Political Skullduggery

As Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, goes before a federal judge today to fight a recommended 30-year prison sentence, he's telling anyone who'll listen that his prosecution was engineered by White House strategist Karl Rove.

It may be a long shot as a legal argument, but at least one influential Republican and a number of Democrats are questioning whether politics may have played a role in the case.

All but a handful of more than 100 charges against the former governor were rejected, his defenders point out.

And the bribery charge on which he was convicted did not involve pocketing money personally, but rather persuading a rich business executive to put $500,000 into a campaign for a state lottery to support education.

Prosecutors said Siegelman, 61, named the executive to a state board, though the executive had held the same position under three previous governors.

The other charge on which Siegelman was found guilty, obstruction of justice, centered on trying to conceal a $9,200 deal involving a motorcycle he said he was trying to sell.

The 30 years in prison that prosecutors are asking U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller to impose could be a life sentence, his lawyers say, and more than the average meted out to murderers in Alabama.

"Congressional committees ought to investigate what in the world went on in this case," said Grant Woods, a Republican former attorney general of Arizona. Woods, who still tries high-profile cases as a special prosecutor, has reviewed the charges against Siegelman as a former colleague and friend.

"From start to finish, this case has been riddled with irregularities. It does not pass the smell test," Woods said.

Siegelman's supporters argue that his popularity and his history of attracting both black and white voters — dating to 1998, when he was elected governor — made him a target for GOP political strategists and may have played a role in a long-running effort by the offices of Republican U.S. attorneys to bring him down.

His supporters point to a welter of circumstantial and other evidence to support their view.

A previous indictment, for instance, was scotched by another federal judge in 2004 with a scathing rebuke to the government. Just this month, a Republican lawyer signed a sworn statement that she had heard five years ago that Rove was preparing to politically neutralize the popular Siegelman.

And there are links between the case and GOP political activists, as well as an alleged failure by prosecutors or Fuller to conduct a vigorous investigation into evidence that prejudicial e-mails may have been sent to jurors during Siegelman's recent trial.

The controversy in part reflects the loss of credibility suffered by the Bush Justice Department in the wake of evidence that Rove and members of his staff played a role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year. In several of those cases, U.S. attorneys targeted for removal had been criticized by Bush officials for not being sufficiently attentive to GOP political priorities.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto waved away the controversy, saying: "Someone is always making some baseless charge about Karl. Unfortunately I can't comment in this case while legal proceedings are ongoing."

The lead government attorney in the case, career prosecutor Louis Franklin, said he had not been subjected to pressure.

Political corruption cases are nothing new in Alabama. Siegelman's three gubernatorial predecessors — two Republicans and a Democrat — faced criminal inquiries. Two were indicted and convicted.

But Siegelman's case differs from the usual pattern in some ways. For example, former Gov. Guy Hunt, a Republican, was found guilty in state court of personally pocketing $200,000. And state prosecutors sought probation, not jail time, in the Hunt case.