear by demanding absolute loyalty.
The point of prosecuting Siegelman was not about the law. It was about politics from the start.
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