Who is Don Siegelman? And, why should we care?

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This first part is from Mark Crispin Miller’s Blog:

Siegelman Speaks! Alabama Ex-Gov Calls ‘02 Election “Stolen” by the White House!
by Mark Crispin Miller

Here is some amazing video: a very candid interview with Don Siegelman, who spoke to Julie Sigwart of Take Back the Media on Sept. 13, 2004–months before the Governor was finally put away on trumped-up charges by the Alabama GOP.

As he himself makes clear, Siegelman’s ordeal began back in 2000, when he came out early on, and publicly, against the presidential bid of his fellow governor, George W. Bush, and backed Al Gore instead. It was a move that Karl Rove never did forget, and never would forgive, says Siegelman.

Rove’s long drive to destroy the Alabama governor resulted in the theft of the 2002 election for Republican Bob Riley. Here Siegelman describes that theft–which took place primarily in Baldwin County–and also talks about his handling of that matter.

So far, the mainstream press coverage of Don Siegelman’s ordeal has pointedly ignored the theft of the 2002 election. Clearly, Siegelman himself does not regard that theft as a side issue, but as a major crime, and one that is quite relevant to his whole story.

Today, the Alabama governor is not allowed to speak up on his own behalf. He’s locked away inside a federal prison cell, and, for good measure, has been silenced by the Alabama courts. As Scott Horton has so aptly put it, Don Siegelman is the Man in the Iron Mask.

So let’s do everything we can to get this interview played far and wide, so that his fellow citizens can finally hear him, and see him, talk about the criminal campaign against him.

PART ONE

PART TWO

On Harpers’ Magazine website, Scott Horton has done a series of 41 blog posts on Don Siegelman and what has happened to him, and why. This takes a while to get through them, but they are VERY worth the read. Scott started writing on this story June 1, 2007.

The Raw Story posted this article (The permanent Republican majority: Part one: How a coterie of Republican heavyweights sent a governor to jail:

For most Americans, the very concept of political prisoners is remote and exotic, a practice that is associated with third-world dictatorships but is foreign to the American tradition. The idea that a prominent politician — a former state governor — could be tried on charges that many observers consider to be trumped-up, convicted in a trial that involved numerous questionable procedures, and then hauled off to prison in shackles immediately upon sentencing would be almost unbelievable.

But there is such a politician: Don Siegelman, Democratic governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003. Starting just a few weeks after he took office, Siegelman was targeted by an investigation launched by his political opponents and escalated from the state to the federal level by Bush Administration appointees in 2001.

Siegelman was ultimately charged with 32 counts of bribery and other crimes in 2005, just as he began to attempt a political comeback. He was convicted the following year on seven of those charges. Last summer, Siegelman was sentenced to seven years in prison and immediately whisked off to a series of out-of-state jails, not even being allowed to remain free on bond while his appeal was under way.

Shortly before the sentencing, however, suspicions expressed by Alabama observers that there was something “fishy” about the case — as Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine would later put it — began to reach the national stage. What initially appeared to be merely a whiff of possible political corruption became something stronger, with allegations that Karl Rove and the Bush Justice Department had been operating behind the scenes. And yet, despite these suspicions and the attempts of a few journalists to bring them to greater notice, Siegelman’s case remains virtually unknown to most of America.

As a result, RAW STORY Investigates has decided to focus a series of reports, interviews, and investigative pieces over the next several weeks on Siegelman’s case. At the very least, the investigation will illuminate an incestuous pool of corruption in Alabama, with government officials, lobbyists, attorneys, and even judges behaving in ways that breach the public trust.

Continue reading…

Then, Raw Story also posted the Timeline: The prosecution of Don Siegelman . It covers the Karl Rove/Bill Canary/Alabama Attorney General William Pryor connection, and then the Lobbyist Jack Abramoff/Ralph Reed/then-Congressman Bob Riley connection, and then oh so much more…

TPM Muckraker posted a series of stories on Siegelman as well, including following the House Judiciary Committee hearing on selective prosecutions in October 2007, where ex-Gov. Don Siegelman’s (D-AL) was the marquee case. There are quite a few posts here following this story.

Crooks and Liars posted video from MSNBC’s Dan Abrams’ Bush League Justice series that covered the story of Don Siegelman last Friday (Dec. 14th).

In the final installment of Dan Abrams’ Bush League Justice which looks at the infuriating case of Don Siegelman. A credible Democratic rival to Republican Rob Riley’s race for the governorship of Alabama, it appears that Karl Rove pulled strings with the DoJ to have Siegelman charged not once, but twice, with corruption and using loyal Republican US Attorneys and judges (some of whom actually worked on Riley’s campaign and refused to recuse themselves), convicted and imprisoned Don Siegelman on shaky evidence and even now prevent Don from speaking to anyone. Law professor and Harper’s contributer Scott Horton, who has been following Siegelman’s case, calls him literally The Man In The Iron Mask. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) and Horton paint a horrifying picture of depraved partisanship and corruption where nothing is off limits, not even unfairly jailing your opponent.

This segment by Abrams was powerful. The work by all those referenced above, working to expose this story, is important reading. This story is sickening. I can’t bear what these people are getting away with this (Karl Rove comes to mind first). Until recently, I didn’t even know who Don Siegelman was. It was a story I hadn’t paid much attention to. This story is a massive, tangled web of deceit and corruption, of vindictiveness and retribution, of abuse and politicization of our system of justice, and it is the epitome of the cancer that has grabbed hold of our system of law and government that threatens to destroy our democracy. This is yet another example of manipulated elections that cannot be tolerated in this country, and that threaten all future elections if left uninvestigated and prosecuted. It reaches into the highest levels of our government. Justice has not been served in this case, and there are those - apparently all the way up the chain to the WH - who bear responsibility for that corruption who need to be held accountable.

This is an important story to stay up on, and one that I intend to follow.

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Filed under America - Law, Election 2008 - Fraud, Government & Institutions - Corruption

Tags: Dept of Justice, Don Siegelman, Governors, Karl Rove, nwmuse @ TPZoo