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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 4/6/11

Obama Nominee Should Be Rejected for Key Justice Department Post

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Our Justice Integrity Project, among many others, has documented how the Bush Justice Department framed Siegelman via the current Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney Leura Canary and her subordinates. The prosecutors did this in part by pressuring Beck's client Nick Bailey, whose tormented and coerced testimony were enabled by a biased Republican trial judge, Mark E. Fuller. Fuller hated Siegelman, according to our research. We documented this in a 2009 investigatory story that the Huffington Post front-paged, entitled, "Siegelman Deserves New Trial Because of Judge's Grudge, Evidence Shows." Fuller himself had no response when we asked him for comment, which helps underscore why the Justice Department and Senate need to have inquiries above suspicion.

Key questions involve Fuller's curious ties to the military-industrial complex, issues that Beck might not be equipped to handle:

Even if Fuller continues to refuse to recuse himself because of his animosity to the defendant, the judge was compromised also by his secret contracts on the side bringing in $300 million from 2006 to 2009 for Doss Aviation, Inc., the judge's privately held company. Doss primarily serves the Air Force. This Air Force tie-in leads to a host of necessary Senate confirmation questions for Beck, the Justice Department and others regarding Air Force involvement in the Siegelman prosecution and in the recent $35 billion Air Force acquisition of a next-generation of mid-air tankers. Powerful interests wanted these tankers to be built by a European-led consortium at a reassembly plant in Alabama instead of by a U.S. prime contractor.

Beck declined to be interviewed for Kreig's article. But Beck already has indicated he is not willing to examine Fuller's myriad conflicts in the Siegelman matter. Reports Kreig:

{Beck} revealed a number of troubling perspectives when he spoke to reporters on Alabama's statewide television on June 29, 2007, during a half-hour interview about the Siegelman sentencing. Asked, for example, whether there was evidence of judicial bias by Fuller during the trial, Beck responded emphatically, "None whatsoever." That was two months after a defense filing showing that the judge was being enriched with Air Force contracts through the company he controlled with up to 44% ownership. Beck showed also a remarkable level of ignorance about basic facts involving two of his biggest cases of the past two decades, that of Bailey (who he had represented since 2001) and former Alabama Gov. Guy Hunt, a Republican convicted of ethics charges in misappropriating some $200,000 and then pardoned.

Are the Obama administration and the Alabama legal establishment strongly behind Beck? Well, their words say one thing and their actions say another. Writes Kreig:

To be sure, Beck has strong defenders in Alabama. But state party leaders and the White House declined to respond to our requests for comment on specifics, aside from their press releases.

The Beck nomination, Kreig writes, seems to be the ugly end product of massive weakness within the Democratic Party, both in Alabama and nationwide:

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I live in Birmingham, Alabama, and work in higher education. I became interested in justice-related issues after experiencing gross judicial corruption in Alabama state courts. This corruption has a strong political component. The corrupt judges are (more...)
 
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