http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14819.html Jury: Stevens guilty on seven counts By: John Bresnahan October 27, 2008 04:11 PM EST Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) was convicted today on seven counts of failing to report more than $250,000 in improper gifts he received from 1999 to 2006, a stunning blow to a political career that has lasted more than 40 years and marked Alaska’s entire history as a part of the United States. Stevens, 84, now faces a question over whether he will resign, and if he does not, whether he can win reelection Nov. 4 in an already tough race. Stevens showed no emotion, holding his stomach as verdict was read. Stevens could also be sentenced to as much as five years in federal prison, although considering his age and lack of previous convictions, is unlikely to receive anywhere near the maximum sentence. Stevens’ sentencing hearing is scheduled for Feb. 25, and Stevens' attorneys have already told Judge Sullivan they would file motions to overturn the verdict by early December. Stevens could also appeal the decision, but would likely to have to pay a heavy political price for such a move. The conviction came after a tumultuous week in the jury room. First there were complaints about an unruly juror, then another had to be replaced when she left Washington following the death of her father. Finally, jurors on Monday discovered a discrepancy in the indictment that had been overlooked by prosecutors. Jury deliberations in this historic trial have at times been as contentious as some of the proceedings The Justice Department indicted Stevens on July 29, and the Alaska Republican took a huge legal gamble and asked for a speedy trial in order to resolve the charges before Election Day. Judge Emmet Sullivan complied with Stevens’ request, and in less than three months from the time of his indictment, Stevens was found guilty. The verdict, which followed a month-long trial, puts into serious doubt Stevens’ political career, as well as his 40-year tenure in the Senate. Stevens was seeking a seventh full term as in the Senate – he was first appointed in 1968 – and wanted to clear his name before he had to go before voters. With today’s guilty verdict, Democrat Mark Begich, Stevens’ opponent, will get a huge political boost, and make it that much more likely that he will unseat Stevens. And even if he wins reelection, Stevens could face an expulsion from the Senate. Of the four sitting senators who were convicted of crimes while in office, only one — Sen. Truman Newberry (R-Mich.) — continued to serve after being found guilty, and he was eventually hounded out of office in 1922 by senators seeking his expulsion. The verdict was also a huge win for the Justice Department, especially Brenda Morris, the lead prosecutor in the case, and her team of lawyers and investigators. Even investigating a lawmaker of Stevens’ standing and reputation was a risky proposition, much less indicting and convicting him. Justice Dept. officials, however, insist that they are willing to take on any public-corruption case, no matter who is involved, and today’s verdict will certainly buttress that claim. The heart of the government’s case against Stevens centered on the nearly total overhaul of Stevens’ home in Girdwood, Alaska during 2000-01. Bill Allen, a close Stevens’ friend and former CEO of VECO Corp., an Alaska oil-field services company, paid for much of the renovation work and used VECO employees to carry it out. That work cost more than $180,000, and Stevens never paid for it or reported it on his annual financial disclosure forms.. But Stevens claimed he paid more than $160,000 to other contractors for the home renovation project. He also said that any VECO employees working on the remodeling were not working for VECO, but rather were employed by him. Stevens and his wife, Catherine Stevens, said she handled the couple’s finances and the senator was not closely involved in the remodeling. After some prosecutorial missteps early in the trial that almost led to the dismissal of the charges or a mistrial, the pivotal moment in the proceedings appeared to come when Stevens and his wife took the stand. Both told disjointed stories that failed to follow a cohesive narrative, and prosecutors were able to dissect their claims during cross-examination. Stevens, in particular, was argumentative and crotchety when questioned by prosecutors, and his testimony failed to convince the jury that he was an innocent man. "This case has been a long time coming," Morris during her closing comments to the jury. "This trial has exposed the truth about one of the longest-sitting senators.”
Re: One more seat for the Democrats Good riddance to that corrupt SOB. I'm not a fan of term limits, but he's a strong argument for them. When you've had that kind of power for too long, you begin to feel invincible.
Re: Jury: Stevens guilty on seven counts Denny, would you merge this post with the other Stevens thread?
Re: One more seat for the Democrats I must say I was amused by his defense, which was that he suffered a series of reverse home burglaries, where he'd come home and find that someone had left a bunch of new stuff in his house. barfo
Re: One more seat for the Democrats It won't be the hard core jail. Most white collar crimes get guys put in a place where the prison wall is painted on the floor with yellow paint or they just wear a GPS tracker and stay home all the time.
Re: One more seat for the Democrats Really? Well, I suppose that's not all that bad. His defense was a compelte joke. He undoubtedly paid millions for a defense and all they could come up was that someone placed all that stuff at his place?? What a freaking joke.
Re: One more seat for the Democrats Doubtful. He's a cowardly parasite who sold out his State to Big Oil. Following the many seamy connections between them, Palin should be the next to go down.
All except Russ Feingold and Ron Paul that I can see. How's that for bipartisan? One from each party.
http://www.russfeingold.org/promiseskept.php Russ has kept every one of these promises. Russ' 1992 and 1998 re-election campaigns raised the majority of their funds from Wisconsin individuals. In 1998, almost 15,000 Wisconsinites contributed to Russ for his historic re-election campaign, in which he did not accept any soft money from his party and restricted his campaign expenditures to $1 per voter. Russ is also raising the majority of his funds for his 2004 re-election campaign from Wisconsin individuals. For more information, read a recent article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Campaign filings show Feingold keeping promise on contributions." Russ has kept his promise to maintain his home in Middleton, Wisconsin, with his two children, Jessica and Ellen. Russ is proud that his children are, like himself, products of the Wisconsin public education system. Russ does not accept pay raises during each term in office. When Congress votes to raise its pay or when it is scheduled to receive a cost of living increase, Russ sends his share back to the U.S. Treasury. As part of his efforts to reform government, Russ has introduced legislation that would end these automatic cost-of-living increases, so that Congress would be accountable to the public in deciding when to raise its pay. Russ visits each one of Wisconsin's 72 counties every year and holds a listening session that is free and open to the public - that's over 860 listening sessions so far. These listening sessions have given Russ the opportunity to hear the concerns of Wisconsinites first-hand. Russ has met with thousands of Wisconsinites during these listening sessions, and has taken thousands of their comments and suggestions with him to Washington D.C. Nobody knows Wisconsin better than Senator Feingold. Russ is proud that the majority of staff people in his Senate office are from Wisconsin or have Wisconsin backgrounds. http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/summary.php?cycle=2008&cid=n00005906 How complete are this candidate's campaign finance reports? <table id="scofflaw" style="padding-bottom: 50px;"> <tbody><tr class="rowTint"> <td></td> <td nowrap="nowrap">Full Disclosure</td> <td align="right">$12,118,459</td> <td align="right">(84.8%)</td> </tr> <tr> <td></td> <td nowrap="nowrap">Incomplete</td> <td align="right">$123,069</td> <td align="right">(0.9%)</td> </tr> <tr class="rowTint"> <td></td> <td nowrap="nowrap">No Disclosure</td> <td align="right">$2,050,647</td> <td align="right">(14.3%)</td></tr></tbody></table>
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2006/11/post_47.html As new Congress organizes, Pelosi backslides on ethics ... House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, anointed Thursday as the next speaker of the House, must have an awfully short memory for promises or an awfully narrow definition of corruption. Perhaps both. (New day? From left, Rep. John Murtha, New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and new Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer / By Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images) Less than a week after Democrats captured the House on promises to reverse the Republican "culture of corruption," who did Pelosi back to become the No. 2 House leader? Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who was implicated (though not charged) in one of Washington's most sordid scandals. And who has she refused to rule out as the next chairman of the ultra-sensitive House Intelligence Committee? None other than Rep. Alcee Hastings,D-Fla., a former federal judge who was impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate for conspiring to extort a $150,000 bribe in a case before him. Not exactly a flying start for setting a new ethical tone on Capitol Hill. Long before Murtha became his party's leading critic of the Iraq war, he was caught on a grainy FBI tape in the 1980 Abscam probe, in which undercover agents posed as errand boys for an Arab sheik looking to bribe congressmen for favors. Murtha's reply to the agents' $50,000 lure: "I'm not interested — at this point." The congressman, who suggests on tape that they "do business for a while," ended up an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. These days, he is one of Congress' most ardent purveyors of pork-barrel projects and, as recently as this week, expressed disdain for raising Congress' ethical standards. Earlier this year, he joined Republicans to vote against a tough Democratic ethics bill. Luckily for Pelosi, 149 House Democrats have more sense than she does. On Thursday, they picked Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., over Murtha as majority leader. Hoyer is no purist. Since 1999, he has raked in campaign contributions of more than $600,000 from lobbyists, ranking him No. 5 in the House, according to Public Citizen, a liberal public interest group. That points to a sad truth about Congress: Many of those who climb into leadership are steeped in its money culture. One way to get ahead is to collect millions from special interests and dispense it to colleagues' campaigns. Pelosi's judgment and commitment to change will be tested again with her decision about Hastings, who, after getting booted from the federal bench, was elected to Congress. He has served on the Intelligence Committee and is backed by the Congressional Black Caucus for the chairmanship. His Senate conviction should be enough to prevent that. He is the wrong man to be entrusted with the nation's most sensitive secrets. On Election Day, voters sent a clear message about ethics in government. They ousted several scandal-plagued incumbents, and 92% said corruption was important in their vote for House members. Pelosi vowed to change Congress' culture. First, she'll have to show that she recognizes corrupt behavior when she sees it. Posted at 12:22 AM/ET, November 17, 2006 in Politics, Government - Editorial, USA TODAY editorial | Permalink
They all need to be thrown in jail before you believe it? I'm satisfied with the dozens of DOJ investigations of various congressmen, and WWW sites like this (biased against republicans, albeit): http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/ And this: http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/22923.html RINO Chris Shays says Fellow Congressmen Corrupt Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2002 Shays Shocker: My Congressional Colleagues Are 'Corrupt' An author of the Shays-Meehan campaign finance reform bill passed by the House last week had telephones ringing off the hook in New York and Washington, D.C., Tuesday afternoon when he said during a radio interview that he and many of his fellow congressional representatives are "corrupt." During a heated debate on the influence of big money in politics, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Ct., told nationally syndicated radio host Sean Hannity that he could name "more than three" congressmen who he said had been corrupted by campaign donations - but declined to do so on the air. Shays' bizarre confession prompted calls of concern to his Washington office by several colleagues, with Hannity revealing after the interview that at least three congressman had called his own New York City broadcast studio for clarification on what Shays said. The full exchange went like this: HANNITY: Can you name me three members of Congress, just three, that are corrupt because they receive donations? SHAYS: Oh, I can name you more than three, but I wouldn't ... HANNITY: You can? SHAYS: No, no, Sean, this is one thing we have to be very honest about in our society. You don't - you, I hope, were outraged at Enron, what happened at Enron. I was. HANNITY: I'm more outraged about Global Crossing, but that's ... SHAYS: Well, OK. But either way, what happened was there were two things that Enron - Enron told us a whole host of things. But one of the things they taught us was that nobody spoke out about a corrupt system. And even Miss Watkins, who spoke out, only spoke out internally. Now, I would be like Miss Watkins if all I did was to speak internally and tell my Speaker the system is corrupting us - because I've done that. And what corrupts us ... HANNITY: You're saying that members of Congress, you have no doubt - how many would you say of the 435 members are corrupt? 'Cause you're saying ... SHAYS: Now, Sean, I want to say this to you. This is a system that corrupts everyone it touches - even me ... HANNITY: You have been corrupted by accepting donations? SHAYS: Let me just explain to you how, and, you know, we may not be able to cover it all. But I want to be honest with you like you would want an Enron employee to be honest with you. And the bottom line is certain bills don't come to the floor because the people are major contributors. Certain amendments don't get on the rules committee because people are major contributors. Some bills get to the floor because there are major contributors. Some issues that have been important to some people in the general public for years don't see the light of day because major contributors don't like it. And that's a fact. (End of Excerpt) Shays' comments about congressional corruption set off a firestorm of controversy, so much so that minutes after the interview ended he was back on the telephone asking Hannity for more air time. SHAYS: I wanted to dialogue because I don't feel that everyone in Congress is corrupt. I think it's a corrupting system. ... I was having people call me in response to one or two things you were saying and I really want to be clear on this because this is very important to me. I believe that I work with some of the finest people who actually are members of Congress. But the issue is, do I think all members of Congress are corrupt? Absolutely not. HANNITY: No, you didn't say that. But you said some. SHAYS: But what I do believe is that we are involved in a very corrupting system.
