Here’s an article from TIME about selective prosecution in a corruption case in Alabama. The Justice Dept. chose to prosecute or not based on party affiliation. Guess which party got off the hook?
TPMmuckraker brings it back to the White House for us. Anybody surprised?
October 12, 2007 at 2:11 pm |
The actions and omissions smell more than a bit fishy, and may indeed be due to partisan malfeasance. But I would note that Time put a question mark on its headline for a reason.
The charges which Time highlighted are primarily as follows:
1) “Young testified that he had furnished [Democrat] Siegelman with an all-terrain vehicle and a motorcycle, lavishing money on the Governor and his aides.”
2) Young also claimed that he had his employees make campaign contributions to Republicans, which Young reimbursed. But according to Time, “None of the individuals Young named as his intermediaries in making the [Republican] donations are listed in Federal Election Commission records as contributors to Sessions’ 1996 U.S. Senate race.”
The former items (ATV and motorcycle) are easy to confirm and track the transfer of, being tangible, probably registered or insured, probably with a paper trail to Young, and likely findable at Siegelman’s house.
In contrast, to the extent the illegal contributions are trackable, they appear not to have existed. It doesn’t make sense that Young would have subordinates make secret unrecorded cash transfers, which Young would reimburse. If Young wished to hand over cash sub rosa he could do it more simply and much more safely himself. It is only if they were to be open campaign contributions — as Young claimed to investigators — that he would use a straw donor.
Young of course had incentive to give investigators one or more big fish, to get a reduced sentence.
So perhaps there is less to the scandal than meets your eye.
On the other hand, as the article points out, if Young was believed by the FBI to be lying in his allegations about Republicans, the Democrat’s defense lawyer should have been alerted, and been able to present that in his defense. However, the assumption that a Prosecutor could only fail to help a defendant like this for partisan reasons is falsified certainly on a monthly basis for people who follow crime news.
Finally, the purported link to the Bush Administration is less than damning, based as it is on one person’s literally third-hand testimony about a conversation between Rove and an unnamed “head guy.” Even assuming the conversation happened, and that it concerned the Siegelman prosecution and its likely effect on an election, a third-hand source is not going to know the difference between a proper and an improper conversation about that subject.