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Siegelman targeted, 60 Minutes suggests There was Don Siegelman, the poster child of political success in Alabama, elected to more statewide offices than anyone, including governor. He was emptying a mop bucket in some faraway federal prison in Louisiana. That's how CBS News' 60 Minutes opened a piece on Siegelman Sunday night that suggested that Siegelman, a Democrat may have been the target of a Republican conspiracy. Former GOP activist DAna Jill Simpson of Rainsville told 60 Minutes' Scott Pelley that former White House political advisor Karl Rove had asked her to spy on Siegelman and to try and catch him having an illicit affair with one of his aides. She watched Siegelman but came up blank. She said she did other intelligence and opposition research for Rove, too. She said after a federal judge stopped a Medicaid fraud case against Siegelman for lack of evidence, Rob Riley, the son of Republican Gov. Bob Riley, told her that Siegelman would have to be re-indicted. He was, four months later. The younger Riley said he never talked to Simpson about the matter. Simpson had testified earlier before Congress and didn't tell some of the stories she told 60 Minutes. That, says the Alabama Republican Party, makes her statements questionable. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Maybe she simply chose not to tell Congress all of her stories. Siegelman was indicted, tried and sentenced to seven years not for personally taking money but for accepting a $250,000 donation to a fund backing a lottery vote (that failed) in the state from healthcare executive Richard Scrushy and in turn appointing Scrushy to a state healthcare board. Scrushy was also tried, convicted and sentenced along with Siegelman. The feds' star witness in the case was former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey, an admitted crook who was also sent to prison but who cooperated with prosecutors. He told 60 Minutes that he couldn't remember the details so they had him to repeatedly write the testimony used in court until he got it down pat. Siegelman's lawyers, by law, should have been told of this but they weren't. Fifty-two active or retired state attorney generals petitioned Congress to investigate the Siegelman case. Former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a lifelong Republican, defended Siegelman to 60 Minutes and charged his party with a political hack job. "The case should have never gone to trial. There was no quid pro quo (exchanging "something for something"). The jury deadlocked twice and the judge ordered them back." Woods explained "You do a bribery when someone has a real personal benefit. Not, 'Hey, I would like for you to help out on this project which I think is good for my state.' If you're going to start indicting people and putting them in prison for that, then you might as well just build nine or ten new federal prisons because that happens everyday in every statehouse, in every city council, and in the Congress of the United States." Woods also suggested that U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller's immediate shackling of Siegelman and Scrushy and sending them off to prison before their appeals were exhausted "was personal" and doesn't happen, even to those convicted of violent crimes. When the Republican Woods asked why he was defending the Democrat Siegelman he answered, "We're Americans first and we have to stand up for that." The former AG added, "I haven't seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done."
It does make you wonder.
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