Attention all Alabama political junkies.  I’d like to direct your attention to a series of blog entries regarding the Scrushy/Siegelman trial by Glynn Wilson of The Locust Fork, linked below:

Danny at Doc’s Political Parlor linked to Glynn’s entries a couple of days ago in a post entitled “The Karl Rove/Bob Riley Conspiracy.”  The entry touched off, shall we say, a fair amount of attention.  As of now it has attracted some 128 comments, which is substantial for any site dealing in Alabama politics.  Here’s Danny’s description of Glynn’s story:

Confession: I have never been much one for conspiracy. Oh, I am sure there must be some that run as deep and wide as anything I could imagine, but for the most part, I am the doubting Thomas.

However, if conspiracies are your thing, The Locust Fork Journal has one that involves Karl Rove, Gov. Bob Riley, a stolen election, rumors of a legislator murdering a lover’s husband, a compromised judge, and more.

After you read it, get back to me on why Governor Siegelman would be expected to concede an election because of photos of a Jackson County Democrat putting up Bob Riley signs at a Ku Klux Klan rally.

Take some time and read through Glynn’s material as well as the commentary on Danny’s site.

Now, since I’m sure you’ve taken the time to complete your reading assignments I’ll offer my thoughts on the matter.

The real thrust of the argument centers around whether or not Siegelman (and by association, Scrushy) were prosecuted for political reasons at the behest of members of George Bush’s administration, namely Karl Rove.  Glynn paints a very compelling picture, but the majority of his argument rests squarely on the words of attorney Jill Simpson.  Simpson claims to be a lifelong Republican and has helped Riley campaign in the past so there is no readily apparent motivation for fabricating a story as one might suspect if the allegations were made by a member of the loyal opposition.  Some have suggested that she is doing this out of spite because one of her clients did not receive a tire recycling contract.  She denies that she bears a grudge.

Without beating around the, er, Bush any longer I’ll just jump right in and look at the veracity of some of Simpson’s claims and Glynn’s facts.  By the way, for those of you who haven’t heard of him (and I don’t know how you might not have given his acclaimed credentials) Glynn purports to have “more journalism credentials than anyone working in this state.”  Fortunately for you, the reader, you can trust that his site is the primary repository of factual information on the web - or so he would have you believe (and he is very touchy about his facts).  Note, all further blockquotes are directly from Glynn’s site.

Simpson on Riley’s successful primary victory in 2002: 

She figured out that Riley only needed to take 13 North Alabama counties to win the primary. And the strategy worked. Riley won.

“We beat Karl Rove and Bill Canary in the primary, with almost no money,” she says with a touch of glee in her voice.

Riley actually won every single county in the state in that primary, which pretty much means that Simpson’s strategy of focusing on the northern part of the state was not the lynchpin in Riley’s victory.  Also, Riley started out 2002 with more money than his main opponent, Steve “Jug” Windom, and raised more cash than said opponent in the next few months leading up to the primary.  Hardly seems like they were cash strapped.

Along the way, in their effort to raise money, Ms. Simpson tried to get the Rileys to help her collect on a contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for one of her storm gypsy clients. It was a $4 million deal for cleaning up after an ice storm in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a contract that was tied up in the federal bureaucracy in Washington. What’s a Congressman for but to help a citizen collect legally earned money being held up in Washington? She promised to split the money with the Rileys if they would help free it up in the bureaucracy.

But the contract was never paid. Why? Because once President George W. Bush heard about Riley’s situation, she says, he agreed to make a fund raising visit to Alabama. That visit raised roughly $4 million for the Riley for governor campaign and gave Rob Riley the budget he needed to run a real campaign for his dad.

Simpson’s proposal sounds an awful lot like a kickback.  You might have heard of a kickback scandal in our state that has taken down the chancellor of our two year college system and won a Pulitzer for Brett Blackledge, who I’m sure hopes to one day attain the lofty stature of Glynn Wilson.  For the uninitiated, a kickback is where a contractor overcharges someone (like the government) and then splits the overpayment between himself (or herself) and the government official who made the taxpayer fleecing possible.  If her claims are true, then it certainly might make one question her ethics.  Riley didn’t play ball in the scheme that Simpson alleges.  Oh and I included that last part about the $4 million fundraiser because I had to correct Glynn on the amount raised (he initially wrote $2 million).  Shortly afterward he said, “You’ve not successfully challenged any facts or conclusions.”

During that campaign, in part since the Rileys had not helped her with her federal contract case and others, in other words they didn’t do their jobs, Ms. Simpson decided to publicly support Judge Roy Moore in the primary…

Nope, she doesn’t sound disgruntled at all.  It is perfectly reasonable for one to oppose a politician who refused to engage in a kickback scheme with you.

In one of the more bizarre, and I would assert unrelated, portions of his work Glynn describes how the 2002 election was stolen from Siegelman.  Glynn says there was voter fraud and pictures of a Siegelman supporter nailing up Riley signs at a KKK rally.  I have no idea about the veracity of the claims that fraud occurred in Baldwin County.  Maybe, maybe not.  I was living in Maryland at the time and didn’t follow the race closely.  However, I find it VERY hard to believe that a seasoned, successful politician like Don Siegelman would concede an election that (as Glynn claims) was so obviously stolen simply because there were pictures of one of his many supporters carrying out a dirty trick.  All he would have to say is, “I have no idea who that guy is and I don’t condone his actions.”  Problem solved.  The only way he might concede under those circumstances is if he in fact knew about and authorized the dirty trick ahead of time and that his culpability was known by the opposition.  Pictures alone wouldn’t do the trick.  If anyone reading this disagrees I would LOVE to hear the logic behind Siegelman’s concession.  The pictures in question, by the way, no longer exist.  How convenient.

Glynn then levels a serious accusation, calling a federal judge “corrupt.”  He writes:

What Scrushy didn’t know and was later distressed to learn is that he was not even close to being the richest man in that courtroom. It was the judge.

That last sentence is wholly unsubstantiated in Glynn’s work.  Reporting on Scrushy’s assets vary, but I’ve seen numbers close to $300 million.  Glynn offers up one supporting fact to insinuate that Fuller might be wealthier than Scrushy.

Amazingly, Justice Fuller received a $178 million contract through a privately held company to train pilots and navigators for the U.S. government DURING THE SIEGELMAN, SCRUSY TRIAL. The company is called Doss Aviation of Alabama.

For another company called Aureus International that is listed as a division of Doss Aviation on the company’s Website, Fuller is also listed as the majority owner, according to Ms. Simpson’s research.

I doubt that a journalist of Glynn’s renowned talents would intentionally mislead about the contract.  Maybe he spilled some coffee on the keyboard.  You see, the contract in question is a one year contract that may be extended up to ten years.  The total amount of the contract, which was competitively bid, (over the 10 year period) is expected to be $178 million.  But as anyone who contracts with the federal government should know, some amount of actual work is expected with those contracts and that work costs money, which means you don’t just get to put that contract award in your pocket.  Profit margins for government contracts typically are in the 10% range, which means that the company in question might receive a profit of about $18 million over the next ten years.  Even then, Fuller doesn’t simply get that money.  You see, he is only an investor who, as of 2005, had between $250,001 and $500,000 invested in the company.  That certainly does not support him being the “richest man in the courtroom.”  It is perfectly legal for U.S. Judges to invest their money in both publicly and privately held companies.

A search of [U.S. Rep Terry] Everett’s campaign finance disclosure forms shows Fuller has contributed thousands of dollars personally to Everett’s campaigns.

Mark Fuller donated a total of $5,000 to Terry Everett from 1995 to 1999, well before his 2002 appointment as a federal judge.  How does that make him a corrupt judge?  Should anyone who has ever contributed to a political candidate be forever barred from serving in out judiciary else they be considered corrupt?

So what conclusions can be drawn from all this?  We already knew (or at least I did) that Bush/Rove are not at all interested in the law or our constitution.  Was Siegelman prosecuted for political reasons?  It sure seems that way.  But, even if he were targeted for prosecution for political purposes that doesn’t change the fact that he was convicted by a jury of his peers on 10 counts, including bribery, conspiracy, and mail fraud (he was acquitted on numerous additional counts).  So regardless of the motivation for the prosecution it certainly appears that the charges had merit.

The real shame in the whole matter has been Bush.  The disregard for the rule of law and the politization of the justice department have exacted their toll on our country by inviting doubt into every conviction.  If the national Republican party devoted their efforts to cleaning up their own party rather than disproportionately prosecuting their opponents then we might not be dealing with this.  Maybe Siegelman wouldn’t have been prosecuted, but maybe he would have.  If so, then his conviction wouldn’t be the subject of such intense speculation if Bush and co. exercised more discretion in their use of executive power.

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This entry was posted by Brian on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Alabama, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.