Somebody call the Waa-ambulance..

Sen. Ted Stevens: Prosecutors out to smear my name

Sen. Ted Stevens accused the Justice Department of trying to smear his character Monday as he prepared to defend his seat in a crowded Republican primary election.

Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, is scheduled to stand trial next month for lying on Senate records about hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations he received from VECO Corp.

Prosecutors also want to present somewhat unrelated evidence that they believe shows the Alaska senator got a sweetheart condominium deal, his daughter got a discounted car and his son got a job from VECO.

In court documents filed Monday, Stevens suggested the Justice Department was making accusations haphazardly, hoping to damage his reputation at trial. Those accusations have nothing to do with the crime he’s charged with, attorneys said.

Prosecutors are just picking on him? I don’t think so.. You’d have to have character in order for someone to smear your character..

He’s crying ‘foul’ because he chose to lie on Senate records, received LOTS of money and favors, got caught, and is now being made to account? I guess I can see his point.. Many other politicians in Washington, including EVERYONE in this Administration, are ‘getting away’ with breaking rules, laws, etc.. Why shouldn’t he? (/sarc)

The Justice Department filed court documents of its own Monday, outlining its suspected motive for why Stevens would have kept home repairs and other freebies off his Senate financial records: Doing so would have touched off ethics investigations and news stories that could have jeopardized Stevens’ political future.

Reporters, ethics officials and watchdog groups would have discovered that when VECO needed help, company founder Bill Allen had a direct line into the office of one of Capitol Hill’s most powerful lawmakers, prosecutors said.

“Most importantly, however, disclosure of the things of value and the negative repercussions flowing from that disclosure would have threatened the defendant’s future stream of things of value from VECO, Bill Allen and others,” prosecutors said.

The Seattle Times reported this on August 16th:

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, quickly turned a $5,000 Florida condo investment into a profit of more than $100,000 in an unconventional transaction that federal prosecutors hope to introduce at his trial on charges that he lied on financial disclosure forms.

The investment and other details of the Justice Department’s case were disclosed late Thursday in court papers filed by prosecutors and defense lawyers gearing up for the first trial of a sitting U.S. senator in more than two decades. The trial is scheduled to start Sept. 24.

In the new documents, the government also dismissed Stevens’ assertions that his conduct was shielded by the Constitution as a member of Congress, citing nine examples of the senator’s “errands” and requests involving a former Alaska oil-services company that had nothing to do with protected lawmaking.

Among them: an intercepted phone call in which Stevens discusses how his son Ben, then the state Senate president, planned to push a bill favored by the oil industry as a prelude to natural-gas development.

The new filings go substantially further than a July indictment that charges Stevens with seven counts of failing to disclose gifts from 1999 through 2006. Most of the alleged gifts, including the renovation of the senator’s Girdwood, Alaska, home, were from former oil-service company VECO and its politically active chairman, Bill Allen.

Allen and former VECO Vice President Rick Smith have pleaded guilty to bribing elected officials and are expected to testify at Stevens’ trial.

(There’s lots more on these latest surfacing details).

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy..

This video is of Ted Stevens refusing to swear in ‘Big Oil’ executives before they testified in a joint hearing of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees in November of 2005.