Rove Op-Ed Reveals He Had Inside Information About Probe

Source: Raw Story

Rove Op-Ed Reveals He Had Inside Information About Probe

BY LARISA ALEXANDROVNA

Published: August 20, 2009
Updated 1 hour ago

Lawyer declines to say how he found out accuser didn’t talk to Justice Department

Karl Rove’s latest attempt to proclaim his innocence and demand apologies from those who have accused him of being behind the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman may backfire if it turns out that Rove was improperly receiving inside information after leaving his position as Deputy White House Chief of Staff.

“For more than two years,” Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal, “House Judiciary Committee Democrats and the New York Times editorial board have argued that I personally arranged for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to be prosecuted in 2004 for corruption and ordered the removal of eight U.S. attorneys in 2006 for failing to investigate Democrats. The Washington Post editorial board also echoed this last charge. The Times and the Post have published a combined 18 editorials on these issues, which were also catnip to House Judiciary Committee Democrats.”

Rove then goes on to attack Dana Jill Simpson, an Alabama Republican lawyer turned whistleblower who has linked him to the Siegelman prosecution. In doing so, however, he raises serious questions of impropriety by revealing that he has received confidential information from both the House Judiciary Committee and the Department of Justice.

“Committee staff confided to me that they considered her an unreliable witness,” Rove says of Simpson. “I also understand that Mr. Siegelman and Ms. Simpson refused to cooperate with the Justice Department’s review of his claim of political persecution, while I willingly gave sworn testimony.”

MORE

Read more: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/20/rove-op-ed-reveals-he-had-inside-information-about-probe/

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GD Thread with more info (and nice formatting): http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6356897&mesg_id=6356897

PROSECUTE!

why have a DoJ if perpetrators of high crimes can confess to them in public and not be held to account?

:kick:

Via listserv:

Dear Mr. Murdoch and all the editors at the Wall Street Journal

My Response to the article Closing in on Rove


I want to thank you from the very bottom of my heart for running Karl Rove's delusional article, Closing in on Rove, on August 20, 2009. The reason I want to thank you is that Mr. Rove has clearly lied about me in this article. You have captured and printed it without even checking to see if it is so or not. The lie he has told is and I quote, "Judiciary Democrats didn't get testimony from either Mr. Siegelman or Dana Jill Simpson, the eccentric Alabama lawyer, who drew attention by publicly supporting the allegations". In case you are unaware, I testified on September 14, 2007, before the House Judiciary Committee lawyers that were selected to question me. I most definitely gave sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Democrats. In fact, I gave over one hundred and forty three pages of testimony before the Judiciary Democratic and Republican lawyers. It is unfortunate that your paper does not give a rip about the truth or you would have checked out the bold-faced lie that Karl Rove put in his article before you printed it.

Further, I find it extremely tacky that you allow him to call me an eccentric Alabama lawyer. I ask, did you check with anyone other than Karl Rove who clearly hates me for telling on him? Karl also states in his article, "I also understand that Mr. Siegelman and Ms. Simpson refused to cooperate with the Justice Department’s review of his claim of political persecution, while I willingly gave sworn testimony". It was announced on May 15, 2009, that Mr. Rove was subpoenaed to testify by Nora Dannehy of the DOJ about the firing of the nine attorneys in a criminal matter. I would hardly call that willingly giving sworn testimony. Further, he pointedly refused to agree to give sworn testimony to the House Judiciary Committee this summer and did not take a sworn oath before chatting with the House Judiciary lawyers that questioned him. I might add I gladly and freely gave sworn testimony Mr. Rove however has willfully misled the public in this article to think that I have refused to give sworn testimony to the DOJ in the case in which he was subpoenaed to testify. I have never been subpoenaed or contacted by Nora Dannehy to testify in the investigation she is conducting on Karl Rove. I believe the reason for this is the fact that she is appointed the special prosecutor solely for the nine fired United States attorneys. Anyone who has read the transcript of my testimony before the House Judiciary lawyers, my affidavit and watched the 60 Minutes piece would know I have never made a direct claim of having any personal knowledge about the fired United States Attorneys. What I believe Mr.. Rove is trying to do here is to confuse the public.

I would additionally like to state that I have had very limited contact with the Department of Justice since testifying before the House Judiciary lawyers. One contact is from Lisa Howard. She contacted my attorney in the fall of 2008 and contended that she was working at the DOJ for the Office of Professional Responsibility and asked about me possibly testifying and asked for my address. My attorney communicated to her that I had already told my story in an affidavit and given four hours of testimony under oath before the House Judiciary Committee and that both of these documents were readily available and represented all I knew about the prosecution of Don Siegelman. Ms. Howard did not ask for a copy of these documents nor has she every subpoenaed me or asked to interview me and been refused to the best of my knowledge.

In December of 2008, I was contacted by an individual I knew and her attorney about the OPR conducting an investigation on me and asking questions about my sex life and the adoption of my four-year-old daughter. I contacted the man they identified as working for the DOJ OPR, Jim Sullivan, who happens to work for Alice Martin. I asked him if I was the target of an investigation since he had conversations with the woman who contacted me about whether I had bought a baby for $300,000.00 after his asking her about it. He would not confirm or deny if I was a target to investigation on the ridiculous claim that I had bought a baby for $300,000.00 , which was untrue, but he admitted asking the questions the woman said he had asked her. Within a week or two, the woman contacted me again and said that a Mr. Causey, A Washington OPR attorney, had contacted her. I had my attorney write the DOJ OPR office and Ms. Howard about this matter to ask if this was the way they conduct investigations at the OPR. Further, it seemed quite odd at the time considering I do not work for the DOJ and I could not fathom the connection of my sex life and adoption of my four-year-old daughter having anything to do with the investigation of Leura Canary and Alice Martin. An OPR attorney, Judith Wish, contacted my attorney and asked her to provide the name of the individuals that their employees had contacted. They did ask me what their investigators learned and whom they had spoken with. We communicated back that they should ask them because Mr. Sullivan had already admitted to me that he had done it and could not tell me why. I had no desire to put into writing their ridiculous claims. Those are the only two contacts I have had with the DOJ. Neither involved me refusing to testify from being subpoenaed or interviewed on whether Mr. Siegelman had been persecuted or not as Karl Rove so claimed in the news article. I did however refuse to give them the names of the people they had contacted but gave them their employee’s names as they knew very well who they had contacted.

It has long been my belief that Karl Rove put the OPR up to asking these questions and I am still to this date waiting for an apology from the OPR and have never heard anything else from the DOJ since they got caught snooping around in my personal life. It is completely ridiculous for him to claim I refused to cooperate with them when I am still waiting for them to let me know why they were snooping in my personal life that had nothing to do with their investigations of Leura Canary and Alice Martin. Plus the allegations were so ridiculous as I had not bought my daughter. I would have thought they could have gotten to the bottom of this very fast. Never during any of that awful deal with DOJ did they ask me to testify and give a sworn statement. Further, how my sex life was involved in their investigation is beyond me but they had questions about it. I suspect this was done in an attempt to embarrass me. I suspect Karl Rove was behind those attempts to discredit me and again the stuff was just so ridiculous. Apparently that matter is lost as well at the DOJ as we never heard back from Ms. Judith WIsh after she contacted Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Causey.

However, after reading Mr. Rove's article today I am unclear but believe he may be claiming he made a sworn statement to OPR. I shall be writing to see if this is about my sex life and adoption. I would love to know if he is the one behind those ridiculous tales.

Mr. Rove also stated in the article that Committee staff considered me an unreliable witness but he fails to identify any of those unnamed individuals. What I find most interesting is he fails to mention the report that found my evidence credible enough to call him as a witness. He is truly a sad, pathetic individual trying to cover his behind from criminal prosecution.

It is clearly evident that Karl Rove completely distorted the truth in his article and you printed it. I just want to thank you for showing that he is so delusional that he cannot even control himself from printing lies in the press. Clearly today, your paper has shown that he is a nut job and although he may have called me a lunatic and eccentric at times, we now have hard evidence that he is a bold-faced liar. His lies can clearly be confirmed as lies.

Thank you Mr. Murdoch for printing his lies. Hopefully the American public will wake up and realize that Karl Rove is a liar. For too long he has been allowed to politically bully people and lie in the press. Today I socked him in the nose with the truth. As for his lies, please let him know lies do not hurt anyone except the person who tells them.

I am happy today to call Mr. Rove a liar and you have provided the cold hard proof. You, Mr. Murdoch, gave me that opportunity. I am thankful that you run a paper that apparently does not check for the truth.

Sincerely,
DANA JILL SIMPSON

Go to original link for other links: http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/08/calderone-karl-rove-and-pretense-at-journalism.html

Calderone, Karl Rove, and pretense at journalism...

Politico's Michael Calderone has this interesting little write up today:


Rove writes that in the U.S. attorney scandal, his role was “minimal and entirely proper.” As for Siegelman, he contends to being innocent of the “overheated assertions by the Times, Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes," and various MSNBC talking heads.” The Times and Post, he writes, should “admit their mistakes.”

I’ve reached out to Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal and Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt for comment, and will update when I have a response."

How does this summary even address the myriad of lies in Rove's op-ed or the well documented facts of the Siegelman case? When Calderone is reaching out to the Times and WaPo, what is he asking them exactly? The tone of this non-report is also incredibly skewed. I have my opinions as well, which I do not include in my articles. Compare my opinion pieces on Rove and my articles on Rove and you will find seemingly two very different authors.

Did Calderone call Simpson for comment? How about Conyers? What about any reporter like Scott Horton, Roger Shuler or myself who have spent years investigating these cases? No. Why?

I urge NYT and WaPo both to not even bother responding to someone who is so completely unaware of the facts surrounding the Siegelman case or worse, is willfully omitting them. Michael may wish to start with my PRM series as a crash course in the facts of my two-year long investigation:

Part 1: Political Prisoner
Part 2: Siegelman's Daughter Speaks Out
Part 3: Running Elections from the White House
Part 4: Mississippi Prosecutions
Part 5: Interview with Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver E. Diaz, Jr.
Part 6: Break-Ins Plague Targets of Political Prosecutions
Part 7: Justice for Sale
Judge who denied Paul Minor's release protoge of Karl Rove
DOJ Investigating 2 US Attorneys in alleged political prosecutions
60 Minutes signal dropped in Alabama only during Siegelman portion
Interview with Dana Jill Simpson on Karl Rove's alleged smears
Karl Rove's next move: A Million Dollar House in Florida
Abramoff said he had agreement with White House aid regarding communications
Treasury Department investigating US Attorney for sharing private income tax returns of a case target
Instead of reporting facts, Politico does not tell - although cites Rove's words - on "what the Committee discovered," and instead Calderone simply echoes Rove's "I am innocent" mantra. Does Calderone actually know anything about these prosecutions in general or the Siegelman case in particular?

Did Calderone even bother to note the most obvious lie in Rove's piece? No. Why not? Rove claims that whistle-blower Dana Jill Simpson never testified as he had to the HJC. Not only did Simpson testify, she did so under oath and in public. She also provided a sworn deposition. Rove, on the other hand, did not testify under oath - contrary to his claims. He testified behind closed doors and ONLY after some very strange requirements were met, see here. A simple Google search shows Rove to be a liar on this very basic point. Yet Calderone reports Rove's claims as a serious rebuttal to the serious allegations against him.

In fact, Rove lied in his op-ed almost entirely. Read here and here.

Moreover, 75 former state Attorneys General of both parties have demanded that the DOJ investigate these matters. Yet Calderone never mentions this, nor does he mention the serious issues and charges against Rove brought up by NYT, WaPo, 60 Minutes, Raw Story, Harper's, Roger Shuler, the House Judiciary Democrats and countless others. He does not even provide a simple laundry list of the charges against Rove. Why?

If you had never heard about these charges and read Calderone's piece, what would you learn from it other than Rove appears to be a victim of sorts and is demanding an apology from the press - to whom Calderone reached out to get comment? Is this journalism? If so, is this lazy journalism? Is Calderone simply ignorant of the facts? Or is Calderone simply writing a piece that is so dismissive of the evidence it can only be called shilling? I leave it to you to come up with the answers.

I guess reporting on the false push to war of the Bush Cheeney Gang is what got so many "news" outlets accustomed to not worrying about facts.

Good point.