There are some interesting developments in the saga of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, convicted in 2006 of bribery after what appears to have been a politically motivated prosecution. The Birmingham News reports:

Former Gov. Don Siegelman asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday to toss out his conviction, saying prosecutors confused campaign contributions for bribes.

Siegelman's lawyers argued the trial judge made multiple errors at the 2006 trial.

"We believe we will be successful in the appeal and all the convictions on all counts will be overturned," Siegelman lawyer Vince Kilborn said.

Siegelman, a Democrat, was released from federal prison in March pending the outcome of his appeal.

Also yesterday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers issued a subpoena to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and key Bush advisor Karl Rove, demanding testimony about his role in the firing of U.S. attorneys as well as the Siegelman prosecution.

In addition, Conyers disclosed that the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility has opened an investigation into selective prosecution of Siegelman and at least three others, the Washington Post reports.

"I think this will make Watergate look like child's play," Siegelman said in a recent interview with the Anniston Star.

Labels: Alabama, corruption, don siegelman, karl rove, politics

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman is to be released from prison tomorrow on the orders of a federal appeals court in Atlanta. The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said his larger appeal had raised "substantial questions," the New York Times reports:

Mr. Siegelman, a Democrat, had been taken to prison immediately following his sentencing last year, an unusual move by federal authorities in a white-collar case. His lawyers said Thursday that he never should have been imprisoned while he appealed his conviction.

Earlier today, a House committee called for Siegelman's release to testify before Congress about the politics of the case. In the meantime, the FCC is investigating an alleged technical glitch that resulted in one Alabama TV station blacking out a national CBS report on Karl Rove's reported involvement.

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove

From the Associated Press:

The House Judiciary Committee has asked the Justice Department to temporarily release former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman from prison to testify before Congress in early May about possible political influence over his prosecution.

A spokeswoman for the committee said Thursday that Siegelman, who is serving more than seven years in a Louisiana prison, would travel to Washington under guard of the U.S. Marshals Service. She said Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, wants to hear directly from Siegelman because lawmakers are having trouble getting information elsewhere, including from the Justice Department.

Some are already wondering aloud whether this development will cause any more Alabama TV stations to experience technical difficulties.

Labels: Alabama, congressional hearings, don siegelman

Remember the curious glitch that prevented a CBS affliliate in northern Alabama from airing the recent 60 Minutes' report -- and that report only -- on the politics behind the controversial prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman? Well, the Federal Communications Commission has launched an inquiry into the incident, Reuters reports:

The FCC issued a "notice of inquiry" to WHNT, a CBS affiliate in Huntsville, Alabama, in connection with an outage that cut off a segment of the February 24 broadcast of "60 Minutes," an FCC spokeswoman said.

WHNT, which has blamed the black-out on equipment failure, has 30 days to respond with an explanation of what happened in the incident.

The inquiry came at the request of Commissioner Michael Copps, one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member body. The agency's chairman, Kevin Martin, is a Republican.

WHNT is owned by an investment firm whose founder's family has close ties to the Bushes, and it's managed by Local TV, a company headed by a former Clear Channel Communications executive and major Bush contributor. After initially blaming the blackout on a CBS transmission problem, the station management has since maintained that the problem was caused at the receiving end by an equipment failure that cut off the feed. The station later re-aired the segment twice.

The FCC inquiry comes amid mounting calls from across the political spectrum for Siegelman to be freed from prison and for the case to be investigated. Last week former Former Reagan Treasury official and Wall Street Journal editor Paul Craig Roberts joined the chorus, writing in CounterPunch that Siegelman "was framed in a crooked trial ... and sent to Federal prison by the corrupt and immoral Bush Administration."

Labels: Alabama, criminal justice, don siegelman, FCC, karl rove, media, politics

Sue here at Facing South reported on Wednesday about the sudden "glitch" that befell WHNT TV in Huntsville, Alabama last weekend -- precisely at the moment that a 60 Minutes expose was airing which argued that the prosecution of former Alabam Gov. Don Siegelman (D) was politically motivated.

As the New York Times reports today, WHNT officials are sticking to their story:

In an attempt to clear up questions about how an Alabama television station lost its signal at the start of Sunday’s edition of “60 Minutes” on CBS, the management of the station, WHNT-TV, issued a statement Thursday citing equipment failure.

The station, in Huntsville, said that after a review, it had concluded that the blackout was related to a similar interruption during a basketball game the day before.

WHNT has been furiously responding to an avalanche of questions about the eight-minute blackout (which we had reported as lasting 12 minutes); here's one such response from sent to a blogger at DailyKos from WHNT's news anchor Elise Morgan:

If you're at all interested in the details of what happened, I can tell you. At first we thought the problem was on CBS's end because we'd had some problems with their feed during basketball Saturday night. Even worse, it's the weekend and there's no engineer in the building to fix it. It took 8 minutes to figure out what in the world was going on... skeleton crew and all... and fix it. But the fact that it just so happened to occur during this story that is filled with allegations of a conspiracy, feeds the conspiracy theorists themselves that this is no accident at all. No it doesn't look good. That's why we call it a P.R. nightmare. But I can assure you it was nothing more than a problem with our receiver. That's why other stations across the country could get the program even if we couldn't.

CBS bent over backwards to allow to us re-air the story again on our 10 pm newscast that night and at 6:00 pm the next day, commercial-free, so everyone in our area could see it. The story actually got more attention and air time than if it had aired as scheduled.

Sounds like it could have been an honest glitch to me. And either way, the blackout probably brought more attention to the story than if they had aired as usual.

Labels: 60 minutes, Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, whnt

A top executive at WHNT in Huntsville, Ala. denies that his TV station intentionally blacked out the CBS "60 Minutes" report about the politically motivated prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman -- even though the 12-minute blackout came just as the report started, and ended just as the report drew to a close. The New York Times reported yesterday:

"We know what our license means to us," said Stan Pylant, the chief executive at the station. "There were no political motives in this."

Pylant blamed the mysterious blackout on a signal receiver, which strangely enough had no problems receiving CBS's feed up until the report started or after it ended. Somehow it managed to malfunction only during the report on Siegelman.

As we previously noted, WHNT is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners, an investment company managed by prominent supporters of President Bush, whose former advisor Karl Rove was implicated in the "60 Minutes" Siegelman investigation. But as the New York Times notes, the station is managed by a separate company, Local TV -- whose chief executive, Robert "Bobby" Lawrence, is a former Clear Channel Communications executive and also a major Bush contributor.

In an editorial in today's paper, the New York Times sounds skeptical about WHNT's explanation. The paper points out that in 1955, when Mississippi NBC affiliate WLBT didn't want to run a network report about desegregation, it hung up a sign that said, "Sorry, Cable Trouble." The editorial concludes:

In 1969, the F.C.C. revoked the license of WLBT in Jackson after the commission established a systematic effort by the broadcaster to suppress information about the civil rights movement. Today, broadcast rules have changed, giving stations more leeway to decide what to air. Dropping a single report is unlikely to set the regulators in motion. Still, it would be deeply troubling if a partisan broadcaster could suppress information on the public airwaves and hide behind a technical fig leaf.

In this case, if the blackout was intentional, it may also have been counterproductive. Rather than take attention away from allegations that Mr. Siegelman was the victim of a partisan campaign, WHNT’s technical glitch seems to lend support to the charge.

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, media, politics

WHNT -- the CBS affiliate for northern Alabama where the "60 Minutes" report on former Gov. Don Siegelman's controversial prosecution was blacked out last night -- is owned by Oak Hill Capital Partners. The investment firm was founded by billionaire Texan Robert Bass, the son of oilman Perry Richardson Bass. Robert's brother Ed was a Yale classmate and personal friend of George W. Bush, and along with brother Lee they put up $25 million to finance Harken Oil in the late 1980s while George W. Bush was serving on the board of directors.

The Bass brothers' political action committees donated more than $200,000 to Bush's gubernatorial campaigns, while their personal donations topped $270,000, according to UTWatch.org. Lee Bass was also among the Bush Pioneers in 2000 and 2004, raising at least $100,000 for the presidential campaign in each election cycle, according to Texans for Public Justice.

Meanwhile, Harper's Scott Horton -- who has been following the Siegelman story closely -- reports that the station's general manager initially gave an incorrect explanation for the broadcast failure, blaming it on "network problems." He also notes that the station "was noteworthy for its hostility to Siegelman and support for his Republican adversary."

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, media, politics

Last night the CBS show "60 minutes" aired a powerful report on what appears to be the politically motivated prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Unfortunately, viewers in northern Alabama who tuned in to watch the show found a black screen during most of the Siegelman piece. Reports Facing South reader mooncat:

Strange coincidence, but WHNT, the local CBS affiliate in Huntsville AL which covers the northern part of the state, had "technical problems" during the Siegelman segment of 60 Minutes tonight. They showed a black screen for the first 12 to 13 minutes of the show, including most of the Siegelman story.

They caught a lot of flack from viewers and did rebroadcast that segment in its entirety at about 10:20 pm.

The station said the problem was at its end and blamed it on a failed satellite receiver.

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, media, politics

This Sunday, the CBS news show "60 Minutes" will report on an alleged five-year secret campaign spearheaded by former White House advisor Karl Rove to bring down Don Siegelman, who served as Alabama's governor from 1999 to 2003 after previous stints as Secretary of State, Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor.

Rep. Bob Riley defeated Siegelman for re-election in November 2002 by about 3,000 votes. A voting machine glitch in a single county put Riley over the top, with votes in no other races affected. Coincidentally, all of the elections officials in that county were Republicans, and they conducted the recount after midnight when the Democratic Party observers had gone home. Democrats' requests to repeat the recount were rejected by Alabama courts and then-Attorney General William H. Pryor Jr., who were all Republicans or appointed by Republicans.

In 1999, Alabama's U.S. Attorneys began a criminal investigation into controversial accusations of corruption involving Siegelman. He was indicted in 2004, convicted in 2005, and is now serving a seven-year federal prison sentence. Click here for more details on the case from TPMMuckraker.com.

But last year, Dana Jill Simpson -- a Republican attorney and political activist from Rainsville, Ala. -- signed a sworn statement that she had been on a Republican campaign conference call in which she heard GOP operative Bill Canary say not to worry about Siegelman because his "girls" and "Karl" would make sure the Justice Department took care of him. His "girls" allegedly included his wife, Leura Canary -- the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama. Simpson has said that she spoke out because Siegelman's prosecution and imprisonment bothers her conscience.

For more on the upcoming "60 Minutes" story -- including a clip of Simpson talking to reporter Scott Pelley, as well as Pelley's discussion of his report -- click here.

Labels: Alabama, don siegelman, karl rove, voting integrity