Left In Alabama had the scoop yesterday: former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman will be joining us Friday morning at Netroots Nation to discuss his case.
Perhaps you recall the 60 Minutes piece on Gov. Siegelman:
"I haven't seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done," says Grant Woods, the former Republican attorney general of Arizona.
Woods is one of the 52 former state attorneys-general, of both parties, who’ve asked Congress to investigate the Siegelman case.
"I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of," Woods says.
Kagro X reviewed the key elements back in February, and Scott Horton of Harper's has a wealth of detail. Basically, Siegelman was the one Democrat in Alabama whom Republicans could never defeat at the ballot box, so Karl Rove used every means at his disposal to ruin Siegelman, from attempting to secure photos of marital infidelity (he committed none) to, ultimately, turning the Department of Justice into a political wing of the Bush-Cheney Administration bent on destroying Democrats by pressing trumped-up corruption charges against him. Kagro X:
This really demonstrates the lengths to which Bush-Cheney's hyper-politicized Department of Justice can go. If they can railroad the actual governor of a state into prison and have pretty much nobody really sit up and take notice, what does that say about the extent of the damage to the country? Not just the DOJ (which is a goner), but about the supposed watchdogs of the media, who've been in large part either cowed into silence, or distracted by an endless stream of shiny objects?
Seriously, this means they can do this to anybody.
But worse than that, it means that anybody who finds themselves under scrutiny by the federal government now has license to charge that they're being politically targeted. Because if this can happen as Horton describes it happening, all bets are off. It has all the ingredients of the complete and total undoing of all federal law enforcement capability for the foreseeable future.
Here's what Siegelman himself has said:
I think this will make Watergate look like child's play when it is fully investigated, not so much this case because certainly it's not about me. It's about restoring justice and protecting our democracy and, because this case shows the lengths to which those who are obsessed with power will go in order to gain power or retain power, it has attracted the attention of the national press. ...
It's much bigger than me because it's not just my case. This was not an isolated incident. This was a pernicious, political plan that was set in motion by Karl Rove to further his espoused dream of establishing a permanent Republican majority in this country, and what he left out was by any means necessary.
It is clear to me — and I think to those who have been investigating, and that's why they're so hot about this case — it is clear that Karl Rove abused his power and misused the Department of Justice as a political tool to win elections, and that is something that would happen in a police state. That is something that we might have read about in history books as happening in Russia, but it is not something that should be allowed to happen in the United States of America.
Don Siegelman is currently free while on appeal, and he'll join us in Austin for a conversation with Air America's Sam Seder this Friday at 10:30am in Exhibit Hall 4. He will have much to say. As Sam notes:
For over a year and a half now we have known of the US Attorney firings scandal that has forced the resignations of countless DOJ officials. The Siegelman case is the other side of the coin of the corruption of the Department of Justice under the Bush Administration. Those US attorney firings took place because those US Attorney's would not play ball with a DOJ hell bent on using it's powers to provide Republicans an advantage at the ballot box. Some refer to this scandal as the politicization of the Department of Justice, but the Siegelman case and other such prosecutions over the past six years go well beyond a mere infraction of the Hatch act. These cases are indicative of an agenda that has literally torn at the fabric of a nation built upon the rule of law and Justice for All. This is a corruption of the very foundations of how the United States of America is supposed function as a democracy. When the chief law enforcement agency has become crooked, who do you call?
See you there.
