Simpson also swore in testimony to House Judiciary Committee staff that Robert Riley, the governor's son, told her in early 2005 that Fuller "hated" Siegelman and would be assigned a prosecution targeting the former governor and would then "hang" him. The Bush DOJ secretly indicted Siegelman and Scrushy in the spring of 2005, and announced the indictments that fall to the defendants and public.
Rove, William Canary, the younger Riley and others have denied her claims.
The Obama
administration and Alabama's timid Democratic Party leadership have kept
a lid on the scandal in other ways as it deferred to the state's two
powerful Republican U.S. Senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions.
President Obama retained the Republican partisan Leura Canary in her political post for a decade until last spring. Even then, Obama replaced her with George Beck, who should have been fatally compromised from such a post because he allowed rogue DOJ prosecutors to threaten his client Bailey in up to 70 pre-trial interrogations almost entirely unreported to the defense.
Also, prosecutors reportedly threatened Bailey with up to 10 years in prison under harsh conditions
unless he gave them what they wanted in terms of convicting Siegelman and
Scrushy, according to defense documents filed in 2009. One affidavit was from a Republican businessman who said he provided legal defense money and a job for Bailey in sympathy because the witness was a homosexual who was especially vulnerable to prosecution threats of exposure and long imprisonment for crimes unrelated to Siegelman.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Beck without even requiring him to appear to
answer questions. Since then, Beck and his DOJ colleagues provide no sign of investigating what
we have reported
as $27 million in donations by gambling interests (including from Jack
Abramoff clients) to the two-term Gov. Riley and his cronies. Neither is there any apparent interest in improprieties in the $35 billion Air Force tanker refueling deal
that played an important role for Republicans in Alabama to seek Siegelman's imprisonment by any means possible.
Last April, Shuler wrote:
Siegelman
looks remarkably fit for a 65-year-old man who has been through 10
years of legal hell. He remains convinced that Rove is behind his
prosecution, and he hopes to someday prove it. But for now, he and his
lawyers are playing a waiting game.
Siegelman's No. 1 concern at the moment seems to be the U.S. Justice Department's apparent determination, even under a Democratic president, to obscure the truth about his prosecution.
In sum, the bipartisan disgrace continues unabated in what appear to be court-enabled kleptocracies in Alabama and Washington. Are you surprised?
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