(May 15) Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman shouldn’t get away with his latest attempt to finagle exoneration for long-ago crimes.
Siegelman, whose term from 1999-2003 made him the last Democrat to serve as Alabama’s chief executive, has been trying for years to get his 2006 federal corruption conviction overturned. Now, he is trying, somewhat bizarrely, to piggyback on the case of former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as yet another way to find his own vindication. How absurd!
A Friday press release from Siegelman began like this: “The U.S. Attorney General dropping federal charges against Michael Flynn has now raised questions of the political prosecution of Don Siegelman … who was poised to enter national politics when he landed in the crosshairs of a politicized Bush-era Department of Justice.”
The rest of the release immediately abandons the Flynn analogy while repeating a host of familiar, bogus complaints about the supposed unfairness of Siegelman’s own case. There’s good reason he pivots from Flynn: The comparison is ludicrous. There is no parallel to Siegelman’s case….
[Later in his delusional release] Siegelman [also] blames “the Bush-era Department of Justice political machine, helmed by Karl Rove.” This is crazy. At the very time Siegelman says Rove was directing a Justice Department political machine, the Justice Department was investigating Rove himself and came within a day of filing an indictment against Rove until definitive exculpatory evidence emerged. Rove no more controlled the Justice Department than Donald Trump controls Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives that impeached him.
Siegelman also claims he “was poised to run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004” until Rove targeted him. Not even close. In 2004, he was a has-been who had just lost his gubernatorial reelection bid. If he had even floated his name for president then, he would have been a laughingstock….
[The full column is here.]
