Original subtitles

- [Crowd] Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!

Four more years!

- Going into the election in '02

we knew it was going to be a close race.

On election night, we were in the war room of sorts

that we had set up to track results as they came in

from a network of people we had throughout the state.

We were taking in the numbers all night long.

- On that election night I was assigned

to the Riley campaign in Talladega.

That's where we were covering it.

The Riley campaign and all of their supporters

were gathered in this room, in this arena,

watching those numbers, cheering sometimes,

going quiet sometimes.

- When we had the complete state in,

we realized we'd pulled it off.

We'd won.

Shortly thereafter, Associated Press, AP,

called the race and CNN called the race.

It was over.

It was done.

- And then Don Siegelman comes out

and essentially claims victory in this race.

- The voters have spoken.

We're gonna move this state forward

by investing in education and giving every child,

every single child in this state

a chance to reach their God-given potential.

- Dad gets elected governor again

and we went back down there and Dad's so happy.

Oh my gosh, my children are back.

They like got out of bed for this

and so we all got to go onstage and celebrate.

- How sweet it is!

- Everybody went quiet for awhile

and then the Riley campaign came out and spoke

briefly and said we're still watching,

we're still monitoring, but it's too soon to tell.

We'll see ya tomorrow and we're gonna call it a night here.

- Siegelman had won the re-election

and then we started getting word about something

that's taking place in Baldwin County.

(dramatic music)

- Our criminal justice system, when it goes wrong,

can go wrong horrendously.

- Should the prosecutors be in jail?

Yes, they should be in jail.

- That's mind boggling.

Well we know she's lying.

- The government spared no resource.

We had to do what we could to make sure

he wasn't re-elected because he was

an ongoing threat to our client.

- Lo and behold, they started to manipulate

the criminal justice system.

- One purpose here and that was to keep that man

from being the governor of the state of Alabama.

- Here is what we call a fraud on the courts.

- No doubt in my mind that Don Siegelman was roved.

- They had to get rid of him

because they couldn't beat him fair and square.

- They can't get to the jury, but they did.

- I am mad.

I wanna get somebody's neck in my hands.

- It's one of the great injustices of our time.

- God bless the great state of Alabama.

- This is one of the most egregious

miscarriages of justice that I've encountered.

- There's something wrong in Alabama.

- This situation cries out for the correction

of an injustice.

(gentle music)

- Key in that whole play is the vote

in one of the most Republican counties

in the state of Alabama, Baldwin County.

Something very strange occurred

in the course of the election night there,

resulting in a fairly dramatic shift in the vote.

- I was the Chairman of the Baldwin County Democratic Party

and one of the duties at that time that I was in office

was to go to, on election night,

go to Bay Minnette for election returns.

Around 10:45, we got the first printout

that showed John Sophocleus had received

more votes than Don Siegelman.

There's this huge red flag goes up

that this number couldn't possibly be right.

- [Narrator] As a Democrat, Siegelman was not expected

to win this heavily Republican county.

In past elections, Democrats usually got

about 40% of the vote and third-party candidates

received only a few hundred votes for governor.

However, these results showed that Libertarian candidate

John Sophocleus received over 13,000 votes,

signaling an obvious mistake.

- We brought that to the attention

of the Sheriff's Department and they immediately agreed

that something must be wrong.

So about 11:00, one of the deputies

brought us a new printout that was supposed

to be the corrected results.

Under those totals that we were told were correct,

Don Siegelman would have won the election.

- [Narrator] This seemingly correct result

adjusted the Libertarian candidates total to 937,

increased Governor Siegelman's vote count

to just over 19,000 and marginally increased Riley's votes.

These corrected totals were then consistent

with results from previous years.

Although Siegelman wasn't expected to win the county,

it was enough votes statewide to win the election.

- That set of numbers is the one that it was given to me.

It was given to the Republican party chairman.

It was given to the representative from the AP

and those were the numbers that we left with.

This is supposed to be the correct total.

This is what's going to be certified later,

so we got our printouts and we all left

shortly after 11:00, including it appeared that

most of the Sheriff Department staff was leaving as well.

They were locking up the building for the night

and we thought that the election,

at least for Baldwin County, was over.

By the time I got home, it was close to midnight.

As I'm watching the TV, the AP wire is calling

the election for Siegelman.

- I would guess around 11 or so, just from my memory,

Rob Riley came out and I was live.

I had a wireless microphone and I was just

roaming around and a photographer from a distance

and Rob Riley came out and looked at me and said

"Rick, you want a story?"

- [Man] Due to the fact that the media has been reporting

what we can now confirm as a 6,000 vote discrepancy,

the numbers simply don't add up.

- We win this race and at this point,

it was off to the races.

- We're going to fight until we know what every vote is.

(cheering)

- I get on my computer and went to the probate court website

to see what results had been posted there.

The dispute is over a third set of results

that's been posted to the probate court website

that I've never seen before.

There's time stamped just a few minutes after

the latest copy that we had gotten

that was supposed to be accurate.

- [Narrator] These mysterious new third set of totals

were never seen by party officials

to validate their authenticity.

They just simply appeared on the probate court's website.

- I remember having almost like a sick feeling

in my stomach, like something serious is going on here.

This isn't just a minor glitch.

This is serious.

This is going to change the result of the election.

- [Narrator] In fact, these new results

didn't change the totals of either Riley

or the third-party candidate

and no other race on the ballot was affected.

The only change was that just over 6,300 votes

from Governor Siegelman's column simply disappeared.

These new, unverified set of results

switched the winner over from Governor Siegelman

to Republican Bob Riley.

- Complete bullshit is what anybody else would say,

but it just that doesn't happen.

This was an issue over we say the vote changed

and we've locked everything up

and nobody can look at it.

- That third set of numbers, according to the time stamp,

those numbers were generated right after

the numbers that we were given.

I don't know how in two minutes' time

a new set of numbers was produced.

- And sometime during the dark of night,

two individuals went into the courthouse

and came back out and announced the vote had changed

and it had changed just enough to change the outcome

of the governor's race.

- [Narrator] According to numerous reports,

Bob Riley's Chief of Staff Dan Gans

had been seen at the same voting precinct with a laptop

along with Riley political consultant George Burger.

Both men had been trained by the voting software

manufacturer and professional claimed

to be voting technology experts.

- That morning, I'm heading up to Bay Minette

and when we got there, the canvasing board,

they were all locked in Adrian Johns' office.

They went in there.

They weren't letting anyone in to talk to them

and they were apparently deciding

what they were going to do about the situation.

The canvassing board was made up of three local officials.

It was Jackie Calhoun, who was the circuit clerk,

Marvin Ussery who was with the Sheriff's Department

and then you had Adrian Johns, the probate judge.

Those were the three people in Adrian's office.

I can tell you that they had locked the doors

and nobody could go in.

They were locked in there from the time

that I got to the courthouse, which was early that morning,

until minutes before they went out

and announced the certification

and so I handed them a copy of the statute that said

certification is supposed to be on Friday at noon.

They'd have no part of it and they were locked in

and this is what we're gonna do

and we're not gonna discuss it.

We're gonna certify these results right now

and they turned and just walked out of the room.

- Siegelman had received 12,736 votes.

Bob Riley received 31,052 votes.

- These numbers were certified after no one was there

from any political party.

The statute says you certify at noon on Friday,

but suddenly on this one race, this one election,

they've decided that they're going to certify

on Wednesday morning instead.

- I'm not convinced that there is a problem

with the software.

It's something that we need to look at

and talk with Mr. Kelley about from our

election vendor company.

- [Narrator] Despite acknowledging potential software

problems and the fact that three different results

all came from only one data set,

Judge Johns and the other election officials

all Republican Riley supporters,

defied state law and certified the results two days early

to make them official.

Moments later, the Republican Attorney General, Bill Pryor,

issued a warning to anyone trying to initiate a recount.

- Before the doors opened the next morning,

the Republican Attorney General has issued

an AG's opinion basically saying he'd lock

anybody up that tried to count the votes.

- A recount count of sealed material

cannot occur without a court order

and a finding that a voting machine or precinct

failed to make a return.

- [Narrator] Attorney General Pryor quickly obtained

those ballots and results to be kept in his possession.

- You would expect someone to at least

look at the votes publicly and show

what the tally was, what happened.

That's never occurred.

Those ballots were locked up, put under seal

and to this day no one has ever seen those ballots

and no one has ever questioned the individuals

who went in and said the vote changed.

I've never seen anyone so adamantly opposed

to counting votes.

But that's what took place.

- It's not only has he said the people's ballot

will not be counted,

the only evidence of the people's choice,

he has now said to the public officials of this state,

if you do it, if you do it,

you're gonna be put in jail.

Our public officials want to do what's right.

- [Narrator] A recount would seen obvious,

however, the early certification eliminated

the possibility for that to happen.

- In case you have not heard,

Baldwin County just came out and certified

the election results and they are...

Don Sielgelman 12,736.

Riley 31,050.

(cheering)

- The two sets of returns from

this gubernatorial election between Sielgelman and Riley,

I dove into those anomalies to see

if I could figure out what was going on.

When certain patterns show up,

it begins to show probably source

of the anomaly in the data.

- [Narrator] James Gundlach,

a former professor at Auburn University,

performed a statistical analysis of the vote totals.

The resulting paper, which had been peer reviewed

by professors at MIT,

clearly show that a fraud had taken place.

- The first set of results, statistically, are normal.

You look at the second sets and you see how

the blue dot for Baldwin County is way off the line.

That's saying Baldwin County results

are statistically abnormal.

- When you went from the first set of numbers

to the second set of numbers there were several changes,

although the biggest changes were in the governor's race.

When you go from the second set to the third set,

you would assume that there would be changes

in several races again, but there weren't.

The only place you saw any difference

from the second set to the third set

was in the governor's race.

In this case, you had the shift of just enough votes

to change the outcome of the election statewide.

- My lawyers tell me that we've got

an excellent chance to win because the law

is on our side.

- If it went to the Alabama Supreme Court,

then it's going to be heard by Republican judges.

If it gets all the way to the United States Supreme Court,

it's gonna be heard by the same justices

that had just ruled against Al Gore two years earlier.

So the odds of success through all of that

were probably pretty low.

- And every step would mean a lawsuit.

Every question would mean a new court battle.

A look at the voter's list?

Back in court.

An examination of the ballots?

Another lawsuit.

To find out what really happened in Baldwin County,

we would be back in court.

- The data patterns and the data show clear

data manipulation that stole the election from Siegelman.

- [Narrator] Sometime after the election,

Riley Chief of Staff, Dan Gans,

who had been seen at the Baldwin County office

on that fateful night with a laptop,

went on to work for the Alexander Strategy Group,

a lobbying firm associated with convicted lobbyist

Jack Abramoff.

Multiple reports have said that his bio

on their now-defunct website stated that he had,

quote, "Implemented a state of the art ballot security

"program that was critical to securing Governor-elect

"Riley's narrow margin of victory, 3,120 votes."

- The people of Alabama spoke last night.

The only problem is the governor did not wait

until they stopped speaking.

(cheering)

- The substantial decline in the percentage of the vote

that went from Siegelman from the county before

to the county this time and the fact that that

significant decline occurred when everybody

was locked out of the voting,

observing how the votes were counted and other such things,

if you're not suspicious about that,

you shouldn't be an adult.

(chuckling)

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(piano music)

- We want people to know that we're very proud

of who our dad is.

We're very proud of him and what he represents.

We want people to know that we're his kids

and that we stand by him as much now, if not more,

than we ever have in the past.

- I am the father of two wonderful children.

We want them to have the best opportunities in life

and we know that the road to those opportunities

starts at the schoolhouse door,

and they remind me each and every day

how great it is to be a dad.

- Police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorneys

are for Don Siegelman because he's helped them fight crime.

- And he will fight to get guns and drugs

out of our schools.

- We loved our dad and he tried to give a voice

to as many people who he felt needed a voice

and hadn't had a voice.

He just loved people and genuinely.

It wasn't a fake sort of I have to do this.

It was an authentic I get to do this.

- Like so many of you, my wife and I know

firsthand the impact of crime.

We were hit head-on by a career criminal driving drunk.

I almost lost my family.

I remember holding Laurie in my arms,

waiting for the ambulance to arrive,

praying and wondering whether she would live or die.

Laurie and I saw our criminal justice system

more concerned with processing criminals

than protecting victim's rights.

After only 48 hours,

while Laurie was still in God's hands,

our assailant was back on the streets.

I make this pledge.

I will work night and day to make your families,

your homes and your communities safer.

(uplifting music) (applause)

- He did something that no elected official

in the history of the state ever did.

He was elected to all four

statewide constitutional positions.

He was elected Secretary of State,

Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor.

- And now I need your help and vote on Tuesday.

- [Bob] And Governor.

- There's never been another politician like Don Siegelman,

and I'm talking about George Wallace,

whoever else you wanna throw in there.

You can talk to anybody in this town,

people that knew Governor Wallace,

who was as a relentless and tireless campaigner.

Those people will tell you right up front

that Don Siegelman was maybe the greatest campaigner

that has ever been in the history of this state.

Don Siegelman was relentless.

- The time for talk is over.

We need action.

We need a constitutional convention.

We need to change our tax structure.

We need to invest in education,

and I trust the people do be able to do that.

- Don Siegelman is a hero to a lot of people.

I walked the streets a few times in Montgomery with Don

and I've never seen anything like it.

They don't do that for me in Phoenix.

They don't pull over and wave and come over

and give you a hug and thank you

for all you've done for us.

It's people across the board viewed him as a hero.

- Don Siegelman was a Clinton-esque figure.

Matter of fact, he was mentioned as potential

candidate for President of the United States.

He was that good.

- And anytime you're in politics,

if you're gonna get something done,

you gotta push somebody occasionally,

and he didn't mind pushing,

but he always pushed in the right direction.

- So the Republicans felt threatened

as long as Don Siegelman was around.

Lo and behold, they started to target him

and to manipulate the criminal justice system.

(solemn music)

- Don Siegelman ran for governor on a platform

that called for the approval of a state-wide lottery

and the proceeds of the lottery were

to go toward education.

- An education lottery is so critical

to the future of Alabama.

Only the people of Alabama should have

the right to decide.

- Public education in Alabama was not in good shape.

Siegelman was committed to changing it.

We had looked closely at Georgia

as our neighboring state on how the lottery had almost

single-handedly transformed education.

Suddenly pre-K was available to everyone.

Technology was in schools and if you graduated

with a good enough grade point,

you went to college on a scholarship.

We wanted that in Alabama.

- Adequacy is not good enough for my children

nor do I think it's good enough

for the children of this state.

The governor has argued that portable classrooms

are an adequate place for people to learn.

Number one, it's not safe from fires.

It would take about 60 seconds to burn down

one of those structures completely.

- By having the approval of this lottery,

it would have changed the status of the state of Alabama

to such that the tribe in the state

would have been able to legally game

or have gambling facilities in the state.

- [Interviewer] I see, so if the lottery education

fund was passed,

that automatically opened the door to casinos?

- Right, to tribal gaming casinos there.

- Obviously, if Alabama had a lottery

it would hurt Indian tribes in Mississippi.

Choctaw Indian tribe had a big operation in Philadelphia

about 50 miles from the Alabama line

and Choctaw Indians gave a lot of money

to Republican strategists Abramoff and Scanlon.

- [Narrator] Scanlon, who had previously served

as press secretary for then Congressman Bob Riley,

joined forces with lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Their client, the Choctaw Casino in Mississippi,

secretly paid them $20 million,

funneled through various PACs to defeat

Siegelman's education lottery referendum,

thus preventing any possible competition

from any new casinos built in Alabama.

- We expected the Indian casinos in Mississippi

to oppose the lottery referendum,

but what we didn't expect was for there to be

a secret network of people pulled together

to illegally funnel this money into Alabama.

There was a off-handed comment that they had raised it

at church bake sales, but that didn't happen.

- [Narrator] A U.S. Senate committee investigation,

headed by John McCain, found that part of the money

had been funneled through 501c4 organizations

and eventually found their way to grass roots

lobbying campaigns led by one of Abramoff's

old friends, Ralph Reed.

- Ralph and I got ouR cert together in college Republicans,

in the Republican party and had spent our entire lives

working to elect Republicans and defeat Democrats.

- [Narrator] Funded by the Choctaws, Reed went to work

on church-going voters using a strategy

that proved incredibly effective,

if not an outright moral contradiction.

In a document presented during the Congressional

investigation on Indian Affairs,

lobbyist Michael Scanlon spelled out their strategy

in direct but not so polite terms.

"Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos

"to vote against something and make sure

"the rest of the public lets the whole thing

"slip past them.

"The wackos get their information from the Christian right,

"Christian radio, mail, the Internet

"and telephone trees."

Over the years, Ralph Reed and his organization

had developed close associations

with church administrators throughout

the southern states to amass a vast database

of personal information about individual church members,

the kind of highly concentrated group of consumers

that marketers only dream about.

Using this list and the marketing methods

described by Scanlon, Reed targeted Christian

voters with a simple message,

don't vote for the education lottery fund

because it contradicts Christian values.

Little did they know the money behind the message

was casino cash.

To counter the Abramoff-Reed campaign

against the referendum,

proponents of the education lottery

began their own marketing efforts

and created the first of two non-profit organizations.

To pay for local advertisements in marketing,

they took out a loan for over one million dollars.

- At the beginning of the campaign for the lottery,

we helped fund an effort and we sent politicos

into work in Alabama to defeat this

and it was defeated at the end by two to one.

- [Narrator] The Alabama education lottery fund,

the non-profit organization covering

all the expenses of the referendum,

still owed about half a million dollars.

- It happened to be Alabama had kind of

unfortunate circumstance of a very Republican state,

having lost the governorship to a democrat

and being proximate to the state that contained

our large client, the Choctaws,

and then eventually we made the decision that

we had to do what we could to make sure

he wasn't re-elected because he was a continuing

and ongoing threat to our client in Mississippi.

(gloomy music)

- [Narrator] Sometime after our interview

with Jack Abramoff, we obtained an email

he sent to his business partner, Michael Scanlon,

where he made it clear what their casino client

expected of Riley in return for their financial support

by explicitly stating that the Choctaws definitely want

Riley to shut down the Poarch Creek operation.

The Poarch Creek Indian tribe owned casinos

in neighboring Alabama and were considered

by the Choctaws to be their primary competition.

While Siegelman held the state's top office,

his rivals wasted no time in targeting

the newly elected governor.

Bill Pryor, the same Attorney General

that would later stop the recount in Baldwin County,

issued financial subpoenas for Siegelman

and his staff only weeks after taking office,

hardly enough time for anyone to do anything

that would warrant an investigation.

- While they're still trying to figure out

how the phone systems work,

while they're still arranging furniture,

an investigation is underway.

- [Narrator] Bill Pryor, the Republican Attorney General

that initiated the investigation,

worked with political consultants Karl Rove

and his partner, Bill Canary.

Soon after taking office in Washington in 2001,

the Bush Administration appointed Leura Canary

as the new Federal Prosecutor

for the middle district of Alabama.

She happened to be the wife of Bill Canary,

Karl Rove's colleague and political consulting partner.

This means that the Federal Prosecutor

legally pursing Governor Siegelman

is married to the campaign manager of his opponent

in the upcoming election.

Even though there's no premise for the investigations

of Governor Siegelman,

the negative publicity and false accusations

help her husband's client by smearing Siegelman's

political image in the press.

- So, it's pretty cut and dry

that the moment that Leure Canary

became the U.S. Attorney, her husband was being paid

by one of Governor Siegelman's political opponents.

So getting Don Siegelman benefited her husband

and all of a sudden, when she takes over,

the case gets new energy, action ramps up

as far as a grand jury investigating everything

you can imagine.

- [Narrator] With almost unlimited resources,

and without any evidence of a crime,

prosecutors began looking for anything

that could smear or tarnish their Democratic rival.

They question hundreds of people,

including campaign donors in an obvious attempt

to discourage future contributions to Siegelman's campaign.

They also issued dozens of grand jury subpoenas

in hopes of finding something to pin on him.

As Canary's efforts quickly gained momentum,

Siegelman's attorney, David Cromwell Johnson,

makes a statement on the courthouse steps

regarding Leura Canary's obvious conflict of interest.

- These are real canaries, by the way.

The difference between a canary and a parakeet

is a canary sings and that's what's been happening.

The next step is I wanna go to Washington

and talk to those people about what's happening here.

This is a very serious matter.

It's a violation of the criminal code,

the U.S. Attorney's code

and the code of federal regulations

and she's got to get off this case.

- [Narrator] Leura Canary soon offers a public statement

saying that Justice Department officials

in Washington said there was no conflict of interest.

"However," she said, "out of an abundance of caution,

"I will recuse myself from the case."

Despite her statement, no official documents

were ever produced to back up her claim.

- That's mind boggling.

The fact that the Justice Department would tell her

that she didn't have a conflict when her husband

was working for Don Siegelman's political opponents.

Well, we know she's lying.

Even a blind man can see that conflict of interest.

It's almost comical.

If I wrote that down, if I took this case

and wrote it as a movie script, it would be rejected.

If I wrote it out as a novel outline, it would be rejected.

People would say it's unrealistic.

- [Narrator] Canary ostensibly turned the case over

to her assistants,

Deputy Prosecutors Stephen Faega and Louis Franklin.

- When Louis Franklin says he was the person

who was making the decisions, the buck stopped here,

Leura Canary was not involved in it,

that was a conscious lie and this is a lie that mattered.

(dramatic chord)

- [Narrator] Faega and Franklin rapidly expanded

the investigation by questioning hundreds

of potential witnesses looking for a crime

to prosecute Siegelman.

- They were absolutely targeting Don Siegelman.

They were threatening people,

trying to get them to say certain things

so that they could prosecute him.

They went to Dr. Phillip Bobo's home in Tuscaloosa

late at night.

They threatened him.

They wanted him to say certain things

against Governor Siegelman.

He wouldn't lie and they brought charges against him

in another case.

- It was led by a team of prosecutors

out of the Northern District,

primarily Matt Hart who had previously

tried the case, indicted him, convicted him,

then the 11th Circuit overturned it.

They continued after this doctor,

destroyed his practice, destroyed his family life

and ultimately he was acquitted.

- [Narrator] Soon after Dr. Bobo was acquitted,

prosecutors led by Bush appointee Alice Martin

indicted him again with virtually the same charge.

However, this new indictment named Don Siegelman

and his former chief of staff Paul Hamrick

as co-defendants.

- The basic charge was conspiracy in Medicaid for all.

Once a jury was chosen in the case,

I conducted a hearing

to determine whether the government has sufficient evidence

of a conspiracy and the witnesses who testified,

called by the government,

convinced me that there was absolutely nothing to

this charge of conspiracy

and so I dismissed the conspiracy charge,

notified the parties that we were gonna proceed to trial.

At that point, the government dismissed the case

and I insisted that it be dismissed with prejudice

and so it was.

In my 29 years seven months as a federal judge,

this was the most unfounded criminal prosecution

that I saw.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(gloomy music)

- [Narrator] With the trial behind him

and polls showing support,

Siegelman announced that he would challenge Riley

in the 2006 governor's race.

- Don Siegelman immediately set about talking

about running for governor again in 2006

and polls showed that Don Siegelman

would beat Bob Riley in a rematch.

So that really set off alarm bells in Republican circles.

- [Narrator] Just after Siegelman announced

his intention to challenge Riley for governor,

prosecutors under Leura Canary

immediately reanimated an old investigation against him

that had been closed because of lack of evidence.

- The evidence was not there to convict Don Siegelman.

The evidence simply was not there.

So how do you go about trying to get a conviction?

Well you have to get someone to testify.

You have to get someone to cut some sort of a deal.

There's a continuing pattern of intimidating witnesses

and trying to get people to lie

in order to say what these people wanted

in order to make a case against Governor Siegelman

and they've done this throughout the years.

This is another pattern of misconduct on their part.

- We did, with this case, what we do with every case.

There was evidence out there,

we investigated, we looked at evidence,

and we went where it took us.

It took us back to him.

- [Narrator] Instead of using current FBI agents,

Canary's office quietly contracted

three retired investigators who had previously worked

under then former Alabama attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Together they scoured every aspect

of Siegelman's personal, private, and public life

in hopes of finding something to charge him with.

About the same time, prosecutor Alice Martin,

who had just lost the Siegelman case,

indicted Richard Scrushy, then CEO of the state's

largest healthcare company HealthSouth,

as the first person ever charged

under the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

By the time the case went to trial,

it received enormous media attention

from all over the world

and billed as the financial trial of the century,

just what prosecutors wanted.

Eventually, five of HealthSouth's CFOs

pled guilty to fraud.

However, Richard Scrushy was found not guilty

of all charges.

- The government spared no resources

to try to take down Richard.

Between the Security Exchange Commission,

the FBI, the Northern District of Alabama,

the press, the publicity,

they went all out, they went gung-ho

to try to take down Richard.

After all this effort, Richard was acquitted.

Alice Martin suffered a huge defeat,

ruined her possibility for a federal judgeship

and I can imagine what it did to her ego.

- [Narrator] After a second embarrassing loss for Martin,

prosecutors in the Middle District

sought to capitalize on Richard Scrushy's bad reputation

that had been completely smeared

after years of constant negative press

by targeting him for another prosecution.

- Even though Richard Scrushy prevailed

in that first SEC and mini criminal trial,

his public reputation was smeared.

There was so much negative publicity

in the state of Alabama,

particularly Northern District Alabama,

that people would yell at him and say bad things about him.

So he was set up for someone that could be brought in

to the Siegelman case after they lost the first indictment.

- [Narrator] With hardly any time to recover from the trial,

Canary began threatening Scrushy with another charge

unless he testified against Siegelman.

- My attorneys talked with the prosecutors

about me being dropped out of the prosecution

by testifying against the governor.

The discussion was would Richard say certain things.

All of them centered around something

that would have implicated the governor

in some way that he was guilty of something,

but every one of them were, number one, straight-up lies.

None of the situations they asked me to say

were anywhere near any truth.

There was no way that I could say any of those things.

As a matter of fact, I went home that night

and I sat down with my wife

and I told her these are the things they wanted me to say

and she said "Well you know those are not true"

and I said "Absolutely"

and the decision was made by she and I

that I'm not going at all to go out and lie against this man

and have him go to prison

for something that I said that was not true

and have to live with that the rest of my life

and that was actually what happened.

- [Narrator] Prosecutors also pressured Paul Hamrick,

the governor's former chief of staff,

to lie under oath.

One investigator working under Leura Canary

stooped to an even lower level

when he cornered Hamrick in a courthouse elevator.

- At a pre-trial hearing at the federal courthouse

is when one of the agents, Bill Ong,

commented to me I had no choice

but to give the testimony that they had told me to give

and when I asked him why

he said well 'cause you've got two young daughters

and I had no choice but to do it,

basically threatening me that they would take me away

from my daughters and I had to do what they wanted me to do.

There's a place in hell for that man.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

- So in 1972 I joined the Republican Party

and I automatically went on the local committee.

There was only but 11 members of the Republican Party

in Montgomery, Alabama

and I was very much involved

and really watched the Republic Party

build here in Alabama.

Unfortunately I watched some of the people

that I thought were not very credible nor honest

begin to come into the party as the tide changed.

In 2001, I got a call from a friend of mine

whose family big Republicans, longtime Republicans

and he said "Tommy, I want you to come to a meeting

"that we're having, local Republicans"

and I said "Well what kind of meeting?"

He said "Well, we've got a plan.

"We've been able to get Leura Canary

"appointed US Attorney

"and Congressman Bob Riley that's gonna run

"against Don Siegelman for governor"

and he said "You're gonna be surprised"

and I said "Well, what?"

And he said "Well, our plan is to indict Don Siegelman."

"You know, you gotta tell me more.

"You mean you're gonna use political prosecution

"to indict somebody in the middle of a political race?"

And he said "Well that's what they tell me."

- [Interviewer] Who is they?

- He said that he thought Karl Rove

was supposed to come to the meeting,

Riley, I later found out, Abramoff, Scanlon, Bill Canary.

I said "Look, I don't want to be a part

"of anything like this.

"Count me out."

And I said "Just this political prosecution

"is just not the way to go."

And so that's the last I heard of it

until the middle of the campaign

between Bob Riley and Don Siegelman,

I pick up the paper, Don Siegelman's been indicted

and I thought holy Moses, are these people for real?

(dramatic music)

- [Narrator] The friend who told him about

the Republican plan to use the judiciary to take over

Alabama was longtime Republican operative Winton Blount

who has since passed away.

Blount had once been chairman

of the Alabama Republican Party

and for decades the Blount family has been well known

among the established ranks of the GOP.

With a strong motive and means,

these Republicans had an opportunity

to complete their sinister plan.

- A new poll came out in October that showed us winning.

After all they'd thrown at him,

Governor Siegelman was still going to walk away

with the nomination and was gonna pose

a serious threat to Bob Riley.

10 days later Don Siegelman was indicted.

- [Narrator] The key allegation made by prosecutors

was that Richard Scrushy bribed Governor Siegelman

with $500,000

for a seat on the Certificate of Need Review Board,

or more commonly known as the CON Board,

a committee that regulates healthcare facilities

around the state.

During the investigation, prosecutors discovered

that a mid-level aid in the administration

was on the take.

Unbeknownst to everyone in the governor's office,

Nick Bailey took bribes totalling more than $100,000

for special favors.

- Nick was called in the investigation of Siegelman.

He left the administration,

cooperated with the FBI and the Justice Department

and eventually pled guilty himself.

- [Narrator] Facing as much as 30 years,

Bailey's attorney George Beck

brokered a deal with prosecutors

to receive a lighter sentence

if he agreed to testify against his former boss,

Governor Siegelman.

However, there was a catch.

He would not be sentenced until after testifying

in the Siegelman trial,

obviously ensuring a convincing testimony.

- Nick and I became very good friends

and he confided in me about his treatment by the FBI

and by the Justice Department.

Nick was interviewed dozens and dozens of times

by the Justice Department and the FBI

about what he might know related to Siegelman

and what he might know related to other matters.

The two people on the frontline for the government

were Steve Faega and Louis Franklin.

He confided in me that they had, in essence, coached him

and so this process began as trying to help him

become more consistent in giving his answers.

- As they were warming up for trial, Nick would call me.

He would just be distraught,

I mean just emotionally a wreck.

They wanted to press him into saying something

that he couldn't say

and I would just encourage him.

I'd say come on, Nick, stand up and tell the truth

and don't let these prosecutors

make you tell anything otherwise

and if you have to go to prison, you have to go to prison,

you did wrong.

- Louis Franklin, one of the prosecutors, US attorney,

got so upset with Nick that they almost came to blows.

Nick was afraid he was gonna have to defend himself.

I think most people think Faega is tough,

but he's sort of a pro's pro

and I think the impression of Franklin

is he's sort of a jerk's jerk.

He's sort of a self-righteous.

He prosecutes with a chip on his shoulder.

After Louis Franklin and Nick got to a point where

they could not communicate,

Steve Faega became the point person

on getting Nick ready for the case.

Faega would point out inconsistencies with him

and so Faega helped him edit his testimony

so that it would be consistent.

I think most people would say

he was giving him the answers.

- There was a point where they threatened him

with bringing family members into this investigation

and that was really when Nick broke.

(gloomy piano music)

- He was trying to protect his family.

He was trying to protect his own self

and he was also trying to get a reduced sentence.

- The day the trial started,

he said "Amy, I've had to change sides."

He said "Well, I don't have a choice.

"I really don't have a choice."

And he said "I just hate what's getting ready

"to happen to Don.

"I just hate it, he doesn't deserve this.

"I've got to do this perfect.

"I've gotta be excellent on the stand.

"How well I do is gonna determine

"how much time I spend in prison

"and I've got to do the best that I can."

- [Interviewer] He did say that?

- Oh yeah, absolutely he said that

and I said "Well, Nick, what are you gonna do

"when the lawyers, if they ask you that on the stand?"

And his whole demeanor changed.

I mean immediately he just looked off

and he became very stoic and robotic.

"It was a pay for play, it was a pay for play.

"Money exchanged for favors.

"That's all it was."

I let him finish and then all the sudden

he just looked back at me like.

(solemn piano music)

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(solemn music)

- I've worked in every state in the Union

in the almost 40 years I've done this.

Alabama surpasses any other state

in terms of I think what a lot of people would call

the dirtiness of its politics.

- Alabama has a famous tradition going back decades

of being the jurisdiction where you could indict

and convict a ham sandwich if you wanted to.

- Well, I think they anticipated

that there would be a certain amount of backlash

from the community as a result of the acquittals.

The media had been extraordinarily negative

at least as to Richard.

By putting them together you have the classic situation

where jurors believed something must be wrong,

they must be guilty of something

because the government keeps indicting them.

You know, this is a wholly separate prosecution,

but there's no question that it was a second bite

at the apple for the Department of Justice.

- They wanted maximum political damage done

to Don Siegelman and the charges

that were brought against him,

charged him for everything you can imagine

that a politician could be charged for,

bribery, improper contracts,

awarding things on the basis of financial interest,

every possible ethics violation.

- We learned that they were basically reopening this case.

Once it was coming back to life,

we requested a meeting

and I asked them if they had made a charging decision.

They told me no.

We made certain disclosures to them

and had an open discussion with them.

It didn't result in any sort of deal being made between us,

but I subsequently found out that on that day

when I went to that meeting,

they had already indicted Richard Scrushy.

So clearly they had made a charging decision.

We move to dismiss based on the government's

misrepresentation to me and it was denied by the court.

- [Interviewer] They lied?

- Yes, they lied to me

and they admitted during the hearing that they lied to me.

That was the most significant lie

that has ever been told to me by a federal prosecutor.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Prosecutors filed multiple charges

against former Governor Siegelman, Richard Scrushy,

Siegelman's former chief of staff Paul Hamrick,

and former Alabama transportation secretary Mack Roberts.

The trial was held in the Montgomery Federal Courthouse.

- [Woman] And with just three days before the primary,

gubernatorial candidate and defendant Don Siegelman

boarded his tour bus after court today,

heading for the campaign trail.

- I imagine the governor will let us the begin

the day after the primary.

- [Man] You think that's calculated?

- I do think it's calculated.

- Pleading guilty was not even discussed, not an option.

Usually when somebody's kinda thinking

well maybe this sounds kinda bad or something,

they tell their lawyer see what you can work out.

Never happened.

- There would have been no conviction

if the government could not prove

that there was an agreement or a quid pro quo,

something for something.

That's how bribery is proven.

So they put Nick Bailey on the witness stand

for the government and they grill him for four days

and over and over and over again

they have Nick Bailey say that he and Don Siegelman

had an agreement with Richard Scrushy

that they would appoint Scrushy to the CON Board

in exchange for contribution.

Over and over again, did you have an agreement, yes,

did you have an agreement, yes,

and they had Bailey repeat this over and over again

trying to beat it into the jury's head

that there was in fact an agreement,

thus a bribery charge.

- And Nick Bailey accused me

of handing the governor a check.

He said that Richard came in,

he gave a check to the governor,

then he said "I saw the check"

and he said it had Richard had signed it

and it was a HealthSouth check.

Well, that was not true.

- [Narrator] Bailey also testified that he personally

saw the check was dated July 19th,

that it was drawn off of a HealthSouth bank account

and that it had Richard Scrushy's signature on it.

However, there was a big problem with his testimony.

Records showed that the meeting took place on June 29th,

almost three weeks before the check was cut.

So there would be no possible way

that he was telling the truth.

There was also another big problem.

Prosecutors never produced a check

to corroborate Bailey's accusation.

In fact, the check prosecutors entered as evidence

came from an entirely different company,

Integrated Health Services from Baltimore, Maryland.

This contradicted Bailey's testimony

that it was from HealthSouth and signed by Scrushy.

- Come to find out there was a company

called Integrated Health Services that did give a check,

but they didn't give him a check till like July the 19th.

- It's not rocket science, man.

If the meeting occurred on this day

and the check was cut weeks later,

how could he have taken that check to that meeting?

It didn't exist.

- [Narrator] The other 250,000 that prosecutors said

was part of the bribe was a properly recorded donation

from HealthSouth to the Education Referendum.

However, this transaction occurred one year later

as he was leaving the CON Board.

Hardly a time to pay off a bribe.

- There was no direct evidence

that Don Siegelman said give me a $500,000 contribution

for the lottery campaign and I will appoint you

to a seat on the health siding board.

There was no explicit evidence or testimony

with regard to that.

It was only implied and under the Mccormick rule

that is not sufficient to have a successful prosecution.

- [Narrator] In fact, it was impossible for Siegelman

to have personally benefited from the arrangement

because of two important reasons.

One, he never received any money or personal gain.

He simply raised funds

that went to non-profit organizations.

Lastly, Siegelman was not a guarantor on the debt

until after the referendum had been defeated.

- I don't know of any other politician

who was accused of conspiracy charges

because he solicited and received

a political contribution.

I know of other Americans who made political contributions

to presidential campaigns, for example,

and who ended up, rather than being in jail,

being ambassadors.

- When we talk about bad faith,

you talk about bad faith charging,

this was as bad a faith example of misprosecution

as any that I have seen in my years of study

of misconduct by prosecutors.

- And just so you know how ludicrous this is,

this theory of bribery that I'm describing

has never been used in this country,

in any federal court in this country.

Note, the Justice Department had never pursued

that theory of bribery.

- [Narrator] Scrushy had served on the CON Board

for the previous 12 years

under three earlier governors from both parties.

During that time, he and other board members

had donated directly to those governors' campaign funds,

the same thing that happens thousands of times every year

with virtually all elected officials.

In this case, however,

the donation did not even come from Scrushy or HealthSouth

and it went to a separate 501c3 fund

that did not personally benefit Governor Siegelman.

There are also logical reasons Richard Scrushy

didn't bribe his way on to the CON Board.

- As chairman of the transition team for Governor Siegelman,

I tried to find the best people in the state of Alabama

that could serve him as Governor of Alabama.

I went to see Richard Scrushy.

He and I sat down and had breakfast together.

I said "Richard, you served three times.

"You know the CON Board better than anybody else

"I can name

"and I want you to consider serving another term

"on the CON Board."

What did Richard Scrushy say?

"No, I will not serve another term on that board.

"I've served three different governors in the past.

"I do not want to do it."

- I was asked by Elmer Harris,

who was chief of his transition team,

and he asked me to serve

and I said "No, Elmer, I'm not gonna serve."

It takes an entire day every month.

I'm running a Fortune 500 company,

a New York Stock Exchange Company,

it takes a day to prepare, it takes a day of your time,

so that's two days a month, we only have 20 working days,

I just can't do it.

- I said "Now, Richard,

"what I want you to do if you're not gonna tell me is

"I want you to tell me that you will seriously reconsider."

- And he said "You're the most qualified person we have.

"You run the largest healthcare company

"in the state of Alabama.

"We want you to serve."

I said I'd do one year.

Out of a three-year term, I'll serve one year and that's it.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(gloomy music)

- [Narrator] The judge on the case was Mark Everett Fuller

who had been appointed by the Bush Administration

four years earlier.

- We basically got nothing from Judge Fuller.

The best comparison I could make

would be if you think about the movie Gladiator

where people are fighting on numerous fronts

with numerous people against them.

That's how the trial felt.

Not only am I fighting against the government,

I'm fighting against the evidence

submitted by the government,

but I was also fighting with the court

and it was a losing battle

in that motions that we would file

that are normally granted without any serious consideration

were absolutely denied.

Trials are supposed to be fair

and not inherently prejudicial.

- After the jury was sent out to deliberate

and they came back with a note,

they asked the judge can a campaign contribution

be a thing of value under that statute

or do they have to find that Don Siegelman

benefited personally?

Faega jumps up and says

"The campaign contribution can be a thing of value

"and it doesn't matter whether you got a personal benefit."

Another argument he makes is that it can be a thing of value

if he gets it directly or indirectly

through some other foundation.

What's even more remarkable

that Judge Fuller says a thing of value can be

something that improves someone's political capital

on a platform on which he ran.

So Don Siegelman ran the platform of a lottery

for an education referendum.

- [Interviewer] Doesn't make any sense.

- It makes no sense.

It's all a bunch of crap.

- Every person that is probably sitting over there

on any committee or any board or any commission

or a cabinet members I'm sure have contributed

to the current governor or any governor.

- It was obvious to us that Don and Richard had won.

I mean, they didn't even put on a defense.

They hit it out of the ball park.

I mean there was no way that

the prosecution proved their case and we all knew it.

- And then they went out and ultimately we got the verdict.

(gloomy music)

- Eventually the jury comes back and throws out 25 counts

of the 32 counts that were against Don Siegelman

and the sentence that he imposed

was an exceedingly harsh sentence,

seven years and four months of imprisonment.

That's a long sentence for a situation where

Don Siegelman did not personally benefit.

- [Narrator] The jury acquitted Siegelman's

former chief of staff Paul Hamrick

and former state transportation secretary Mack Roberts

of all charges.

In June of the next year at the sentencing hearing,

Judge Fuller, upon handing down their sentences,

ordered both Richard Scrushy and Don Siegelman

to be taken away immediately

with no time to say goodbye to their families

or get their affairs in order.

- He had him bound and shackled

and carted off to prison on the spot,

whereas almost any common criminal in federal court

would be allowed to report at a certain date.

I think that showed where this guy was coming from.

- They shackled this man and drug him out of the courthouse.

I mean it was like something you would think

took place in a third world country.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm even close to that.

- Immediately our lives have changed.

I mean when he was sentenced,

I was in such utter shock I couldn't,

I didn't feel like I could breathe.

Two weeks it took me to recuperate

and kind of gain my composure again.

- I have a place down at Seagrove Beach, Florida

right next to Rosemary Beach.

Karl Rove, I saw him pedaling around on a bicycle,

poor guy looked like Elmer Fudd or something, you know.

I then talked to a US attorney, Steve Faega,

who I saw from a distance and I thought it was him

going into Karl Rove's house at Rosemary Beach

and they had a party there

and it was after the Siegelman trial

and I don't know if the prosecutors

should be attending a party with Karl Rove.

- I don't think he ever thought for a moment

they actually were so malicious

as to continue to persecute and prosecute him

until they got a conviction

and I think that's what shocked him more than anything.

- Thank you.

God bless you and God bless the great state of Alabama.

(applause)

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(solemn music)

- [Narrator] Since the Siegelman Scrushy conviction,

a virtual landslide of new information has come out

that points toward their innocence.

Even more disturbing than the depth

of the misconduct on the case

is the extensive amount of time and effort

that was spent to cover it all up.

- It just didn't feel like there was a level playing field.

That's the best way I knew to put it.

But then there was the jury and you thought

you know, this doesn't feel like a level playing field,

but they can't get to the jury.

But they did.

(gloomy music)

- I can't remember exactly how long after the trial it was,

but I received a letter, an anonymous letter

in the mail at my office and when I opened it

it clearly was an email exchange between jurors.

Unmistakable.

- Some information came to light that jurors

were possibly communicating with each other during the trial

where they spoke specifically

about how to convict Governor Siegelman

and some of their personal feelings about Governor Siegelman

and they were not positive.

- [Narrator] The letter, received by all defense attorneys,

contained printed emails between jurors from the case.

Two of those emails were dated before deliberations began

and revealed that at least one juror

had actively plotted to convince other jurors

to vote guilty even before all the evidence had been heard.

- Jurors nationwide, state, federal court,

are always instructed that their discussions about the case

have to occur in the jury room

where all the jurors are present.

So I mean basically the way that it appeared in these emails

was that a group of jurors were getting together

to lobby the other jurors to convict

and that's just it's improper.

- [Narrator] The emails were between jury foreman

Sam Hendrix and juror Katie Langer,

also known as Flipper by the other jurors

because she performed gymnastics in the jury room.

They revealed that Langer held a strong predisposition

against the defendants

whom she pejoratively referred to

as the governor and the pastor.

Scrushy occasionally preached at a local church.

In one message dated before deliberations,

Langer continued to pressure juror 30 to convict

before all the evidence and arguments had been heard.

It also revealed that she and Hendrix

had accessed outside information.

With an obvious lack of impartiality,

Langer said that all public officials are scum

and that both defendants were up shit creek.

Later, she even referred to Siegelman's

and Scrushy's previous acquittals,

stating "They missed before, but we won't"

as though her influence in this trial could make up

for how she thought those other trials should have ended.

Both Hendrix and Langer have since denied

sending or receiving those emails.

When the defense brought the matter to the court,

Judge Fuller surprisingly ordered the defense

and the prosecution to drop the matter

and not investigate their authenticity.

- It would have, almost without question,

caused a mistrial.

In other words, the original verdicts

would have been thrown out

and we would have been on for a new trial.

The jurors were emailing each other

and conducting basically strategy sessions.

That could have been easily disclosed

simply by going to the ISP providers with an order

and getting all of those emails and just seeing

are these emails that were revealed to us anonymously,

are they genuine.

We were denied.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(gloomy music)

- [Narrator] Several months later,

Jill Simpson, a local lawyer and republican activist

who had been working for years to dig up dirt on Siegelman,

had a change of heart.

She provided defense attorneys with an affidavit

describing how she witnessed

Alabama Republicans use the Justice Department

to target Siegelman for political prosecution.

Her story caught the eye of 60 Minutes

and was featured in their lead segment on the case.

- [Man] A Republican lawyer from Alabama, Jill Simpson,

has come forward to claim that the Siegelman prosecution

was part of a five-year secret campaign

to ruin the governor.

- Jill, because of the way she came forward

to report ethical violations

of the Justice Department of the United States,

of Karl Rove in instigating for political reasons

an improper, unfounded political prosecution

of Governor Siegelman by the Justice Department,

she had an ethical duty to report this and she did.

So her affidavit accurately reported

a telephone conversation that Jill Simpson had

with Bill Canary,

the head of the Business Council of Alabama,

Rob Riley, the son of Governor Bob Riley of Alabama,

and in the conversation the subject was

how to prevent Governor Siegelman

from running again in 2006.

- Bill Canary assured her,

when she was working on the campaign against Siegelman,

"You don't have to worry about Siegelman.

"Don't worry about Siegelman.

"My girls are gonna take care of Siegelman"

and she said "What do you mean my girls?"

and he said "Well, my wife Leura Canary,"

who's the US attorney in the Middle District of Alabama,

and Alice Martin who's the US attorney

in the Northern District of Alabama,

"They'll take care of things."

- [Narrator] During their investigation,

60 Minutes also found that prosecutors

withheld exculpatory evidence

involving their key witness, Nick Bailey.

- [Man] Bailey told us that before the Siegelman trial

he spoke to prosecutors more than 70 times.

He told us that the prosecutors were so frustrated,

they made him write his proposed testimony

over and over just to get his story straight.

- That got them so frustrated

that Bailey couldn't get his story straight

that they asked him just to write it out.

We were trying to get every bit of that information.

We asked for that.

The government's response was well,

if Mr. Bailey wrote out his testimony, we don't have it.

That would easily be another way to overturn

Governor Siegelman's conviction.

- [Narrator] Bailey claimed that he handed the notes

over to his attorney, George Beck, for safekeeping.

Beck, the attorney that cut the deal

for him to testify against Siegelman,

has denied ever having the binder

containing those notes in his possession.

- After the 60 Minutes report aired,

I mean they all...

Everybody ran around like their hair was on fire

denying this had ever happened.

Nick's attorney claimed he never had a binder

full of questions and answers.

All of things that Nick had confirmed

to the people at CBS.

- [Narrator] The 60 Minutes bombshell gave the defense

the national attention it deserved,

however, there was more to Simpson's story

that was not covered in the report.

- And then when Jill Simpson indicated

that Rob Riley further went on to tell her

that they had a judge picked out

to preside over any Siegelman trial

and this judge was Mark Fuller

and he could be counted upon to hang Don Siegelman.

- [Narrator] When Fuller received his appointment

by the Bush Administration to the federal bench,

he vacated his job as district attorney

in Enterprise, Alabama.

As then governor, Siegelman filled the position

and a customary audit was performed

on Fuller's old office.

The result found that Fuller had misappropriated

over $300,000 in state retirement funds

when he spiked the salary of one of his employees.

Although no charges were filed,

it was a clear case of misconduct

and very embarrassing for a new up-and-coming judge

to be seen as dishonest.

Fuller blamed Siegelman and publicly stated

that the governor's actions were politically motivated.

- Don Siegelman called his hand on it.

The judge was publicly embarrassed.

The judge even commented in the paper

that Don Siegelman had damaged him politically.

- This was an issue that caused a major embarrassment

for Mark Fuller.

Instead of doing the right thing and recusing himself,

Mark Fuller saw that as an opportunity for payback.

- This judge had a political beef with Don Siegelman.

How did he end up sitting on the bench?

He was the chief judge of the Middle District of Alabama.

So he could do basically what he wanted to do.

All he had do is say I don't have a conflict of interest

and that's the end of story

and that's exactly what happened.

So we ended up with a judge with a conflict of interest

and a prosecutor with a conflict of interest

and when those things are mounted against you,

it's almost impossible to prevail.

- He sat as judge in this case

and he ensured that there was not a finger on the scale

supporting the prosecutor,

but a fist coming down on the side of the prosecution,

ensuring that this case was gonna result in a conviction.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

- [Narrator] Almost immediately after Siegelman

filed his appeal with the 11th Circuit in Atlanta,

his attorneys received a letter

from the Department of Justice

admitting to their own wrongdoing.

- During the appeal of Don's case to the 11th Circuit,

we get a letter from the appellate lawyer named Stemler.

I guess her conscious was hurting her.

Anyways, she wrote a long letter to the lawyers

and confessed that what the government had done

with regard to some juror emails

that we had gotten anonymously after the trial

that showed jurors were communicating back and forth,

which is a big no-no.

- [Narrator] If you recall,

the matter regarding juror emails

between Katie Langer and Sam Hendrix

was taken for Judge Fuller.

The defense asked the court to subpoena the ISP providers

to find out if those emails were in fact legitimate.

Judge Fuller denied their requests

and instructed both sides to simply do nothing.

Defense attorneys believed the matter was over,

however, unbeknownst to them at the time

the prosecution secretly took action.

- Louis Franklin had asked the Marshals Service

and the Postal Inspectors

to investigate the authenticity of the email.

Well that was on the tee.

Are they authentic or not?

If they're not authentic, forget it.

They're authentic, big problem for the government.

So we get what I call the Stemler letter

and she said "I just want to let you that Mr. Franklin,

"one of the prosecutors, had asked the Postal Service

"to investigate the authenticity of the emails

"and in fact they did and they determined that

"they were not genuine"

and we never heard about that.

- They withheld the information until such time

that we could not use it.

They informed us of this information

after the appeal had already been filed.

- [Narrator] Even though the letter stated

that the emails were not genuine,

the defense had no way of verifying

whether the investigation was conducted properly

or even at all.

Regardless of whether the emails were authentic or not,

the issue highlights four major problems

that each alone should have brought about a new trial.

One, the prosecution defied the judge's order

to not investigate the matter,

ex-parte communication occurred when prosecutors

discussed the issue in private with Judge Fuller

and outside the presence of defense attorneys,

there were failures to disclose when, one,

prosecutors deliberately suppressed their efforts

from the defense and when the Department of Justice

admitted to withholding key information

up until the moment the defense

no longer had any recourse to rectify the misconduct.

- We filed motions in the 11th Circuit

to try to get a special master to investigate this,

but by that time the thing had moved on to appeal process

and it's just not a good forum

to investigate that kind of thing.

The Constitution demanded we be told about that

and we were not.

Something needs to be done about that one.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(solemn music)

- These were obviously incredibly disturbing things

that people were hearing

and then it was followed up by a letter by a paralegal,

Tamarah Grimes,

who was a member of the prosecution team,

to the Attorney General of the United States

outlining a series of irregularities

that she was very, very concerned about.

- [Narrator] As a paralegal working for the prosecution team

Tamarah Grimes provided an affidavit

revealing multiple counts of prosecutorial misconduct

she had witnessed behind closed doors

in the US Attorney's office before and during the trial.

Supported by emails and other documents,

she provided hard evidence that showed Leura Canary

had in fact continued working on the case

despite her so-called recusal.

Grimes also explained in greater depth

how Nick Bailey had been pressured and cajoled

by Faega and Franklin into falsely testifying

against his former boss and Richard Scrushy.

Grimes also provided evidence showing how

FBI agent Keith Baker, a member of the prosecution team,

could have been in contact with juror Katie Langer,

aka Flipper, during the trial.

In one email, anther member of the prosecution team

referred to juror Katie Langer as Flipper.

The question is how would someone from the prosecution

have known that juror's nicknamed Langer Flipper

unless they were in contact with someone from the jury?

After two years of following proper procedures

and filing authorized complaints

to the Justice Department,

she wrote a letter to then US Attorney General Eric Holder

detailing the abuse and misconduct

she had witnessed while working with the prosecution.

Eight days later, Holder fired her.

- You know, when presented between a question

of clear-cut justice what is right

and protecting the institutional interests

of the Department of Justice,

this is never a close call

for the senior figures of the Justice Department.

They will protect the image and reputation

of the institution every time.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(gloomy music)

- [Narrator] During the trial,

everyone thought that former HealthSouth CEO

Richard Scrushy was the richest man in the courtroom,

but he wasn't.

That honor went to Judge Mark Fuller.

In addition to his federal judgeship,

Fuller also ran a company called Doss Aviation

that relied almost entirely on government contracts.

Around the same time the prosecution rested,

Doss Aviation was awarded a 10-year Air Force contract

for a whopping $178 million.

(dramatic chord)

Something that could have easily been influenced

by White House officials, including Karl Rove.

- Doss Aviation is a company that Mark Fuller

was the principle owner of.

So here is a prosecution

against Governor Siegelman being brought by the government

and here's Mark Fuller wearing his hat as a judge

in this case where he's also wearing a hat

as a major contract,

beneficiary of major contracts with the federal government.

- I looked at one point at corruption sentences

that were handed down for politicians

who actually engaged in corruption

and it's like two years, two and a half years,

that's sort of the norm.

He's been in for four and a half years

and he didn't engage in any corruption.

I mean it really is just completely outrageous

and that's because of Mark fucking Fuller,

you know, that crook.

He should be in jail.

I mean he should be in jail for violent crimes.

- [Operator] What's going on?

- [Kelli] I'm in a domestic--

- [Operator] Excuse me?

- [Kelli] A domestic dispute.

- [Operator] Okay, with yourself and who else?

- [Kelli] I'm calling, I need help.

- [Operator] What's your name?

- [Kelli] Kelli Fuller.

- [Operator] Okay, do you need an ambulance?

- [Kelli] Yes, please.

- [Operator] Kelli?

(whacking)

Kelli?

(whacking)

Okay, she needs an ambulance.

I'm sending the police.

They're in a domestic fight now at the Ritz-Carlton.

- [Kelli] Please help me, he's beating on me.

I hate you, I hate you.

- [Mark] I hate you.

I hate you too.

- [Operator] We're the EMS.

I need the address of your emergency.

(mumbling)

- [Narrator] In August of 2014,

Atlanta Police were called to a luxury hotel

in downtown Atlanta where they arrested Judge Mark Fuller

for violently assaulting his wife Kelli Gregg Fuller.

The report stated that he had repeatedly struck Kelli

several times in the face

and even pulled clumps of her from her scalp.

For the assault, Fuller received a nominal sentence

for domestic abuse.

Fuller was forced to resign from the bench.

In a scathing report issued after the investigation,

a judiciary committee found that Fuller

had abused his wife at least eight times.

The report also stated that Fuller

had made false statements to the court years earlier

that caused, quote, "massive disruption

"and loss of public confidence in the court."

The report also suggested that impeachment

should still be considered

even though he had already resigned from the bench.

- That's the judge who oversaw this entire process.

That's the judge that these prosecutors

desperately wanted to have handle the case.

A criminal judge,

not the judge who sits in criminal cases,

but a judge who is a criminal

and who was ultimately removed from the bench

based on his violent criminal behavior.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

- [Narrator] Justice Don Siegelman

had been convicted in Fuller's court,

our story returns full circle from where it began.

The Riley Administration that once relied

on under-the-table contributions from Indian gaming interest

to get him elected governor

was now using his position as the state's top lawmaker

to provide those Indian gaming interests with protection.

It was Choctaw casino cash that secretly funded

the Riley campaign to defeat Siegelman in 2002,

but now the Republican governor had a new benefactor,

the Poarch Creek Indian tribe

who operated two casinos in Alabama.

Looking to expand his influence even further,

Governor Riley summoned Milton McGregor,

owner of Victoryland, the state's largest casino

and primary competition for the Poarch Creek Indians,

to his office in the state capitol

with a point blank demand.

- When I met with Bob Riley at his request at lunch

in the governor's office at the state capitol,

within 10 minutes after me walking into that conference room

with him, he made it real clear what he wanted to talk about

was me hiring Rob Riley as one of my attorneys

and it wasn't a request, it was like a demand,

which didn't sit very well with me.

I didn't tell him I'd think about it.

I told him no.

The meeting did not go well at all because

the more he talked, the more I got offended.

We got loud enough that his receptionist opened the door

and asked if we were all right

because we were getting pretty loud in there, he and I both.

- [Narrator] Riley critics, including McGregor,

call his demand for payment as nothing more than extortion.

Instead of cash under the table,

payment would come in the form of legal fees

paid to the law firm owned by his son Rob Riley,

thus appearing as a normal business transaction.

A few weeks after his demand had been rejected,

Riley set his sights on McGregor once again

when he created a new organization

called the Illegal Gambling Task Force

with the intention of shutting down Victoryland

and other smaller gambling venues

that were considered competition for the Indian casinos.

- Hello, I'm Governor Bob Riley.

I believe we're blessed to live in Alabama.

We have a quality of life

that is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

I never want to see anything happen

that would degrade our quality of life

and there's no doubt in my mind

that gambling does degrade our quality of life.

It corrupts Alabama and hurts the people who live here.

So I signed an executive order in December

to create a task force on illegal gambling.

This task force, with the help of state

and local law enforcement officers,

is designed to make sure Alabama's laws against gambling

are uniformly enforced in all of our communities.

- He announced he was forming an Illegal Gambling Task Force

is what he called it, but it was only a few weeks after that

that he sent state troopers at four o'clock in the morning

to Victoryland without a search warrant,

raiding us, closing our business down,

something that you would expect

in Nazi Germany 60 years ago.

According to the news report,

over 100 state troopers came to Victoryland

like a Gestapo crowd.

- [Narrator] Although later that same morning,

a judge ruled that the surprise raid

was completely unconstitutional,

it only fueled Riley's efforts to shut down Victoryland.

After Riley failed to extort protection money

from McGregor in the form of legal fees

paid to his son Rob Riley,

he joined forces with newly-elected

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange

and together they rewrote state gambling laws

that would force Victoryland's closure.

Although traditional one-arm bandits

are not allowed in Alabama,

state law does permit the use of so-called bingo machines

even though the two are virtually identical.

In an aggressive move,

Strange drafted so-called memorandums of understanding

that legally redefined Victoryland's machines

as illegal slot machines,

but in a second memo Strange defined those

at the Poarch Creek casino as bingo machines,

thus legally permitted for use.

Weeks later, as the state's top prosecutor,

Strange then ordered all Victoryland's machines

to be removed, forcing them to close their doors

and lay off hundreds of employees.

The motive behind their actions became clear

when an article published by the Montgomery Advertiser

revealed records showing that the Poarch Creek Indian casino

donated $350,000 via a national Republican organization

to Riley-affiliated pacts with $100,000 of that money

funneled directly to Luther Strange's campaign

for Attorney General the previous year.

Publicly, the Riley Administration opposed gambling,

but privately they were pulling in millions in casino cash.

- The Riley machine on the face was against gambling.

In reality, under the table and secretly,

they took millions of dollars from the Native Americans.

That money was used to elect Bob Riley

and other Republicans.

Once they got in office, they repaid the Indians

by shutting down Victoryland and other gaming facilities

that competed with the Native Americans.

It was that same Bob Riley machine

that transferred millions of dollars

into the Attorney General's office to continue the fight.

- [Narrator] Despite the chorus of decent,

Leura Canary continued as federal prosecutor

for another three years

under Attorney General Eric Holder

and the Obama Administration,

just enough time for one more October surprise

when she indicted Milton McGregor and 10 others

on federal racketeering charges.

- 11 defendants named in the indictment

are charged with forming a corrupt network

of legislators, businessmen and lobbyists

whose aim was to manipulate the Democratic process

for personal gain.

- Then we had a trial and we were declared

not guilty on every single charge.

That ended it.

- [Narrator] Another example of Governor Riley

using the judiciary as a weapon

was when he approached then Alabama attorney general

Troy King who disagreed with him on the gambling issue.

First time I really personally encountered

overzealous prosecutors being used

as political pawns and weapons

was in a meeting I had with the Governor of Alabama

where we were talking about the gambling issue.

At the end of the meeting, the governor said

"Well tell me about your grand jury."

And I looked at him dumbfounded.

I said "What are you talking about?

"What grand jury?"

And he said "Well you know you have a grand jury

"investigating you, don't you?"

I didn't know it and I told him I didn't know it

and his response was to stand up, look at me and say

"Well, if we can get on the same page on gambling,

"I think everything will be okay"

and to turn around and walk out of his office

and I'm here to tell you

when political prosecutions occur,

when there can be a difference of opinion over the law

and the reaction is to try to put people in jail

for disagreeing with you,

that has no place in the public arena.

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(gloomy music)

- Bob Riley gives a lot of credit to Karl Rove

for being the architect, sort of the mastermind

on how to do certain things that they did.

- We know, everybody knows

that Karl Rove had a game plan.

He was the architect.

- We're at the DNC in Charlotte, North Carolina in 2012

and I had a hunch that Karl Rove was around the corner.

I actually did spot him walking down with his security guard

in the hallway and I went up to him

and he must have thought I was a reporter or whatever,

so I stuck out my hand and I said

"Mr. Rove, I'm Dana Siegelman, Don Siegelman's daughter"

and said it just like that and he went berserk.

As soon as I introduced myself,

which I thought I did very politely,

you know, sir, Don Siegelman's daughter,

I just wanted to meet you and say,

he cut me off right away,

started shaking his finger in my face

and said "Tell your dad not to use my name to make money."

And he kind of, he nearly spit in my face,

but he got up in my face

and told me how much he hated Dad

and he was gonna ring Dad for all he was worth

and how dare I come up to him

and he got so flustered and red-faced

and just basically ran after he realized

that he had just like basically gotten in my face

and that there were camera crews coming towards us,

he just started to run.

- [Narrator] When the House Judiciary Committee

ordered Rove to testify about his role

in the Siegelman case and the attorney firings,

he simply refused to honor the subpoena,

citing executive privilege.

In the months following his no-show before the committee,

his lawyers eventually cut a sweetheart deal

with the House Judiciary Committee.

Instead of testifying under oath,

he was only required to answer questions

behind closed doors without being sworn in

and the session would not be recorded.

This eliminated any legal recourse

for lawmakers to hold Rove accountable

should he make false statements

and essentially made his testimony worthless.

What no one knew at the time

was that one of his attorneys

that quietly made those arrangements

was Eric Holder while he was working as a private attorney

and just months before he was sworn in

as Attorney General in the Obama Administration.

- The RNC and Karl Rove were represented by guess who?

At Covington and Burling,

right before he went in as Attorney General,

none other than Eric Holder.

- The law firm that represented Karl Rove at that time

and had for years and probably does today

is the law firm that Eric Holder came from,

Covington and Burling.

- [Narrator] Little known to most of the public,

just before Holder became head of the Justice Department,

he was paid a multi-million dollar salary

as a partner at Covington and Burling,

a high-powered DC law firm with deep Republican ties.

Covington's current and former client list

reads like a who's who of some of America's

most tarnished organizations,

including Halliburton, Enron executives,

Philip Morris and many of the Wall Street firms

at the heart of the so-called great recession,

none of whom were held responsible by the DOJ

for their role in the financial disaster.

Covington's website even boasts of representing the RNC

after thousands of emails were mysteriously erased

and presumed unrecoverable,

emails that many believe would have proven

that another Covington client, Karl Rove,

was the ringleader behind both the attorney firings

and the Siegelman case.

As Attorney General, Holder tapped Lanny Breuer,

a former colleague of his at Covington,

to head the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

- Congratulations. - Thank you.

(applause)

- [Narrator] Breuer's group oversaw

the Milton McGregor prosecution.

- This morning, federal agents began arresting

11 individuals.

- [Man] Federal prosecutors say they've uncovered evidence

of a widespread corruption scandal in Alabama.

- [Narrator] A case so weak that it ultimately resulted

in across-the-board acquittals for all 11 defendants.

This raises a very serious question,

why would the Justice Department,

under another political party,

allow a case so obviously tainted by corruption

to go forward if there were not some kind

of insider influence involved?

- Really the one that I think

needs to be investigated more than anybody

in this whole Siegelman, whole prosecute the Democrats thing

is Eric Holder.

Nobody's laid a finger on him.

- [Narrator] Could Holder's ties with Covington clients

Karl Rove and the RNC be the reason he personally fired

DOJ paralegal Tamarah Grimes for providing strong evidence

of prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case?

Obviously Rove and the RNC would have wanted to minimize

any fallout from potential malfeasance,

however, as Attorney General

it was Eric Holder's responsibility

to notify all parties involved of his conflicts of interest

stemming from his work at Covington

and to recuse himself from any cases

associated with those clients.

Instead, he chose to hide that fact

and even took it one step further by firing Grimes

in an attempt to silence the damning evidence

she provided against Rove and Leura Canary

and many others in the Justice Department.

Legal critics also cite Holder's ties

to Karl Rove and the RNC

as the reason Canary, a Bush appointee,

remain prosecutor for three more years

under the Obama Administration

despite her conflicts of interest

and repeated allegations of misconduct.

Those same critics also ask why the Justice Department,

to this day, still refuses to release

thousands of documents,

including the results of an internal

DOJ investigation of the case,

a report the defense attorneys say

would reveal the rampant misconduct

by numerous DOJ officials.

(gloomy music)

- I wrote to President Obama and to the Attorney General,

pointed out the travesty of justice.

I have not heard a word from them on it,

not that they owed me a response,

but I thought that the gravity of the injustice

of this case

merited some correction

by the White House and we haven't seen it

and I'm bitterly disappointed by it.

- [Narrator] During the House investigation into the matter,

an email surfaced from an unidentified federal prosecutor

sent to Rob Riley who was working on his father's campaign.

In the email, the sender complained that he had been, quote,

"thwarted" for beginning an investigation

into the Siegelman Administration.

That person also stated that it was, quote,

"frustrating for me and a small group

"of like-minded Conservative prosecutors

to, quote, "fight the tide in order to do the job

"we were sworn to do."

The question is why would a federal prosecutor

who began the Siegelman investigation

make such a plea to Rob Riley

unless they and the Rileys were united in their efforts

and the biggest question arises

why did this prosecutor plainly identify themselves

as a Conservative prosecutor to another Conservative

if politics were not involved?

(gentle music)

(clicking)

(solemn music)

- There was so many strains of wrongdoing

that I and a group of attorneys general

felt we should get involved,

we should do something about this.

So a committee, a bipartisan committee,

two Democrats, two Republican

together with Jeff Jeff Modisett,

the former attorney general of Indiana,

and Bob Stephan of Kansas and Grant Woods of Arizona,

we acted as a steering committee to try to reach out

to former attorneys general

to see if they would get involved

and indeed over the course of the investigation

and the prosecution and the litigation,

former attorneys general did a number of things.

There were briefs filed in the United States Supreme Court,

amicus curiae briefs.

One of those briefs got 91

former attorneys general to sign on

and a later brief got 113 former attorneys general.

Never before in the history of the country

have so many attorneys general chimed in

on an issue before the United States Supreme Court

and these were Democrats and Republicans,

Liberals and Conservatives, Moderates.

They represented virtually every state in the Union,

all united saying somebody's gotta look at this case.

- That's unprecedented in the history of the country.

Never happened before, won't happen again

and these are people who have spent their lives

enforcing the law,

being prosecutors for the most part,

being their state's top prosecutor

and yet all of them came together to say

what happened to Don Siegelman wasn't right

and you guys need to take a look at it.

So that should say a lot to people.

- [Narrator] Despite hundreds of letters

written by many of America's top legal minds

to members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the White House,

and the Department of Justice,

pleas have fallen on deaf ears

and no meaningful action has been taken.

- You have well over 100 former attorneys general

who have said that this isn't a crime,

13 New York Timed editorials, this isn't a crime,

Conservative commentator George Will, this isn't a crime,

Neil Cavuto on Fox News, this isn't a crime.

I mean, the echos are amazing that this isn't a crime

and people are flabbergasted

about how these gentlemen ended up in prison.

- [Narrator] After serving over five years

in federal prison,

former Alabama governor Don Siegelman

was released on February 8th, 2017

to home confinement for several months.

He will remain on probation until 2021.

- Here's what I do know.

I do know that I was innocent and the governor was innocent

and we both went to federal prison.

Why?

At the end of the day, why?

- Richard Scrushy spent six years,

almost six years in prison away from his family

and all he had to do was tell one lie

and he wouldn't have done one day in prison.

- You know, I'm taking away from my family

and my little ones and my wife

and just beat down and shamed and humiliated

and tortured for five years in a federal prison.

Come on.

Let me put you in some chains

and lock you up at about 2:30 in the morning

and let you and unhook you late that night, next night

and give you a bottle of water and that was it

and you call it what you want.

When you can't scratch your head, you can't turn,

you're sitting on a cold floor, you're freezing to death,

you're soaking wet because they made you stand out

in the rain in the middle of the winter,

marching you around with shotguns on you

and you tell me that's not torture, it's not harassment.

I can't event talk about some of the things

they put us through

and they put the governor through that kind of stuff.

I had one guard tell me one time "Listen, I tell you what."

I said "Sir, I'm very sick.

"I gotta get some medicine, you gotta help me out.

"I mean, I'm coughing, very sick and respiratory problem"

and he said "I tell you what,

"when you can't get up off that floor

"I'll call us a doctor.

"When you can't get up off that floor."

I mean all you can do is just pray.

Yeah, I haven't even opened the door

to what we went through.

If I told you, you know, it's some tough stuff

and I have to deal with that the rest of my life.

- [Narrator] Siegelman spent two lengthy periods

in solitary confinement.

One lasted 45 days

for speaking to a radio host on the phone.

Corrections department officials have forbidden him

from speaking with anyone from the media.

This 20-year pursuit to get Siegelman out of the way

has been staggering in scope

and a boon for lawyers and lobbyists.

The government spent an estimated $50 million plus

on multiple investigations and prosecutions.

To date, Don Siegelman has spent over $3 million

in his defense,

not to mention the attorney fees incurred

by his codefendants and hundreds of others

questioned along he way.

The Choctaws paid Abramoff and Scanlon over $20 million

to defeat the education lottery fund

and then to oust Siegelman

before he could enter national politics.

An election was stolen after 6,000 votes

mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night.

Those ballots, obtained by Rove client Bill Pryor

have never been seen or counted.

Pryor also initiated a four-year baseless investigation

of Siegelman that found nothing.

Charges brought by Pryor

and another Rove protege Alice Martin

were described by the judge as the most baseless prosecution

he had seen in his almost 30 years on the federal bench.

Federal prosecutor Leura Canary,

wife of the campaign manager of Siegelman's opponent

and Rove partner,

then kicked another federal investigation into high gear

and then lied about her recusal.

Canary's indictment of Siegelman

marked the first time in the history

of American jurisprudence

that a properly recorded non-profit contribution

was considered a form of bribery.

Canary and other Rove associates

strategically planned the trial to occur

so that prosecutors could publicly accuse

Siegelman of bribery and leak false allegations to the press

just before an election.

Stephen Faega and Louis Franklin

committed multiple forms of prosecutorial misconduct

when they scripted Nick Bailey's prepared testimony

during an unheard of 100 plus meetings with him.

They illegally withheld Bailey's notes from those meetings

when they should have been admitted as evidence.

Franklin and Faega also threatened Bailey for years

to falsely testify against Siegelman

or face a lengthy prison sentence,

untruthful testimony that the DOJ officials knew

would lead to a conviction.

Faega and Franklin also threatened

multiple witnesses to lie on the stand

or face prosecution,

some of which were later tried and convicted

under similarly specious circumstances.

Rove associates arranged for a hanging judge

and Siegelman political foe Mark Fuller

to be assigned to the case,

a judge so crooked that he was eventually

forced off the bench for perjury and domestic violence.

When the prosecution rested their case,

Fuller's company was quietly awarded a government contract

for a whopping $178 million,

a contract that could have easily been arranged

by Rove or other White House officials.

After the trial, emails emerged showing that jurors

inappropriately tried to convince other jurors

to vote guilty before all the evidence had been presented,

however, Fuller demanded that both sides

do nothing to determine their authenticity.

Later, a letter from the Justice Department

admitted that prosecutors defied the judge's order

to not look into the emails.

Then prosecutors actually met with Judge Fuller,

but without the defense present.

That ex-parte communication could have easily

brought about a mistrial.

However, the letter was strategically submitted

to the defense when Siegelman

could no longer use it in an appeal.

In 2008, Tamarah Grimes,

a paralegal working with the prosecution,

blew the whistle on what went on

behind the prosecution's doors

and confirmed what everyone knew all along,

Canary, in fact, continued her involvement

despite her so-called recusal,

Franklin and Faega strongly pressured Nick Bailey

to falsify his testimony,

and the prosecution inappropriately communicated

directly with a juror during and after the trial.

All represent strong ground to overturn the verdict.

Then former Rover associate Jill Simpson

testified before Congress that before Siegelman's trial,

Rove business partner Bill Canary

told her that, quote, "his girls"

would take care of Siegelman

and that's exactly what Alice Martin

and his wife Leura Canary did

when they both indicted Siegelman in separate cases.

Simpson also said that Siegelman's opponent's son Rob Riley

would have Mark Fuller assigned to the case,

and that he was, quote, "willing to hang Siegelman."

As Siegelman sat in federal prison,

Rove and the RNC paid millions to Eric Holder's law firm,

Covington and Burling, to convince lawmakers

and Justice Department officials to turn a blind eye

to their overwhelming levels of corruption they committed

regarding the missing emails, the attorney firings,

and the Siegelman case.

After Holder became head of the Justice Department,

he continued serving his clients instead of serving justice

by shutting down multiple investigations

into Rove's scandals so that no charges

were ever brought against Rove or other Covington clients.

Despite the 20 years of countless

Justice Department man hours, corrupt political dealings,

stolen votes, trumped up charges,

millions in legal expenses, a rigged court,

massive prosecutorial misconduct, judicial abuse,

recusal lies, false testimony, secret government contracts,

shady deals, juror misconduct, and the subversion of justice

committed by Rove and the many others

to carry out this malicious prosecution

and wrongful conviction,

Siegelman was never recused or convicted

of putting one penny in his pocket.

This overwhelming injustice has remained covered up

for over a decade now and the people that perpetrated

this fraud on the court have never so much

as been questioned, much less held accountable.

In fact, most of them have moved on

or maintained very powerful positions.

As head of the Business Council of Alabama,

Bill Canary can forcibly influence legislation

because his lobbying firm provides so many candidates

with the campaign funds they need to remain in office.

Leura Canary remained federal prosecutor

for three more years under Eric Holder

and the Obama Administration

where she continued to indict many Republican foes.

She's now the General Counsel

for the Retirement Systems of Alabama.

- When your government goes awry,

goes crazy and does not follow the Constitution,

then justice is not served.

- [Narrator] Several months after certifying

that 2002 election two days early,

Rove client and former Alabama attorney general Bill Pryor

was appointed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals

where Siegelman lost two separate cases.

Although Pryor was not assigned to either case,

both three-judge panels were a Republican majority.

- Bill Pryor, in my experience with him,

was a complete partisan hack, frankly,

and that was very unusual.

He stood out.

I'm saying as a Republican I would feel very comfortable

voting for Richard Pryor over Bill Pryor.

- [Narrator] Former governor Bob Riley

runs Riley and Associates,

another large Alabama lobbying firm

that funds many Republican political campaigns,

including all members of the Alabama Supreme Court.

As attorneys, Rob Riley and his sister Minda Riley Campbell

have been awarded no bid contracts for the state of Alabama

as well as representing others

seeking a political advantage.

Stephen Faega left the prosecutor's office

and now serves as Deputy Director

of Enforcement and Prosecution

for the Alabama Securities Commission.

- What can you do?

You can't give a man his life back.

These people should be prosecuted.

They should go to jail.

They should lose their law licenses.

They should be punished.

- [Narrator] Louis Franklin is still a federal prosecutor

and continues to maintain close associations

with Bill and Leura Canary.

Unsurprisingly, he's never acknowledged

any prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case.

- We expect more than that

of prosecutors in the United States of America.

We're better than that.

We're supposed to be the best and generally we are the best.

In this case, we were the worst.

- [Narrator] Since coming forward,

Jill Simpson has endured significant hardships.

The Alabama State Bar placed her on disability

and she's been the target of multiple attacks.

- The initial two attacks were

she's driving along the road and SUV comes up to her side.

She does go off the road, car overturns,

and she was injured but survived.

Second attack was a fire bombing of her home,

which again she survived.

- [Narrator] George Beck, the attorney that arranged

for Bailey to testify against Siegelman and Scrushy

and said to be in possession of Nick Bailey's missing notes,

was selected by the Obama Administration and Eric Holder

to replace Leura Canary as Federal Prosecutor

for the Middle District of Alabama.

- Given what we now know about the case

and all that went wrong, all of the misconduct,

why the government would continue to try and shield them

and retain and withhold their documents

after all that's been publicly disclosed already

is something that's just truly astonishing to me.

- [Narrator] A few days after the trial,

juror Katie Flipper Langer reached out to prosecutors

with a request.

She decided to trade in her leotard for law books

and enrolled in law school.

She's now an Alabama state prosecutor

working with colleagues Matt Hart and Keith Baker.

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange,

who accepted Poarch Creek casino campaign cash

just before shutting down Victoryland, got a promotion.

He was selected by then governor Bob Bentley

to replace Jeff Sessions in Washington.

He's now addressed as Senator Strange.

- They killed the lottery by indicting Siegelman,

they got Siegelman put in prison, the Choctaw Indians,

and they put this formula together

and it was to make money through political power.

As Tom Jones said in the infamous movie

in his song What's New Pussycat, it is there.

- [Narrator] Thanks to Eric Holder,

Karl Rove has never been questioned under oath

regarding the attorney firings,

the missing RNC emails, or the Siegelman case

and has never publicly denied his role

in any of the scandals.

However, he was asked about his involvement

in the Siegelman by George Stephanopoulos.

- To be clear, you did not contact

the Justice Department about this case?

- I read about, I'm gonna simply say what I said before,

which is I found about Don Siegelman's investigation

and indictment by reading about it in the newspaper.

- [George] But that's not a denial.

- I've, you know...

(dramatic music)