Democratic Underground - Did a GOP CONSPIRACY Target BOTH Don Siegelman and Gray Davis?

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IE_FIZpyniI/TdSUsg-YXFI/AAAAAAAAAg8/9fq_K3CtcfQ/s200/Gray+Davis.jpg http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tJCfPHUimM8/TdSU96F0BBI/AAAAAAAAAhE/_mQy-8-tOtQ/s200/Don+Siegelman.jpg

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" The same Republican plot that sparked the Don Siegelman prosecution might also have led to the downfall of former California Governor Gray Davis. Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, raised the issue in interviews after last week's ruling from the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld most of his convictions from a 2006 corruption trial.

We have reported that the Eleventh Circuit ignored U.S. Supreme Court precedent by holding that a campaign-related transaction between Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy amounted to bribery, even though no "explicit agreement" was involved. McCormick v. Unites States is the binding case on a charge of bribery in the campaign context, and that requires that prosecutors prove that an "explicit agreement" existed. Mark Fuller, the Bush-appointed judge who oversaw the Siegelman trial, did not hold prosecutors to such a standard, and the Eleventh Circuit essentially said, "Ah, that's OK . . . close enough."

Davis' opponents spent some $66 million to stage a recall election in 2003, and Davis wound up being removed from office. He was replaced by Republican and film star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been in the news lately for events that have nothing to do with politics. Why would Republicans target both Siegelman and Davis in 2002-03? Siegelman told Peter B. Collins that it all had to do with presidential politics. "Al Gore had decided he was not going to seek the nomination in 2004, and Gray Davis was the leading Democratic candidate for president at that time," Siegelman said. "I was a friend of Gray Davis, and I was thinking about entering presidential primaries in the South,to challenge George W. Bush.

"An interesting parallel is that one of Karl Rove's best friends, Grover Norquist, was at work in California to do in Gray Davis--and also was at work in Alabama to cause me trouble." Both Siegelman and Davis had been involved in litigation against the tobacco industry, which also might have helped make them targets for Rove and his allies at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Rove and others who were planning Bush's 2004 re-election campaign apparently were concerned about facing popular Democratic governors from the West and the South. After Davis and Siegelman went down, Bush wound up facing U.S. Senator John Kerry, of Massachusetts.

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http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2011/05/did-gop-conspiracy-target-both-don.html

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