Thom Hartmann: In 2006, Don Siegelman, the Governor of Alabama, was convicted on corruption charges. There’s been an on-going controversy due to counter accusations that his prosecution was intentionally wrongful, that it was engineered by Presidential advisor Karl Rove and officials of the Bush Justice Department to gain political advantage.
National news media have published investigations into this claim. At least fifty US legislators and officials have publicly expressed their skepticism over Siegelman’s prosecution, not to mention over ninety prosecutors, the treatment of Siegelman, Attorneys General. The treatment of Siegelman pending his sentencing was so harsh that it has prompted an intervention by forty-four former Attorneys General of various states.
This is a big deal. Former Governor Don Siegelman is now appealing his conviction on these charges. Unfortunately the Obama administration announced Monday that it is opposing that appeal.
Governor Don Siegelman, his website is donsiegelman.com or .org and Governor, for those who are new to the programme; I should say that you’ve been a guest on this programme. I don’t know if I was one of the first, you know, media, radio shows or what not, to really, really start pounding hard on your cause, but I have been.
Don Siegelman: Oh yes, Thom, you were. I remember the day that you called. It was right after I got out of prison, released in an extraordinary ruling of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. They pushed fifty some odd Attorneys General around the country, but yeah, they at that point had decided that they were going to treat, since they couldn’t keep me in prison, they were going to treat me as if I was a terrorist when I wanted to travel to Washington, so that I would have to apply in advance. I mean, this case has been riddled with government misconduct, from the moment that the prosecutor's husband, who was Karl Rove’s best friend, who was also running my Republican opponent’s campaign for Governor against me, you know, started this stuff. So there is a political origin, a clear path to Karl Rove, and multiple examples of government abuse, of coaching the key witness, making him rewrite and rewrite his testimony over seventy times until he got it the way the prosecution wanted it, according to, this isn’t me speaking, this is CBS’s Sixty Minutes.
Thom Hartmann: Yep.
Don Siegelman: You know, Time Magazine has exposed this case as a case of selective prosecution. But one of the questions I anticipate your asking me, Thom, is was I surprised that the Obama administration is now opposing my position in the United States Supreme Court.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, well this is what has me totally baffled. I don’t get it.
Don Siegelman: Well, it doesn’t baffle me because with all due respect to the President and to Eric Holder, very little substantive change has taken place within the Department of Justice. The very same people who approved my prosecution, the very same people who pushed my prosecution, those motivated to see me prosecuted, at the top level of the Department of Justice, are still there. They are still in power. The Obama administration has scraped the surface and replaced some people with some very good appointments. Eric Holder is a good appointment. Lanny Breuer and Gary Grindler, two other names that nobody knows about but they're good people, but that is just at the top. The guts of the Department of Justice is filled with the cancer of Karl Rove and the political shenanigans of the eight years proceeding President Obama.
Thom Hartmann: When George Bush came into office, as was the case I believe in pretty much every President before him, it was expected and it actually happened that all of the, I think there’s a hundred Federal Prosecutors, do I have that number right?
Don Siegelman: Yes, about that many, 96 or 7.
Thom Hartmann: Ok, all of the nearly one hundred Federal Prosecutors, who are political appointees, submitted a pro-forma resignation and there might be a few who are kept over, but typically they are all replaced with friends of the administration as it were; people who are competent prosecutors, but they’re also, you know, more aligned with the Republican party than the Democratic party, and in this case, it’s quite clear that Rove really tried to stack the deck, and in fact those few prosecutors who wouldn’t go along with politically motivated prosecutions, like the prosecution of you, Governor Don Siegelman, that they got fired, and that firing turned into a scandal, and in my mind the scandal was always the fact that these people kept their, that the other ones, the ones who did go along with the political prosecutions, kept their jobs.
I don’t understand why when Barack Obama become President of the United States and Eric Holder became Attorney General, they did not ask for the resignation of these Bush holdovers who are still in office. I mean the woman who prosecuted, who initiated the prosecution against you, whose husband was the campaign manager of your opponent and Karl Rove’s best friend since college, she, Leura Canary, she’s still a Federal Prosecutor down there, who’s still coming after you.
Don Siegelman: It makes absolutely no political sense. If you’re going to campaign on “Change, Yes we can” and you get into office and you don’t change anything, how are you going to change policy? How are you going to make things different if you don’t replace the bad guys with people who believe and think like President Obama?
Thom Hartmann: Right.
Don Siegelman: So if you leave these bad guys in place, we’re going to have the same bad results as we have had over the last eight years under Rove and George W Bush. So a little frustrating, but I am still hopeful that the United States Supreme Court, you might want, you might ask why are you hopeful, you’re a liberal Democrat going up against a conservative Republican, you know, court. Well, I’m hopeful because if they can do this to me, if they can prosecute me for appointing a contributor, not even to my campaign, but to an issue campaign, cause I was trying to establish a lottery to fund free college education. I was raising money and giving contributions, and I appointed a guy to the same board that he had served on through three previous governors. If they can do this to me, they can do it to Obama.
Thom Hartmann: That’s right, or anybody. And Don Siegelman ... get over there to donsiegelman.com right now to get all the details of this and let your member of Congress know. Let the White House know that you’re outraged.
Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.
