-Caveat Lector-
hyyp://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1668220,00.html
Thursday, Oct. 04, 2007
Selective Justice in Alabama?
By Adam Zagorin
On may 8, 2002, Clayton Lamar (Lanny) Young Jr., a lobbyist and
landfill developer described by acquaintances as a hard-drinking
"good ole boy," was in an expansive mood. In the downtown offices of
the U.S. Attorney in Montgomery, Ala., Young settled into his chair,
personal lawyer at his side, and proceeded to tell a group of
seasoned prosecutors and investigators that he had paid tens of
thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to
some of the biggest names in Alabama Republican politics. According
to Young, among the recipients of his largesse were the state's
former attorney general Jeff Sessions, now a U.S. Senator, and
William Pryor Jr., Sessions' successor as attorney general and now a
federal judge. Young, whose detailed statements are described in
documents obtained by TIME, became a key witness in a major case in
Alabama that brought down a high-profile politician and landed him in
federal prison with an 88-month sentence. As it happened, however,
that official was the top Democrat named by Young in a series of
interviews, and none of the Republicans whose campaigns he fingered
were investigated in the case, let alone prosecuted.
The case of Don Siegelman, the Democratic former Governor of Alabama
who was convicted last year on corruption charges, has become a flash
point in the debate over the politicization of the Bush
Administration's Justice Department. Forty-four former state
attorneys general — Republicans and Democrats — have cited
"irregularities" in the investigation and prosecution, saying they
"call into question the basic fairness that is the linchpin of our
system of justice." The Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney's
office strongly deny that politics played any part in Siegelman's
prosecution. They say the former Governor, who recently began serving
the first months of his more than seven-year sentence, got exactly
what he deserved. But Justice officials have refused to turn over
documentation on the case requested by the House Judiciary Committee,
which scheduled a hearing on Siegelman's prosecution for Oct. 11.
Now TIME has obtained sensitive portions of the requested materials,
including FBI and state investigative records that lay out some of
Young's testimony. The information provided by the landfill developer
was central to roughly half the 32 counts that Siegelman faced for
allegedly accepting campaign contributions, money and gifts in
exchange for official favors. (Siegelman was acquitted on 25 of those
counts and convicted on seven. Young pleaded guilty to bribery-
related charges and, in recognition of his cooperation with the
government, received a short two-year sentence and fine.) But what
Young had to say about Sessions, Pryor and other high-profile Alabama
Republicans was even more remarkable for the simple fact that much of
it had never before come to light.
The Young transcripts will probably add fuel to charges that the Bush
Administration pursued selective justice in Alabama. Leura Canary,
the U.S. Attorney whose office drove Siegelman's prosecution, is
married to Bill Canary, Alabama's most prominent political operative
and a longtime friend of Karl Rove's. In May an Alabama lawyer and
Republican activist named Dana Jill Simpson gave a notarized
statement that she heard Canary say Rove "had spoken with the
Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman, with help from two
of Alabama's U.S. Attorneys. Bill Canary called her charge
"outrageous," and other alleged participants in the phone
conversation issued similar denials. (The White House declined to
comment, citing Siegelman's pending appeal.) But last month Simpson
testified behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee.
Sources tell TIME that, under penalty of perjury, she repeated her
allegations about Canary and Rove.
Alabama is as red a state as the clay in its earth. After the years
of rule by Southern Democrats, Republicans have now taken up
residence in the Governor's mansion, as well as most statewide
offices and congressional seats. In the 1990s Rove helped orchestrate
a G.O.P. near sweep of the Alabama Supreme Court.
In this new Republican landscape, Siegelman emerged as one of the few
Democratic stars, winning the Governor's race in 1998. He lost the
seat in a close and contested race in 2002, but polls in 2003 showed
that he had a good chance of recapturing the governorship. Then came
the first indictment from the U.S. Attorney in Birmingham, charging
Siegelman with using his position to rig a state bidding process. A
judge dismissed the case in 2004 for lack of evidence. Just as
Siegelman was preparing to run for Governor again, a second round of
charges was brought in 2005 by the U.S. Attorney's office in
Montgomery. His trial in 2006 overlapped with Alabama's Democratic
primary, in which Siegelman had initially been a heavy favorite.
The investigation into Siegelman began as an inquiry into a contract
held by Young to build a state warehouse in Alabama. Young was a well-
liked figure in Montgomery who, by his own account, was in the habit
of handing out cash, checks, rides on his private airplane and other
goodies to members of both political parties. In return, he
apparently hoped to receive favorable treatment for his garbage dumps
and other lucrative state-related business.
Young testified that he had furnished Siegelman with an all-terrain
vehicle and a motorcycle, lavishing money on the Governor and his
aides. But he was an equal-opportunity influence monger. Early in the
investigation, in November 2001, Young announced that five years
earlier, he "personally provided Sessions with cash campaign
contributions," according to an FBI memo of the interview.
Prosecutors didn't follow up that surprising statement with
questions, but Young volunteered more. The memo adds that "on one
occasion he [Young] provided Session [sic] with $5,000 to $7,000
using two intermediaries," one of whom held a senior position with
Sessions' campaign. On another occasion, the FBI records show, Young
talked about providing "$10,000 to $15,000 to Session [sic]. Young
had his secretaries and friends write checks to the Sessions campaign
and Young reimbursed the secretaries and friends for their
contributions."
If true, Young's statements describe political money laundering that
would be a clear violation of federal law. In 1996, when Young said
he had made the contributions, it was illegal to give a candidate
more than $1,000 for a primary or general campaign. None of the
individuals Young named as his intermediaries in making the donations
are listed in Federal Election Commission records as contributors to
Sessions' 1996 U.S. Senate race. "We have on record a $1,000
contribution from Mr. Young during the 1996 election cycle and no
record of any other contribution from him," says a spokesman for
Sessions.
Young also openly offered details about what he said were donations
totaling between $12,000 and $15,000 to Pryor's campaign for state
attorney general. Once again, Young had used the friends-and-
colleagues maneuver. According to the FBI record, "Young advised that
during Pryor's 1998 campaign, he contributed money through other
individuals." Young named four people who "all wrote checks to
Pryor's campaign and were reimbursed by Young for their
contributions." At one point in the conversation, Young seemed
particularly eager to tell all. "This was not just for the Governor's
[Siegelman's] campaign," he told investigators. "It was also for the
attorney general's campaign ... I gave you the example of five checks
totaling $25,000. If I was there, I would write them out or just sign
them, and they would fill in who it was to or whatever." According to
Young, a top official on Pryor's campaign "would call and say, 'I
need money for this, this or this,'" and Young would take care of the
request. ("I do not have a recollection of the amounts that you
describe as having been contributed by Lanny Young or his associates
to my campaign," Pryor wrote in an e-mail to TIME.)
But it wasn't always as impersonal as handing over a stack of bills
or checks. Among the illegal actions alleged in Siegelman's
indictment was his acceptance from Young of thousands of dollars'
worth of free T shirts and hundreds of specially embossed coffee mugs
to give away as Christmas presents. The freebies were popular, said
Young. "I had got them coffee cups and stuff before and shirts, and I
had the same thing for Bill [Pryor]." Young estimated the value of
the mugs at $13,000 to $15,000, and he even offered to share the
extras with his inquisitors: "I've still got a case of his [Pryor's
coffee cups] ... if y'all want to come get them." ("I don't think we
want to touch them right now," an investigator replied.)
This evidence was heard by lawyers from U.S. Attorney Canary's
office, representatives of Alabama's Republican attorney general and
an attorney from the Justice Department's public-integrity unit in
Washington. But in an unusual exercise of prosecutorial discretion,
nearly all the payments and donations went uninvestigated. And when
Siegelman's defense team, which had obtained Young's statements amid
tens of thousands of documents provided in discovery, raised his
accusations briefly in court, a judge quickly ruled them irrelevant.
Legal experts say prosecutors enjoy wide latitude in deciding whom to
charge in criminal cases. But according to Laurie Levenson, a former
assistant U.S. Attorney and a prominent expert in legal ethics at
Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, there are limits. "Certainly
prosecutors would face a professional obligation to check out or
verify the allegations in this case," she says. "Not doing so would
represent a potential abuse of prosecutorial discretion." The key,
she adds, is whether prosecutors chose not to pursue evidence of
criminal activity by Republicans because of political bias or a
conflict of interest. Sometimes prosecutors have a more benign
motive; they may simply verify that allegations are untrue or be
unclear on how to categorize the offense or the relevant statute of
limitations. Certainly in Young's statements about Sessions and
Pryor, he did not allege a quid pro quo for his money laundering of
their campaigns. And whatever the involvement of their campaigns,
Sessions and Pryor both assert they were completely unaware of his
confessed chicanery. But the U.S. Attorney's office chose to
prosecute Siegelman in no small measure on the basis of Young's word
and chose not to investigate Sessions and Pryor — or their
campaigns — on the basis of that same word.
Several people involved in the Siegelman case who spoke to TIME say
prosecutors were so focused on going after Siegelman that they showed
almost no interest in tracking down what Young said about apparently
illegal contributions to Sessions, Pryor, other well-known figures in
the Alabama G.O.P. and even a few of the state's Democrats. "It just
didn't seem like that was ever going to happen," said an individual
present during key parts of the investigation. "Sessions and Pryor
were on the home team."
That description is not just a metaphor: several of the lawyers
involved in the Siegelman investigation were from Pryor's office and
had worked for Sessions as well when he held the post. In such
circumstances, say experts on legal ethics, it is nearly always
incumbent on investigators to inform a third party and recuse
themselves from further questioning to avoid a conflict of interest.
In this instance, it appears the investigators chose not to recuse
themselves but to simply ignore the allegations. (Steve Feaga, an
assistant U.S. Attorney in Canary's office, says, "I'm confident that
we investigated every viable federal crime and prosecuted them.")
The fact that most of Young's claimed contributions apparently went
unrecorded raises the possibility that he never made them, that he
was merely boasting. But it would also mean that he had lied to
federal agents, which is a felony, and Young was never charged with
that crime. If he had lied, that would also have diminished Young's
credibility as a key government witness against Siegelman. One of
Young's lawyers tells TIME, "There was never the slightest suggestion
by prosecutors that the information my client provided about
contributions to Sessions and Pryor was in any way untrue." The judge
in the Siegelman case also seemed to find Young credible: he stated
at sentencing that he had increased the sentencing guidelines for the
Governor on the basis of a prosecution memo that alleged "systematic
and pervasive corruption" and cited a "criminal relationship with
Lanny Young."
The controversy surrounding the case in Alabama is not that Siegelman
went to prison and his Republican colleagues didn't. Without an
investigation or even questions being asked, it's impossible to know
whether any of them committed illegal acts. The issue is that some of
the same allegations that led to Siegelman's indictment never merited
so much as a follow-up when raised in connection with Republicans.
U.S. Attorney Canary has vigorously rejected the suggestion of any
political influence on the case. She has pointed out that the
investigation of Siegelman originated not with her but with her
Democratic predecessor as U.S. Attorney and in the office of
Alabama's then attorney general, Bill Pryor. Moreover, she notes that
she was in charge of the case for only eight months, long before
indictments were handed down, and then publicly recused herself to
avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Yet Canary was in charge when Young spoke about his payments to the
Sessions and Pryor campaigns and to other Alabama Republicans. At the
same time, her husband's consulting firm, Capitol Group LLC, was
being paid close to $40,000 to advise Pryor. A source who held a
senior post in Canary's office during the long-running investigation
into Siegelman says it's almost inconceivable that Canary would not
have been informed of Young's charges against prominent Republican
officeholders and candidates. Canary denied that to TIME. The fact
that those charges were never looked at will only heighten suspicions
that the Siegelman prosecution was a case of selective justice and
that in the Bush Administration, enforcing the law has been a
partisan pursuit.
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