Please help to free Don Siegelmann, victim of Karl Rove

[martigras]

Please watch the new trailer by Martin Sheen about Siegelmann's unfair incarceration and help us to get 100,000 signatures to get President Obama to pardon him. Even 60 Minutes and the NY Times believe he was railroaded.

&feature=youtu.be

Petition: http://wh.gov/indFr

[sketchy]

1. Now at about 86 signatures

[Octafish]

2. Rove, Bush and Cheney belong in prison. Not Don Siegelman.

From 2003...



Yet...

[chervilant]

3. This is one critical action Mr. Obama

SHOULD complete ASAP -- release Mr. Siegelman and exonerate him completely.

[Stardust]

4. Done. I fervently hope President Obama will do the right thing about this travesty. eom

Last edited Wed Sep 16, 2015, 04:41 PM - Edit history (2)

[1939]

5. I would imagine

that given the notoriety of the case, the president talked with the Justice Dept shortly after Jan 2009 about a pardon.

My speculation (based on current status of the pardon process) was that he was told "don't go there". This would indicate that Holder didn't think that the resultant releases of evidence would be good for the president.

Again, this is purely conjecture based on the fact that the president has not stroked his pen to date.

[Octafish]

6. Yeah, with Elena Kagan, Solicitor General. She then got Siegelman put in jail LONGER.

Elena Kagan - Willing Accomplice

By Michael Collins

Then, when Siegelman appealed his case to the Supreme Court in 2009, President Obama's Attorney General dispatched Solicitor General Elena Kagan to argue against the appeal in November.

Before accepting the case, Elena Kagan knew or should have known: that the U.S. Attorney who began the Siegelman investigation was closely tied to Karl Rove; that Siegelman never benefited personally from the contribution to an education funding initiative; that the case was so outrageous, forty-four attorneys general petitioned Congress; and, that the presiding judge in the case owned a major interest in a defense firm that received a $178 million federal contract between Siegelman's indictment and trial, a massive conflict of interest.

Most revealing, before her argument against the former governor's appeal, Kagan knew or should have known the following. After two charges had been dropped in a 2009 appeal, Justice Department attorneys recommended a twenty year sentence instead of the seven years already rendered. Fewer offenses for sentencing meant thirteen additional years by the strange logic of federal justice.
Kagan knew or should have known all this and more. That didn't stop her from arguing that Don Siegelman should be kept in jail. ...

That judgment is that Elena Kagan was a willing accomplice in one of the most outrageous political prosecutions of our time. Why should anyone ever trust her?

Her nomination to the Supreme Court of the United States should be rejected unanimously.

SOURCE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8614514

Today, Ms. Kagan sits on the Supreme Court.

[1939]

7. Yes, nominated by President Obama

and confirmed by most of the Democratic senators.

The outrage over Gov Siegelman does not seem to have penetrated Democratic Washington even though it has long been a DU cause celebre.

[Octafish]

8. Justice Department Downplays Evidence of Politics in Probe of Governor

It seems the facts STILL aren't all public, even to our elected representatives like John Conyer -- who has tried.

Justice Department Downplays Evidence of Politics in Probe of Governor

By Adam Zagorin
POGO, December 11, 2014

New evidence related to one of the most controversial public corruption cases in recent years, the 2006 conviction of Alabama’s former Democratic Governor, Donald E. Siegelman, indicates that Department of Justice prosecutors, who are supposed to ignore politics, were thinking and acting in partisan terms when they probed the governor’s administration.

SNIP...

Under Wraps

The document is a June 3, 2010, letter from an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department to Representative John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), who was then chairman of the House Committee on the Judiciary.

In 2008, Conyers called on OPR to look into allegations that the Department engaged in “selective, politically-motivated prosecutions,” and the letter summarized the results of OPR’s inquiry. Siegelman was prosecuted twice: once in 2004 in the Northern District of Alabama, a case that was thrown out, and once in 2006 in the Middle District of Alabama, which resulted in his conviction.

However, even as the Justice Department recapped OPR’s findings for one of its top congressional overseers, it gave him only a partial view of the facts; it did not give him the full report of its investigation, which has never been made public.

The letter’s condensed version of OPR’s findings is at times so fragmentary that it is unclear exactly how and why OPR concluded that prosecutors were to be faulted for nothing more serious than exercising poor judgment. In OPR terminology, poor judgment is not considered professional misconduct. Based on the information in the letter, it is also hard to see how OPR could conclude that the investigations of Siegelman were free of political motivation.

The summary does not name the assistant U.S. attorney who authored the email to the son and campaign manager of Siegelman’s Republican rival.

CONTINUED...

http://www.pogo.org/our-work/articles/2014/Justice-Department-Downplays-Evidence-of-Politics-in-Probe-of-Governor.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

Still, it IS odd, isn't it? Democrats siding with Rove.

[1939]

11. Sherlock Holmes and "the dog that didn't bark"

I never followed this much, but President Obama has been president for 6-1/2 years with two different Democrats heading up the Justice Department for the same period of time. The facts that there has been no presidential pardon or commutation and that the Justice Department has not reopened the case would indicate that there "might be" enough in the "meat" of the case to cause them to stand clear and that any pardon would be a January 2017 affair..

[Waiting For Everyman]

9. Done. It's at 94.

[sketchy]

10. Just noticed a small error in the petition text

It says "convinced," rather than, "convicted."

I hope the person who started the petition notices and fixes this error.
Not sure how to get a message to him or her...

[steve2470]

12. signed! nt

[L. Coyote]

13. More at LBN thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10141208042

[Blue Owl]

14. Hey Karl...

How about you go fuck yourself you POS...