A trio of reporters at Raw Story has just published further details relating to the involvement of Karl Rove in the campaign of Alabama Governor Bob Riley and in the effort to eliminate his chief rival, former Governor Don E. Siegelman, through a criminal prosecution. The story traces Rove’s involvement, largely via his long-time friend William Canary, in the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial race. Canary had initially advised the campaign of Lieutenant Governor Steve Windom, and only after his primary defeat turned to the Riley campaign. Raw Story reports:
According to the Alabama RNC source, Rove met regularly with operatives for the Riley campaign. The source’s allegations are confirmed in part by campaign disclosure forms, which show that Windom paid Canary as a consultant between 1999 and early 2001 and later received large contributions from Canary’s business partner, a pattern that is duplicated with Riley and Canary.
According to public records, Windom paid Canary’s firm $38,022 for consulting and polling between 1999 and 2001. At the same time, PACs associated with Canary’s business partner, Patrick McWhorter, donated heavily to Windom’s campaign, contributing $149,000 in 2001 and another $75,000 in 2002.
After Windom lost the primary, PACs associated with McWhorter and Canary switched their donations to Bob Riley, giving him $85,000 in the days immediately preceding the November election. After the election victory, Windom emerged immediately as a close confidant of Riley’s, advising him on the appointment of a new Insurance Commissioner, Walter A. Bell, and other matters. Canary also emerged as a key Riley advisor.
Public records also show that at the same time Canary was consulting for Bob Riley’s campaign, his lobbying group, the Business Council for Alabama, donated $678,000 to the campaign of his client. This was the third largest donation the campaign received, exceeded only by those from the Republican National State Elections Committee, for $2,475,000, and from Bob Riley himself, who contributed $1,070,000 to his own campaign.
Rove’s linkage to this campaign has been reported before and belongs to the insider’s account of Alabama politics—but Raw Story brings in considerable additional detail. The Rove involvement is unfolded with a flow chart showing the complex relationships. As Dan Abrams noted on his MSNBC report recently, Rove’s extensive campaign dealings in Alabama involve a large team, and the central figure in the process is certainly William Canary, the husband of the U.S. Attorney who brought the Siegelman prosecution. Rove and Canary go way back, certainly to Canary’s days on the Republican National Committee. Canary’s move down to Alabama seems to have been one of the factors that led Karl Rove to become much more deeply engaged in Alabama politics.
A great deal of this article lines up with what I have learned in six months of research on the Siegelman matter. For instance, two well-known Alabama Republicans described to me Rove’s involvement in the campaign to elect Perry Hooper to a judgeship. One of them detailed to me a meeting at which Hooper and Rove were present along with several Alabama G.O.P. operatives, including Mark Fuller (later to become the Siegelman judge), at which some very aggressive campaign tactics were discussed . . . but I’ll be reporting more on this later. Rove’s mastery of the Alabama political landscape was described as comprehensive and detailed. And a large part of Rove’s work consisted of advising his clients how to approach out-of-state funders. He believed that tort reform was the pivotal issue and that manufacturers’ associations would bring in the needed cash to fuel elections. On this as on so many electoral issues, Karl Rove was spot-on. His strategy worked, and the current Alabama Supreme Court, with 8 Republicans and 1 Democrat is proof of that. The Raw Story article also opens up the floorboards on some of this operation, especially as it unfolded into the time of the 2002 gubernatorial election, but this is a complex story yet to be fully unraveled. One thing certainly emerges both from this account and from the Senate probe headed by Senator McCain: Jack Abramoff and former Riley advisor Michael Scanlon, both now convicted felons, and both figures with ample connections to Rove, are right in the middle of it.
Today a federal judge directed that White House visitors’ logs were public records and could be turned-over. The White House is certain to challenge this ruling. Public access to visitors’ records has been a hotly contested issue for a number of reasons, and one of them is that Jack Abramoff claims to have paid hundreds of visits to the White House. President Bush has had a failure of memory with respect to Abramoff visits, but Time magazine says it has viewed a portfolio of portrait-style photographs with Abramoff and the President. Others in the White House have confirmed that Abramoff was a regular visitor. In law-enforcement interviews, Abramoff is said to have confirmed that he frequently met with Karl Rove outside of the White House so as to avoid being recorded in the visitors’ log. The Raw Story account details other meetings that Rove arranged outside the White House so as to avoid detection.
The Raw Story piece provides further detail of Rove’s involvement in the Riley campaign, as one of its chief strategists. One key element of that campaign was the use of a bogus federal criminal prosecution, undertaken by Leura Canary—the wife of Rove’s key connection, William Canary—and timed perfectly to match the election cycle. Republican operatives have now linked Rove directly to arrangements for that prosecution.
Still open to question: the details of Karl Rove’s dealings with prosecutors and Justice Department officials to arrange the political prosecution of Don Siegelman. Does anyone at this point seriously question why the White House and the Justice Department are pursuing a scorched-earth policy to block Congress’s requests for documents relating to this case and to records showing Karl Rove’s communications? They would almost certainly provide further evidence of what the external facts demonstrate.
But there is substantial additional evidence which will be shortly presented which will help to show why this prosecution was a complete farce from the beginning. Stay tuned, as the truth continues to seep out.
Update
Mark Crispin Miller has just put up a fascinating interview with Governor Siegelman in which he explains his grudge match with Karl Rove, the involvement of Karl Rove’s client, William Pryor in the theft of the 2002 Alabama gubernatorial election and how the Republicans launched a criminal prosecution to block him from seeking re-election.
