Posted on 04/01/2009 8:30:47 PM PDT by St. Louis Conservative
Last fall, the senior Senator from Alaska was the poster octogenarian for political corruption. As of yesterday, Ted Stevens is merely another casualty of abusive prosecutors out to make a name for themselves.
The Justice Department yesterday moved to set aside an October conviction on ethics charges and forgo any future trials for Senator Stevens. He walks free, in other words, an innocent man. In the motion, Justice said it "recently discovered" that prosecutors withheld from the defense notes about an interview last April with the state's star witness, Bill Allen, that contradicted his subsequent testimony. Under the Brady Rule for evidence, Justice was obliged to share that with Senator Stevens's lawyers.
This was one of many prosecutorial missteps that came to light after Mr. Stevens was found guilty less than two weeks before Election Day. The Republican narrowly lost his bid for a seventh term. Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday promised a "thorough" probe into the conduct of prosecutors, which is the least the Department owes Mr. Stevens. The Obama Administration made the political calculation here to walk away from the original mistake made by Bush Justice rather than further embarrass the Department in post-trial hearings.
Recall the Stevens indictment was unveiled in July, on the eve of his primary. Announced by the acting head of Justice's Criminal Division, Bush-appointee Matthew Friedrich, the decision violated Department guidelines that prosecutors should avoid becoming players in elections. The charge was that the Senator failed to disclose that an Alaskan oil services company, Veco Corp., paid for renovation work on his chalet -- in essence, that he had lied on official forms. The Government never alleged, much less proved, the far more serious claim that Veco got anything in return from the Senator.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Hey, this is just a distraction. We’ve gotta move on and do something about our more than large carbon footprint.
The justice and state departments are rivaled only by MSNBC in their Democratic party activism, no matter who the president is.
Like former Secretary Donovan who was hounded from office during the Reagan Administration over a scandal that turned out not to be true, Stevens is left to wander the halls asking the media “Where do I go to clear my good name?”.
Of course, no one will answer. The Democrat hit squad will have done their job and care not a lick that a life and a good name were sacrificed. He was inconvenient to them.
The real story is that honest elected officials are the most endangered species on the planet
They were really played for fools by the *Justice* department and the MSM.
They got their senate seat and their extra vote for Harry Reid. Now that that objective has been met, I guess they can let 85 yr old ‘Uncle Ted’ go free. Move along, nothing to see here.
Sorry about that, Ted!
One by one. There is a pattern.
Who has been in charge of taking down members of the GOP?
His name will be cleared in Alaska due to this, most likely. He had near mythical standing in that state.
His senate seat is firmly in the hands of Harry Reid at this point though, and that was the objective of the investigation. The Dems got what they wanted out of this deal - they don’t really care what happens to Ted after they grab his senate seat.
I’m guess David Axelrod & Rahm Emanuel amongst others.
What good name? An inept or corrupt prosecutor has nothing do to with guilt or innocence. As far as I’m concerned he was/is guilty as sin, an embarassment even to RINOs and good riddance. Just having an R behind your name doesn’t mean much - as we have seen.
I do not doubt it, going back to Tom DeLay at least. I need to do a bit of research and see who lost a seats and how many of those losses were influenced by election season scandals.
I do not doubt it, going back to Tom DeLay at least. I need to do a bit of research and see who lost a seats and how many of those losses were influenced by election season scandals.
Just like Tom Delay. No charges were ever filed against Tom Delay, but of course he “embodied the culture of corruption”. They criminalize politics like no other.
Stevens got home improvements at no cost from a contractor. Obama got home value at no cost from Rezko..the cases are the same. They couldn’t afford for Stevens to go to jail. Neither case coud they prove that Stevens or Obama supplied anything in return.
If you really believe this, you obviously have no familiarity with criminal prosecution.
The Democrats set out to steal his seat and convinced enough idiots.
Now we are stuck with Sen Baggage.
The funny thing is; I had made up my mind to back his opposition in the primary. I think he is too old and has become too liberal.
After this obviously partisan attack,fair play forced me to campaign fo rStevens.
You might not like his politics, but you can not question his honesty.
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