The current occupant of the White House has an infatuation with presidential pardons. Sheriff Joe, Scooter, and possibly any number of other felons connected to his campaign. Concurrently, he relishes frothing up crowds with the chant, “Lock her up!” referencing the woman who received three million more votes than he in the last election.
Which brings us to former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and Karl Rove and the depths to which Republicans will sink to gain power and subvert the electoral process.
Siegelman, a Democrat, was elected Alabama’s Secretary of State in 1978, Attorney General in 1986 and Lieutenant Governor in 1994. In 1998, Alabama voters elected him Governor. Four years later, after polls closed for the 2002 election, Siegelman went to bed, comfortable that he had been reelected. He awoke the next morning to the news that “a voting machine malfunction” had been discovered in Baldwin County, giving Siegelman’s Republican opponent the votes needed to win the election. Local Republican election officials had done the recount with no Democratic observers present. The Republican Attorney General certified results and refused requests for a manual recount. Curiously, the purported malfunction did not affect the results of any down-ballot contests.
Siegelman tried again in 2006, but Republican turd blossom Karl Rove had been busy in his Rovian way to keep Alabama the solidly red state it had become. In 2002, Rove had hired an operative to obtain evidence of Siegelman’s cheating on his wife, apparently under the assumption that’s what all politicians do. Nothing was discovered, but Rove also had more devious plans.
Two years later, as Siegelman was gearing up for his 2006 run, a Bush-appointed Federal Prosecutor, the wife of a Republican consultant, brought a case against him for Medicare fraud, a case so lame that the presiding judge threw it out before the first witness was called. Undeterred, Rove and company came up with another indictment.
Back when he was Governor, Siegelman was a proponent of a state lottery to fund education. In those pre-Citizens United days, he was accused of accepting a big donation to that lottery campaign from a prominent businessman in return for a non-salaried position on a state board. The trial for bribery began during the primary campaign, which Siegelman lost. Two months later, after two deadlocked juries, the third time was the charm and Don Siegelman was sentenced to seven years in prison.
(Fun side note: the judge in that trial, was arrested for domestic violence in 2014 and made a deal to have his record expunged if he promised to be a good boy thereafter. He now hears no cases, does no work, but still collects his federal-judge salary.)
The entire affair was so blatantly politically motivated that fifty-two former state attorneys general, of both parties, have asked Congress to investigate the Siegelman case. Karl Rove and others at the White House were subpoenaed to testify before Congress but they refused to appear. And the Justice Department has refused to turn over hundreds of documents in the case.
CBS’s “60 Minutes” broadcast their own investigation in 2008. The New Yorker magazine published a piece in 2015 calling on President Obama to issue a pardon.
A new movie about the affair, “Atticus v. the Architect” can be purchased at atticusvthearchitect.com or downloaded from iTunes.
The moral: when Republicans chant “Lock Her Up,” take them seriously. Our Republic is approaching the climate as in countries with “strong leaders” where a political opponent can be incarcerated for the crime of being a political opponent.
Great article George, have you read The Red Notice by Bill Browder? Russia, with Putin, does this to it’s people as common events. What are we becoming?