U.S. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) has had enough of the politicized prosecutions of the Bush/Rove Department of Justice.
Davis, a three-term congressman and member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, has taken up the cause of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (D), roundly criticizing the DoJ prosecutions of him (one prosecution was dismissed) and calling for a Congressional investigation.
The bizarre conviction of Siegelman this year is drawing nationwide condemnation as a political prosecution engineered by Karl Rove, similar to the prosecution of the innocent Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, now exonerated.
In his letter to the chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), released last Thursday, Rep Davis commended the hearing that Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is reportedly intent on holding on the Siegelman matter.
“A variety of claims have arisen regarding the Siegelman case. It has been suggested that the case against Siegelman was unusually weak and uncorroborated. … Most explosively, an attorney who worked in the 2002 campaign against Siegelman has sworn an affidavit claiming that she participated in a November 2002 conference call in which an influential Republican claimed that Karl Rove had given assurances that Siegelman would be indicted. Prior to his service in the White House, Rove had an extensive history of involvement in Alabama elections, and maintains contact with a number of Republican contributors and operatives in my state,” wrote Davis.
In his letter, Davis also singled out Wisconsin U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic (Eastern District of Wisconsin) for his prosecution of the innocent Georgia Thompson—used unsuccessfully by Republican political operatives to tarnish Democratic Governor Jim Doyle in the 2006 election and described by an appeals court as “preposterous”—as an example of the politically motivated prosecutions of the U.S. DoJ under Bush and Rove.
“At least one U.S. Attorney, Steven M. Biskupic, was removed from a list of prosecutors to be terminated only after he indicted a Democratic appointee in the midst of a closely contested governor’s race in Wisconsin,” wrote Davis.
The DoJ prosecution of Siegelman was recently blasted in a New York Times editorial (June 30) as a Karl Rove-engineered political attack:
“The most arresting evidence that Mr. Siegelman may have been railroaded is a sworn statement by a Republican lawyer, Dana Jill Simpson. Ms. Simpson said she was on a conference call in which Bill Canary, the husband of the United States attorney whose office handled the case, insisted that ‘his girls’ would ‘take care of” Mr. Siegelman. According to Ms. Simpson, he identified his ‘girls’ as his wife, Leura Canary, and another top Alabama prosecutor. Mr. Canary, who has longstanding ties to Karl Rove, also said, according to Ms. Simpson, that he had worked it out with ’Karl.’”
Though the House Committee chaired by Conyers has already held several hearings on the DoJ, observers believe that Conyers will continue his dogged oversight up until the end of the Bush administration.
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