Prosecutors at the Justice Department who were responsible for former Alaska senator Ted Stevens' trial are now themselves being investigated for criminal misconduct. The question now is why the Justice Department is trying to prevent a similar investigation into the very fishy prosecution of former Alabama governor, Don Siegelman.
Scott Horton, who's been on top of this case for years, compares it to the Stevens trial and asks why Eric Holder's Department of Justice is trying to impede any probe into prosecutors of Don Siegelman who appear to have been politically motivated and operating as lackeys of Bush adviser, Karl Rove.
But whereas the Stevens case was under the supervision of a judge who looked skeptically into prosecutors’ conduct, the prosecutors in the Siegelman case seem to have found just the judge they wanted. At the time that the public integrity prosecutors were maneuvering to get their case before Judge Fuller, prosecutor Welch had a 36-page affidavit by an attorney laying out detailed claims of misconduct against Fuller for Welch to investigate, a fact which was unknown to Siegelman and his attorneys. In its papers, the government vehemently objects to a new judge, opposes an evidentiary hearing, and also suggests that both the district court and court of appeals considered the defense’s claims of jury tampering and jury misconduct to be harmless. The arguments are clearly designed to head off any serious investigation of the prosecutorial misconduct accusations, particularly the sort of investigation which has now been launched in the Stevens case.
In another post, Horton sees another attempt on the part of the Obama administration to cover up instances of torture and suggests Hillary Clinton may have been party to obstruction of justice.
And speaking of Karl Rove, he may have competition in Rahm Emanuel. "A cynic studying the latest batch of nominees might conclude that the price of an ambassadorship has soared from roughly $200,000 under the Rovian regime to $500,000 under Rahm Emanuel. Under Barack Obama, the process of political payoff through ambassadorial appointments has matched and appears poised to exceed the already extremely abusive system that Karl Rove put in place under the Bush Administration."