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Frankly I had not paid much attention to Alaska Senator Ted Stevens giving up his senate seat due to his conviction on seven counts of making false statements on Senate ethics forms to hide hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and work on his Alaska home from an oilfield contractor at the center of a corruption investigation in the state. If figured just another lying politician.

All along Stevens claimed his innocence (what’s new?) but now, even though convicted by a jury of the charges, he is going to beat the charges because of corruption by the prosecution. According to a former federal prosecutor, “This was, in essence, a framing of a senator. That doesn’t mean he’s pure as the driven snow, but they were going to convict him no matter what. They changed the balance of power in the United States Senate. That ought to be a crime.”

First I will present a reasonably unbiased review of the situation and then an email Alert sent out by Richard Viguerie of ConservativeQ.com. It is certainly food for thought! If we have federal prosecutors ‘out to get’ elected officials for political reasons, we are definitely in a world of hurt as a republic! The really troublesome thing is that this isn’t the first time for the, ‘get the politician’, to occur!

From google.com by Devlin Barrett dated 04/04/2009 entitled “Justice Dept under microscope after Stevens trial“:

The bungled trial of former GOP Sen. Ted Stevens tainted more than just the Justice Department. It probably tipped the balance of a close election, and the fallout from that is far from over.

Stevens, the 85-year-old patriarch of Alaska politics, is headed to court Tuesday, when a judge is expected to grant Attorney General Eric Holder’s request to dismiss the case and toss out Stevens’ conviction.

Within the department, the Stevens case could have far-ranging implications. The prosecution team, including the top two officials in the public integrity section, faces an internal investigation.

The FBI has 2,500 pending corruption investigations across the country, and whether the targets are lawmakers or suspected crooked government inspectors, prosecutors may be more cautious in bringing charges after the Stevens debacle.

A jury convicted Stevens of lying about gifts and home renovations provided by an Alaska businessman.

Stevens beat the charges, but lost his job. In that, he’s not alone.

In Puerto Rico last year, prosecutors filed a new indictment against Democratic Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila three months before the election. He lost the race, but a jury found him not guilty of all charges.

The prosecution “certainly smacked of political motivation,” argued Acevedo’s lawyer, Thomas Green.

Such accusations are not new from defense lawyers in corruption cases. But they have far more bite when the politicians charged ultimately win in court after having lost their careers.

In Wisconsin in 2006, prosecutors indicted a little-known state worker for allegedly helping contributors to Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle get a contract. The worker, Georgia Thompson, was sentenced to prison two months before the election.

After the election — which Doyle won — an appeals court not only overturned her conviction, but ordered her immediately freed from prison. One appeals court judge described the evidence against Thompson as “beyond thin.”

During the Bush administration, Democrats claimed the conviction of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman was pushed by politically minded Republicans.

Siegelman, who was sent to prison in 2007 for bribery and corruption, was freed last year on bond. An appeals court recently dismissed some, but not all the charges and ordered him resentenced. His lawyer is asking the attorney general to toss out the case entirely, just like in the Stevens case.

Holder, a former corruption prosecutor, is also facing calls to overhaul the public integrity section.

In announcing his decision on Stevens, he said the department “must always ensure that any case in which it is involved is handled fairly and consistent with its commitment to justice.”

Joseph diGenova, a former federal prosecutor, said federal prosecutors suffer from “a lack of supervision.”

“I’m a great fan of prosecutors, but the department and the U.S. attorneys offices in my opinion have been out of control,” diGenova said.

In Stevens’ case, Holder decided to pull the plug after prosecutors withheld notes of an interview with a crucial witness. The notes would have contradicted damaging testimony the witness gave against Stevens.

To diGenova, it was one of the worst examples of prosecutors caring more about winning a case than finding justice, and further proof of what he called incredible arrogance of many lawyers in the department.

“This was, in essence, a framing of a senator. That doesn’t mean he’s pure as the driven snow, but they were going to convict him no matter what,” the lawyer said. “They changed the balance of power in the United States Senate. That ought to be a crime.”

Stevens was the longest-serving Republican in Senate history. A week before the 2008 election, a jury found him guilty on seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a wealthy oil contractor.

After the conviction, Stevens lost to Democrat Mark Begich by fewer than 4,000 votes. Begich has rejected calls from Alaska Republicans, including Gov. Sarah Palin, for him to resign in order to have a new election for the seat.

When he took the job of attorney general, Holder pledged to remove any political considerations from the department’s work after a slew of investigations into alleged partisan meddling during the Bush years.

Those accusations were initially driven by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006, and culminated with the ouster of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.

Yet it was the Republican administration that filed the case against the Republican Stevens, and it was their Democratic successors who dropped it.

Now this via email from Richard Viguerie of ConservativeHQ.com entitled ““Axis of Graft” must not be allowed to hold onto stolen Alaska Senate seat”:

The theft of the 2008 U.S. Senate election in Alaska by corrupt Justice Department bureaucrats “must not be allowed to stand,” Richard A. Viguerie said.

“The people of Alaska, and all Americans, must rise up and demand that Mark Begich resign,” said Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com. “If corruption this blatant, with consequences this far-reaching, is allowed to succeed, it will bring our democracy itself into disrepute.”

Said Viguerie, “Those who corruptly prosecuted this case must be prosecuted aggressively and forced to reveal the names of anyone they conspired with.”

Viguerie is a longtime critic of Ted Stevens, who lost to Begich by fewer than 4,000 votes eight days after Stevens was fraudulently convicted.

“I’m no fan of Ted Stevens,” Viguerie said. “But I’m a big fan of democracy, and this isn’t it.

“By giving Democrats a critical extra seat in the Senate, the theft of the Alaska election helped pass the administration’s program of bailouts and budget-busting ‘stimulus.’ Soon, that seat may make the difference in imposing health care rationing. On one policy after another, for generations to come, Americans will suffer the consequences of this conspiracy to undermine our very system of government.”

Viguerie noted that “the Axis of Graft – the alliance between leftwing Democratic politicians and corrupt bureaucrats and special interests – has grown increasingly powerful.

“From the falsification of data on climate change, to the plan to count nonexistent people in the Census, to acquiescence in ACORN-style voter fraud, to the refusal to pursue the Fannie Mae crowd, corrupt elements in the bureaucracy have rigged the system to promote the agenda of the Left.”

Viguerie added, “Given this administration’s deep roots in Chicago corruption, we can expect more of the same, unless and until people demand honest government for a change.”

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Gary Shumway is the author of Winging Through America and SCUBA Scoop.