Ho, hum. Yawn…

Karl Rove’s minions have been hard at work today, high on meth and Red Bull, trying to follow-up the media coverage in the Siegelman appeal by trying to anonymously and otherwise discredit reliable sources.

Since I have other blog business to do around here and don’t have anymore time to waste on them, I’ll just leave it to former journalist of some note and now lawyer of some note in Montgomery, Priscilla Duncan, for the response.

A comprehensive statement of Karl Rove’s use of the media to attack Jill Simpson

by Priscilla Duncan

A response to: Unappealing Power Play

A Response To the Editors of The National Review

Dear Editors:

I am the legal counsel for Dana Jill Simpson, and we are demanding a retraction for the false and misleading statements in your August 5 editorial.

Ms. Simpson wrote an affidavit that was released just before Gov. Don Siegelman was sentenced last year. She was only the first of several persons who have testified regarding the political aspects of his prosecution. Included among them were law professor Scott Horton and former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. Conyers’ inquiry was not solely based on her statement as you stated.

Ms. Simpson’s sworn testimony to the Judiciary Committee was structured exactly as Conyers and Lamar Smith requested. That testimony was backed up with about four pounds of Ms. Simpson’s documents, which you apparently haven’t taken time to examine.

She did not testify to Conyers in a private interview — where do you people get this stuff??

The hearing was in the form of a deposition to majority and minority counsel — three each. She was questioned four hours, sworn to tell the truth and there were no restrictions on inquiry. Ms. Simpson and I even offered to Republicans to answer questions over the telephone prior to the inquiry, but they evinced no interest.

During the time we were in Washington, we never met with Conyers or any member of the Committee or any member of Congress for that matter. Ms. Simpson has never met Conyers.

Ms. Simpson’s account has never changed, only the questions. Many of the “stories” as you refer to them, were detailed earlier to journalists or lawyers, but were not released due to their selection of topic. Other issues simply were not explored. 60 Minutes interviewed Ms. Simpson in three cities for more than 6 hours and telephoned numerous times on fine points. The two minutes of Ms. Simpson’s interview that 60 Minutes chose to use was not selected by Ms. Simpson. If there really were inconsistencies in her testimony, Karl would have something else to offer besides calling her “a lunatic,” a word Google associates with Rove 99,800 times.

In her Congressional testimony Rove is mentioned 16 times. Obviously, no one on your staff has read it, and you are repeating false information vomited out by Mr. Rove and his henchmen. Rove attacks Ms. Simpson because he knows she knows more. Her information about such matters is vast. Rove can’t afford to testify without knowing it all, and for this reason he has attempted to lure her into a defamation action against him for the scurrilous lies he has told about her in GQ, Weekly Standard , Powerline , News Busters and now The National Review.

I am sure Rove has steadily cursed the Republican counsel in the Judiciary Committee for not grilling Ms. Simpson with more gusto last fall — but then, Rove ran out of Washington like a scalded dog two weeks before Ms. Simpson testified on Sept. 14. He resigned Aug. 31.

As Ms. Simpson says, “Slander is the ultimate revenge of a coward.” Rove has trampled through government like a wild boar in a turnip patch for too many years. Now that he’s being hunted, he is hiding in the woods from the House Judiciary Committee. He needs to come out in the sunshine, tell the truth and stop being terrified of Ms. Simpson.

That it takes a small town lawyer in Alabama to do it, casts shame on all you puffed up big-city pundits. Barry Goldwater would be embarrassed by you and so would William F. Buckley.

PD

The tainted U.S. attorney’s office in Montgomery is sticking by its case against former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy and has now filed its brief with the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta asking that the case be upheld, although most informed legal sources now recognize that it was a strictly political prosecution from the outset.

AP: U.S. Attorneys Ask Court to Uphold Siegelman Conviction

The brief disputes the arguments made by attorneys for Siegelman and Scrushy in their appeal brief, the main focus of which is whether there was an explicit quid pro quo to support convictions for “bribery.”

On the issue of juror misconduct, for reading news coverage of the case online and communicating with other members of the jury via e-mail, the prosecutors claim there was an investigation of that, even though they admitted recently they never told the defense lawyers about it and the judge utterly failed to conduct due diligence to investigate.

Siegelman’s main attorney, Vince Kilborn, told the AP Monday that he doesn’t believe the government brief hurt the chances of his client and Scrushy winning on appeal.

“The government has not dented the basic argument that in a political setting it is required to prove an explicit quid pro quo,” Kilborn said. And he said the trial judge, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller, given a lifetime appointment by President George W. Bush in 2002 just in time to try the case, never fully investigated if the purported e-mails were authentic.

Lawyers for Siegelman and Scrushy now have 45 days to reply to the filing by the Bush prosecution team. The three-judge panel in Atlanta has indicated it expects to hold oral arguments in the appeal after studying the briefs from both sides.