Did DoJ Blackmail Siegelman Witness With Sex Scandal?

[Joanne98]

The top government witness in the 2006 federal conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges says prosecutors failed to give the defense required records documenting witness-coaching.

Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey swears that prosecutors failed to reveal to the defense details of most of his two dozen prep sessions before he became the Bush Justice Department's key witness that former HealthSouth chief executive Richard Scrushy bribed the former Democratic governor. Scrushy arranged $500,000 in donations to an education non-profit fostered by Siegelman to increase school funding. At trial, Bailey suggested the donations were required by Siegelman to reappoint Scrushy to a state regulatory board. The defendants, bolstered by legal experts and whistleblowers, claim that they were framed to eliminate Siegelman from politics.

Even more explosive is a sworn statement by Bailey's current employer Luther "Stan" Pate, another Alabama businessman.


"Nick was told that the government was working to prevent the publicizing of an alleged sexual relationship between Nick and Don Siegelman," Pate wrote. "Nick also told me that one of the agents working the Siegelman/Scrushy prosecution asked him whether he had ever taken illegal drugs with Governor Siegelman or had a sexual relationship with him. These comments had a dramatic effect on Nick, and, in my observation, added significantly to the pressure he felt to go along with whatever the prosecutors wanted him to say."

Allegations of sexual blackmail by the government are among the evidentiary exhibits that support legal arguments by Scrushy and Siegelman seeking a new trial based on new evidence from whistleblowers and investigative reporters.

The filings reviewed July 20 but filed late June 26 include a report by the Investigative Group International (IGI), which some nickname "The President's Investigator." This is because IGI Chairman Terry Lenzner was a Watergate prosecutor of former President Nixon and later helped defend former President Clinton during impeachment. IGI says that it was hired in April "by counsel for the defense."

IGI Vice Chairman David Richardson's affidavit said that Bailey told him and Lenzner during meetings in June that Bailey "did not believe that Governor Siegelman had been bribed by Mr. Scrushy," among other contradictions of Bailey's themes during Siegelman's second trial. Bailey, now free after being sentenced to 18 months in prison on bribery charges unrelated to Siegelman, had been facing a far longer term before he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors against Siegelman.

Pate wrote in his affidavit that he befriended Bailey after the former governor's aide told him in the spring of 2002 that "he was in trouble with the law."

"It was obvious to me that he was a man in trouble with heavy burdens," Pate wrote in his affidavit. "I believe in giving people second chances" but "would not condone any breaking or bending of any laws or rules whatsoever...." Pate said Bailey's office was next to his, and that he observed Bailey on "an emotional roller-coaster" trying to please prosecutors. He said that Bailey feared for his safety both in and out of prison, as well as for the security of his friends and their reputations.

Bailey said in his affidavit that he was brought to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama in 2004 some two years after he began cooperating, and was told there by federal prosecutor and Air Force Reserve Col. Stephen Feaga that the government was "starting over" on the Siegelman investigation on the basis of orders from "Washington."

In 2007, allegations of massive irregularities in the investigation and trial of the Siegelman case became nationally prominent just after the U.S. attorney firing scandal. This was because Alabama attorney and Republican campaign volunteer Dana Jill Simpson filed an affidavit with Siegelman's sentencing judge, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Fuller of Montgomery. In her sworn statement and in her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee staff, Simpson claimed that fellow Alabama Republicans conspired to remove Siegelman from politics in coordination with what she understood to be White House political strategist Karl Rove and a federal judge who "hated" Siegelman. Rove has denied wrongdoing to the news media. His responses to congressional investigators this month are not yet public.

In February 2008, a CBS 60 Minutes segment featured former Arizona Attorney Gen. Grant Woods, a Republican then co-chairing John McCain's 2008 GOP Presidential Campaign. Woods said the federal prosecution was clearly political to remove a Democrat from public life. In the show, the then-imprisoned Bailey first made his allegations that he had been coached to provide testimony against the defendants without the required disclosure.

Government officials have maintained throughout the case so far that their conduct has complied with legal and ethical requirements. No officials were available near close of business on July 20 to comment on the allegations by the co-defendants, each of whom is under a seven-year prison sentence, with massive fines. Siegelman is free on bond.

Prosecutors recently asked for a 20-year sentence for Siegelman, 63, upon resentencing by Fuller, who is alleged by the co-defendants to have tolerated prosecution misconduct. Scrushy, 56, is serving his sentence while claiming that he was framed to imprison Siegelman. Scrushy says also that he refused lighten his own sentence by making false accusations against Siegelman.

Events are coming to a head. Fuller has called for final briefs by next week amidst a growing nationwide campaign by grassroots activists and legal experts critical of the prosecution. But an all-Republican federal appeals court panel affirmed the convictions in March, aside from dismissing two of seven charges against Siegelman for lack of evidence. The predominately Republican full court of appeals denied a rehearing.

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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Did-DoJ-Blackmail-Siegelma-by-Andrew-Kreig-090721-260.html

Maybe it will get some attention now that it's a sex scandal!

[starroute]

1. More on Feaga and those orders from Washington

According to the OP, "Bailey said in his affidavit that he was brought to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama in 2004 some two years after he began cooperating, and was told there by federal prosecutor and Air Force Reserve Col. Stephen Feaga that the government was 'starting over' on the Siegelman investigation on the basis of orders from 'Washington.'"

Although the article barely mentions his name (except in citing Dana Jill Simpson's allegations) you've got to figure that "Washington" is code for "Karl Rove."

For example, journalist John Caylor has alleged:

http://sutherlandsalute.blogspot.com/2007/08/karl-rove-under-fbi-investigation.html

On or about Saturday March 3, 2007, while eating at Bud-N-Alley's beach bar at Seaside, Florida I was rubbing elbows with a nice looking well groomed man in his mid to late thirties and his beautiful wife. He told me he was an Assistant United States Attorney from Montgomery, Alabama. I believe his name was Joseph Fitzpatrick. I could never forget this guy, green as they come yet proud to be there rubbing elbows with the rich and famous just miles down the road from Karl and Darby Rove's summer home at Rosemary Beach, Florida. . . .

Then he confessed, he was actually on loan from his boss Alabama Attorney General Troy King, he was attached in a special prosecution case and was an acting United States Attorney, I told him I had a problem with his boss and he blurted out they were there for drinks before heading down to Karl and Darby Rove's house on Rosemary Beach for a dinner party, his wife grabbed his arm and shouted "Shut Up, We aren't supposed to tell anyone that!" as she led him out the door and down the stairs.

The special prosecution Fitzpatrick was part of was the Siegelman case. According to the official government announcement of the conviction, "The case was prosecuted by Acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama Louis V. Franklin, Sr., and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Stephen P. Feaga and J.B. Perrine, Middle District of Alabama; Trial Attorney Richard Pilger of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division; and Assistant Attorneys General Joseph Fitzpatrick and Jenny Garrett for the State of Alabama." (http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2006/June/06_crm_409.html)

The conclusion Caylor reached about this incident was that Fitzpatrick was on his way to some sort of victory party involving the Siegelman prosecution -- since there was no other way a small fry like him would have wrangled an invitation to dinner at Rove's.

And though Caylor provided no outside evidence to support his allegations, I did check out the timing at one point and found that Rove had accompanied Bush that week on a trip to the Gulf states -- and that on the morning of March 3, Bush had been touring a tornado-damaged high school in Enterprise, Alabama, which is very close to Rove's home in Rosemary Beach. So Rove could easily have been throwing a dinner party there that night.

March 2007 must have been a busy month for Rove -- the US Attorneys firing scandal was in the process of breaking wide open -- so it's nice to see it wasn't enough to distract him from the really important things. ;-)

[Wednesdays]

2. K&R

:kick: