Investigative Reporter Alleges Cover-Up in Obama White House Delay

by Glynn Wilson

A staff member for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee said today that the deposition hearing scheduled for Monday, Feb. 23, for Karl Rove, the infamous former political adviser to former President George W. Bush, “is still on at this point.”

The Obama administration had sought a two week delay to weigh in on whether former Bush White House officials must testify before Congress about the politics involved in the firing of at least nine U.S. attorneys across the country, according a recent report by the McClatchy newspaper bureau in Washington, D.C., as well as the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, according to other sources.

The request came after Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, asked the Obama White House and the Justice Department under the new Attorney General Eric Holder to referee his clash with the House of Representatives over Bush’s claim of “executive privilege.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., issued a subpoena requiring Rove to appear Monday to testify about the firings and other allegations that the Bush White House let politics interfere with the operations of the Justice Department.

Michael Hertz, the acting assistant attorney general, said in a court brief that negotiations were ongoing.

“The inauguration of a new president has altered the dynamics of this case and created new opportunities for compromise rather than litigation,” Hertz wrote in the brief. “At the same time, there is now an additional interested party — the former president — whose views should be considered.”

Rove refused to appear on Feb. 2 in response to a Judiciary Committee subpoena, claiming that even former presidential advisers cannot be compelled to testify before Congress, according Conyers’ release. That “absolute immunity” position was supported by then-President Bush, but it has been rejected by U.S. District Judge John Bates and President Obama has previously dismissed the claim as “completely misguided,” he said.

“I have said many times that I will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court, and today’s action is an important step along the way,” Conyers said. Noting that the change in administration may impact the legal arguments available to Mr. Rove in this long-running dispute, Mr. Conyers added: “Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it. After two years of stonewalling, it’s time for him to talk.”

The staff member contacted today did not know if there was still a chance the deposition will be delayed Monday. No details are being released about the ongoing negotiations.

A PDF copy of the subpoena is linked here.

To catch up with other documents in the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation into how the Bush administration turned the justice system into a White House political operation, this page on the committee’s Web site has a number of important links.

Cover-Up?

Meanwhile, investigative reporter Wayne Madsen released a story on his proprietary Website Feb. 17 alleging that the move to seek a compromise amounts to a “cover-up” by the Obama White House and White House Counsel Greg Craig — who for a time represented Karl Rove and is a friend of Siegelman — for “assisting in a cover-up of a major campaign financial scandal from the 2002 Alabama Republican primary and general election.”

The cover-up is allegedly of a July, 2002 Air Force One “political junket” from Washington, D.C. to Birmingham, Alabama, a fund raising trip where Bush raised $4 million for Alabama Governor Bob Riley in his race against the incumbent Democrat, Governor Don Siegelman.

Rove, who maintains that he was not heavily involved in Alabama’s 2002 elections, arranged for Riley to travel to Alabama from Washington on board Air Force One with Bush.

The other purpose of the trip, according to North Alabama attorney and GOP whistle-blower Jill Simpson, was to get the president to lean on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ante up $4 million in payments to storm contractors who responded to ice storm damage in Pine Bluff, Arkansas the previous winter. Ms. Simpson represents “storm-gypsies” who do major clean up work after bad storms, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Madsen reports that the contractors promised to kick in $1 million to Riley’s gubernatorial campaign from the $4 million in FEMA contract money, if the agency would simply do what it was supposed to do in the first place, pay on a legally bid contract.

FEMA director Joe Allbaugh reported that FEMA officials were not going to pay the $4 million owed to the contractors because one of their lobbyists, Stewart Hall, President of the Federalist Group, had leaned on FEMA to pay up, according to Madsen’s report.

Apparently, the FEMA officials were told that the Federalist Group was somehow affiliated with the very powerful group of conservative Republican lawyers and judges, the Federalist Society.

Madsen also reports that the House Judiciary Committee has been provided with a copy of a FEMA report “in which the Federalist Group claimed to be the Federalist Society when it demanded FEMA pay the $4 million tab to the storm contractors.”

Apparently, there were still Clinton administration loyalists remaining as senior civil servants at FEMA and they “abhorred” anything that smacked of the right-wing Federalist Society.

Madsen also claims that the July 15, 2002, fund raiser at the Birmingham-Jefferson convention center “may have been a clear violation of federal and state of Alabama campaign finance laws.”

Readers may remember what Bush said that day, when he talked about working on a political campaign in Alabama in 1972, while he was supposed to be serving with his Texas Air National Guard unit in Houston.

“I don’t know whether you know this or not, but in 1972, I helped organize Red Blount’s campaign for the United States Senate right here in the State of Alabama,” Bush said, according to The Birmingham News. “Because of me and Jimmy Allison, he managed to get 32 percent of the vote. [Laughter] But I learned then and there how great the people are of the State of Alabama. I’ve got fond affection of those times. I count many of you as my friends, and I want to thank you for coming today to help the next Governor of the State of Alabama, Bob Riley.”

[My own report on the Bush AWOL story is still available on the Web at this link].

Alabama’s wealthy businessmen paid $50,000 each to have their photographs taken with Bush at that Birmingham event. The Business Council of Alabama was there in force, Madsen reports, including Bill Canary, Karl Rove’s friend who had previously worked for George Herbert Walker Bush.

Madsen also claims one of the reasons that the Bush administration failed to regulate the banks, which helped to bring about the current financial collapse, “is because some of Alabama’s top bankers, including those from Regents Bank and Colonial Bank, kicked in the $50,000 donations for the photos with Bush.”

Of course everyone knows by now that Canary’s wife, Leura Canary, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama, brought the charges against Siegelman in Montgomery after the case against him in Birmingham had been dismissed. She claimed in a press release that she recused herself in the case, but no formal recusal order has ever surfaced from legal documents — and evidence obtained by Time magazine a few months ago revealed e-mail messages with Ms. Canary still communicating with career prosecutors about the case.

While Rove insisted in a letter to former MSNBC reporter Dan Abrams that he was only involved in one Riley campaign event, offering as proof the statement that the event was videotaped. But it is known that Riley’s son, Rob Riley, who was intimately involved in the Air Force One event, was also in on the Birmingham fund raiser even though he claimed in his affidavit to the House Judiciary Committee that he barely knew Rove and Bush.

Madsen says there is a “smoking gun videotape” that will prove Bush and Rove were closely involved with the Riley campaign.

Rove was apparently so worried about the tape that he agreed to both a phone interview with 60 Minutes last year and visited the CBS News studio in Washington, D.C. for a non-taped personal interview.

Secret Service regulations require that presidential visits be videotaped in the event of a security incident. For the July 15 campaign event in Birmingham, the firm Vision, Inc. of Pelham, Alabama, “took video footage of Bush’s every move, including all those with whom he met,” Madsen reports.

If the Birmingham videotape in question has Bush individually thanking businessmen for ponying up the minimum $50,000 for the photo ops, Bush, Riley, and Rove could be in real trouble. If one were to assume that there could be a seven year statute of limitations that applies in any criminal prosecutions stemming from the 2002 election, it can easily be seen why Rove and Bush would want to delay or “compromise” on Rove’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee.

In five months, it will be the seventh anniversary of the Birmingham campaign event. If charges are not brought before then, the statute of limitations will apply and Rove, Bush and other Alabama elected officials involved will be beyond the reach of the law — at least on those potential crimes.

It has already more than seven years since the alleged election theft in Bay Minette in 2002, so according to informed legal sources, the perpetrators are already off the hook for that alleged crime.

To read our original break in the story on that, here’s the link:

How the 2002 Election Was Stolen in Bay Minette

Tags: House Judiciary Committee, Karl Rove

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Don Siegelman on Trial, Political Justice in America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.