Ali Alexander, with a history of attacking Alabama progressives, faces accusations of seeking "di-k pics" from teen boys, raising questions re: criminal charges

Donald Trump and Ali Alexander

 

Ali Alexander, who organized the Stop the Steal rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, has been accused of soliciting lewd photographs from teen boys. The allegations stem from an intramural feud with fellow right-winger Milo Yiannopoulos, who brought Alexander's activities to public attention, according to a report at The Daily Dot.

Alexander acknowledged some of the allegations against him were true, apologized for them, and indicated he plans to step away from public life, The Daily Dot reports. Alexander also claimed he had done nothing unlawful, but it remains to be seen if law-enforcement will agree with that.

With longstanding ties to Alabama, partly because of his alliance with Montgomery lawyer Baron Coleman and reported connections to the hideously corrupt Alabama State Bar, Alexander has made it a practice to attack and threaten progressive voices in the state, including retired attorney/activist Dana Jill Simpson and  yours truly here at Legal Schnauzer. Alexander also has ties to GOP operative Karl Rove, who long has engaged in Alabama politics, partly through Montgomery's Capell Howard law firm, which Rove reportedly considers his "home base" in the state.

We have addressed Alexander's ties to Republican money men and high rollers, including Rove and the late Foster Friess -- not to mention Donald Trump. For good measure, we provided details on Alexander's sketchy background. In short, Alexander has had brushes with the law and gay-related scandals before From an August 2018 post: 

An endorsement from Donald Trump was not enough to keep a billionaire backer of conservative causes from losing in Tuesday's Republican primary for governor of Wyoming. On a national level, the story suggests Trump's coattails might have grown flimsy. Closer to home, the story resonates because a growing body of evidence suggests the moneyed candidate in question -- perhaps unknowingly -- has contributed to corruption in Alabama's "justice system."

Foster Friess -- a financial backer of Karl Rove's Crossroads America, Rick Santorum's political campaigns, and the Daily Caller Web site -- finished second to state treasurer Mark Gordon, who will face Democrat Mary Throne in November's general election.

How has Friess possibly contributed to corruption in Alabama? That would be through the National Bloggers Club (NBC), an umbrella group for mostly obscure right-wing bloggers. Ali Akbar, a felon who went on a six-year spree of crime and fraud, somehow became head of the NBC -- and that largely explains Friess' unsavory impact on Alabama's already toxic political and legal environment.

How did Akbar, with multiple criminal convictions and a documented taste for seeking gay sex via the Grindr geosocial networking app, come to represent those hallowed GOP family values?  Perhaps Foster Friess asks himself that question from time to time, as he counts his billions. (Note: Akbar seems to be in the process of changing his name to Ali (Akbar) Alexander. That might be a wise move for a convicted felon and Grinder devotee, who has expressed a desire to run for public office.)

How did Alexander/Akbar come to target Simpson and me? It's a  peculiar, roundabout story, but this explains it - sort of: 

For now, our interest is in Akbar's apparent connections to two attacks on Alabama progressives:

(1) My kidnapping and five-month incarceration in 2013-14 for the "crime" of  blogging about mostly GOP-related corruption in Alabama's legal and political arenas;

(2) False allegations of misconduct (related mostly to a serious neck injury) against whistle blower, opposition researcher, and retired attorney Dana Jill Simpson, which caused her to be placed on inactive/disability status with the Alabama State Bar.

What makes Akbar (and perhaps the NBC) a suspect in these two instances. We are still researching the specifics, but we know this much:

(1) Akbar threatened Simpson, bragging online that he was going to come to Alabama, "dine with the Governor and then spend the afternoon cashing in favors with Alabama lawyers."

(2) Akbar was pissed at Simpson because she had written a letter to Obama campaign counsel Robert Bauer, in which she revealed Akbar's homosexual relationship with GOP guru Karl Rove.

(3) Akbar was pissed at me for reporting on the Simpson letter, and threatened a baseless lawsuit, via a Montgomery attorney and radio host named Baron Coleman.

My interactions with Alexander/Akbar could be filed under RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act). RICO, of course, is a major theme in our reporting on the long-running accounting-fraud scheme at Southern Company and its affiliates. In fact, we raised the possibility that Birmingham-area attorney Burt Newsome and his wife, Regina, might have a RICO cause of action after coming under attack in a series of ugly events. From an August 2018 post on that subject, which leads to a discussion of my odd encounter with Ali Alexander on RICO matters:

The wife of Birmingham attorney Burt Newsome recently was the victim of vandalism and theft from her vehicle while it was parked at a fitness center in Vestavia Hills, according to  a report at banbalch.com.

Regina Galiulina Newsome apparently was targeted while at Lifetime Fitness for a tennis lesson, according to her Facebook page. The incident, on July 30, came nine days after former Balch Bingham partner Joel Gilbert was convicted of bribery in the North Birmingham Superfund scandal. It also came after reports of a possible RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) lawsuit related to Balch's efforts to essentially steal Burt Newsome's lucrative collections practice and ruin his law business.

Was Regina Newsome targeted in an effort to intimidate her husband into forgoing a RICO lawsuit that could expose some prominent political figures -- including former U.S. Senators Jeff Sessions (now Trump attorney general) and Luther Strange, plus Strange's one-time  campaign manager, Jessica Medeiros Garrison?  . . . 

What happened in the Regina Newsome vandalism/theft case? It's peculiar on several levels, as banbalch.com reports:

With a RICO civil suit on the horizon and the conviction of Balch and Bingham equity partner Joel I. Gilbert on six federal counts, maybe it was time to take a look at the matter again with fresh eyes.

Who knows.

Then yesterday, two thugs targeted the wife of Burt Newsome who had gone to her gym. Video surveillance of the incident shows the suspects driving around allegedly specifically looking for Newsome’s vehicle.

After seeing the actions by the thugs, law enforcement’s first question to Mrs. Newsome was, “Do you have any enemies?” . . .

Notice the reference above to a looming RICO case. Is that the reason Regina Newsome was targeted? Based on personal experience, I'd say the answer is yes. Someone concocted a scheme in fall 2013 that made it look like I was pushing for a RICO lawsuit, on behalf of progressive activist Brett Kimberlin, against the right-wing National Bloggers Club, led by GOP and Karl Rove-affiliated felon Ali (Akbar) Alexander. It all grew from comments left at the Web site Breitbart Unmasked, by someone calling himself "RogerS."  Conventional wisdom in right-wing circles was that I was "RogerS," and this was just days before my "arrest for blogging." In fact, I was not RogerS, and I had no involvement in the Kimberlin matter.

What would a story about GOP corruption be without a mention of the "Orange Man" himself. This comes from a post dated Jan. 6, 2001 (of all days):

The "Stop the Steal" protest set for today in Washington, D.C., is more or less the brainchild of two right-wing agitators with ties to Alabama,, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). Reports Michael Edison Hayden at SPLC's Hatewatch:

A law firm associated with activists on the far-right fringe registered the Limited Liability Company (LLC) Stop the Steal in Montgomery, Alabama, in November, state records show. “Stop the Steal” is the name of a nationwide protest movement focused on overturning President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election based upon unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

George Coleman of the law firm Baron Coleman registered the Stop the Steal LLC in Montgomery on Nov. 13. Far-right activist Ali (Akbar) Alexander, 35, the self-described “National Organizer” for the Stop the Steal, told Hatewatch over text that Baron Coleman represents him. Alexander promoted Stop the Steal events to Twitter soon after it became apparent that Trump lost the 2020 election and has done so persistently ever since. Baron Coleman registered the LLC one day before protesters associated with Ali’s Stop the Steal movement descended on Washington, D.C. The event gave way to violent clashes between Stop the Steal supporters and counterprotesters.

How is this for irony and impeccable timing? The Coleman-Alexander rally, designed to deprive Joe Biden of an electoral victory that -- by all credible accounts -- he earned fair and square, comes three days after news broke of Donald Trump's phone call to the Georgia secretary of state showing that Trump really is trying to steal the election. 

Do Coleman, Akbar, and their acolytes care about, or even recognize, the irony of such a situation? Probably not. Writes Hayden:

Hatewatch has so far been unable to determine what the LLC does, but it borrows from a brand name first associated with Roger Stone Jr. A former adviser to Donald Trump and a convicted felon, Stone first launched Stop the Steal during the 2016 election as a group of poll watchers tasked with disputing Democratic votes in urban, multiracial areas. Like the current iteration of Stop the Steal, Stone gathered the group together under the auspices of fighting voter fraud, as Hatewatch has reported. Hatewatch reached out to Stone by phone and email, but he did not respond.

Baron Coleman also represents Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes in his defamation lawsuit against Southern Poverty Law Center, which is based upon its designation of them as a hate group. Alexander and lawyers for Baron Coleman appeared with McInnes outside the center’s headquarters in Montgomery on Feb. 4, 2019, when he announced that suit. Alexander told Hatewatch over text that Baron Coleman advised him in responding to Hatewatch’s request for comment.

“[Baron Coleman] advised me to tell you not to contact me while I’m representing a client suing y’all. Conflict of interest. Thanks!” Alexander wrote.

Alexander does not appear to be an attorney, so it is unclear what he meant by representing. Alexander is a far-right operative linked to a number of political smear campaigns and is known for posting disinformation to Twitter. One example of that behavior includes a sustained campaign he created promoting the unsubstantiated claim that Biden is “sick” and suffers from some form of otherwise unreported, degenerative illness. Mother Jones reported that Alexander is a convicted felon. Hatewatch obtained records showing Alexander entered a guilty plea on charges of “debit card abuse” in Tarrant County, Texas, in April 2008. He went by the name “Ali Akbar” at that time. . . .

As for Roger Stone, he seems to be creeping along the edges of the "Stop the Steal" orbit:

Stone appeared with Alexander in the trailer of an apparent film about Stop the Steal activism, which was published to Twitter on Dec. 9. The trailer also featured an appearance by white nationalist live-streamer Nick Fuentes and anti-immigrant pundit and VDARE contributor Michelle Malkin, among other activists who are promoting the falsehood that Trump won the 2020 election. Proud Boys have also turned up at Alexander’s events. At a Stop the Steal-linked event on Dec. 12, members of the hate group reportedly took down two Black Lives Matter banners from two historic Black churches in Washington, D.C., and destroyed them. The Washington Post reported that police were investigating the incidents on hate crime charges.

As you can tell, Ali Alexander has tentacles in a lot of right-wing pies. For now, our No. 1 question about what Alexander himself calls a "scandal": Could he face criminal charges for his apparently admitted solicitation of under-aged boys? 

News reports indicate Alexander currently lives in Texas, so it appears Texas law would govern any action prosecutors might take. This is from an article about Texas' online solicitation law:

The current Texas law defines the offense of Online Solicitation of a Minor in Penal Code Section §33.021 as follows:¹

(b) A person who is 17 years of age or older commits an offense if, with the intent to commit an offense listed in Article 62.001(5)(A), (B), or (K), Code of Criminal Procedure, the person, over the Internet, by electronic mail or text message or other electronic message service or system, or through a commercial online service, intentionally:

(1) communicates in a sexually explicit manner with a minor; or

(2) distributes sexually explicit material to a minor.

Alternatively, under subsection (c):

(c) A person commits an offense if the person, over the Internet, by electronic mail or text message or other electronic message service or system, or through a commercial online service, knowingly solicits a minor to meet another person, including the actor, with the intent that the minor will engage in sexual contact, sexual intercourse, or deviate sexual intercourse with the actor or another person.

Under this law, there are two separate and specific ways of being charged with Online Solicitation of a Minor. First, sending sexual explicit messages to a minor is an offense under Section (b). Second, soliciting a minor to engage in sexual behavior is an offense under Section (c).

Someone under the age of 17 cannot be convicted under Section (b) of this statute. However, anyone, including someone under 17, can be convicted of Online Solicitation of a Minor if they solicit (which means to ask, demand, or try to convince) a minor to engage in some sort of sexual contact under Section (b). However, there is a defense available, discussed in more detail below, that provides a safety net defense to someone who is not more than 3 years older than the minor and the minor consented.

Subsection (b) was recently amended, effective September 1, 2015, in Senate Bill 344, after the Court of Criminal Appeals determined that the law was unconstitutional. As it is currently written, in order for the messages to be a criminal violation under this statute, the person must have intent to commit any of the offenses listed in Article 62.001(5)(A), (B), or (K). Those offenses are:

• Continuous sexual abuse of young child or children (Penal Code Section 21.02)
• Indecency with a child (Penal Code Section 21.11)
• Sexual assault (Penal Code Section 22.011)
• Aggravated sexual assault (Penal Code Section 22.021)
• Prohibited sexual conduct (Penal Code Section 25.02)
• Compelling prostitution (Penal Code Section 43.05)
• Sexual performance by a child (Penal Code Section 43.25)
• Possession or promotion of child pornography (Penal Code Section 43.26)
• Trafficking of Persons (Section 20A.02(a)(3), (4), (7), or (8))

Texas law is convoluted, and much still is not known about Alexander's interactions with under-aged boys. But the story is picking up steam online, so it seems likely that a prosecutor will at least seek to investigate. 

What about possible punishment for individual convicted of this offense in Texas?

Online solicitation of a minor (a person under age 17) is a 3rd-degree felony in Texas. Punishment upon conviction is a state prison sentence of 2 to 10 years and a fine of $10,000. Upon release, the person also must register as a sex offender.

Does Doug Jones' background include unpleasantness that could turn his confirmation process into a Clarence Thomas/Brett Kavanaugh slugfest?

 

Doug Jones

Part Two

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) is seen by many as the most confirmable of Joe Biden's possible nominees for U.S. attorney general. But the D.C.-based publisher of the Justice Integrity Project (JIP) hints that a thorough investigation of Jones' past might unearth ugliness that could turn his confirmation process into a lugfest.

Journalist-lawyer-author Andrew Kreig  suggests Jones' background might include some unpleasantness that could make his confirmation more difficult than some might imagine:

If any senators from either party dared dig beyond the surface? A confirmation proceeding could well become more explosive than any other in modern times, making the Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh court confirmations seem tame by contrast, and might well tarnish top figures in the Obama-Biden administration for failures to clean up what are reliably reported as shocking levels of official corruption in Alabama in recent years. 

It took many years until nearly the present even for [Tommy] Gallion and [Don] Siegelman to publish 2020 books that penetrate the inherent secrecy of the Justice Department in such sensitive matters.

So, it is no surprise or embarrassment that one of the major Washington Post stories, as of this writing, Biden narrows attorney general list, portrayed Jones as perhaps the most readily confirmable of attorney general candidates because of perceptions that he is a moderate who gets along with most Republicans.

Read further for a deeper view.

Alabama has been riddled with corruption since at least the mid 1990s -- for much of Doug Jones' professional life. And yet, the junior U.S. senator has done precious little to improve the situation, Kreig reports. In essence, Kreig writes, Jones saw the Alabama swamp and dove right in, splashing around with the swamp rats. That hardly seems to make him the kind of rock-ribbed reformer that likely will be needed for justice-related positions in the post-Trump era. That, Kreig writes, would make Jones a particularly poor choice as Joe Biden's nominee to be U.S. attorney general. 

Here is more from a post dated 12/14/20 at the JIP -- under the headline "Sen. Doug Jones As ‘Confirmable’ Biden AG? Bad Idea!". Kreig notes that some Alabamans who have worked closely with Jones do not speak highly of him. That includes Montgomery lawyer Tommy Gallion. Writes Kreig:

Indeed, one of his former law partners, the prominent Alabama attorney Thomas T. Gallion III, published a book this year surveying nearly seven decades of official corruption in the state — and names Jones as part of a "Cabal" working with powerful Republicans in moneymaking schemes that flagrantly violate the law, legal ethics and other  core values of justice and democracy.

The book, Shadow Government, Southern Style: A Saga of Political Corruption From DC to Dixie, was first published in May by Gallion, a partner in the Montgomery firm Haskell Slaughter. Among other posts, he has been County Attorney for Montgomery County (encompassing the state capital) since 1985.

Gallion identifies as a Republican. But his book is a non-partisan slam at those whom he regards as corrupt, including Jeff Sessions, President Trump's first Attorney General after decades as Republican senator and prosecutor in Alabama. Other targets of Gallion include the recent two-term Republican Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (2003-2011), and longtime Bush Family political aide Karl Rove, a White House senior advisor to President George W. Bush.

Regarding Jones (who failed to respond to our invitation this week to comment for this column), Gallion drew on his extensive study of the senator's career to pose near the end of his book a page-long series of questions that he challenged Jones to answer under oath.

Mentioning such allegations does not mean they are true, of course. Nothing like Gallion's allegations have surfaced in national reporting about Jones's unsuccessful campaign for Senate re-election this fall or regarding the Biden-Harris Transition Team appointment process to pick an Attorney General.

That lack of national coverage for allegations against Jones continues as of this writing. That's so, at least for now, even though the Gallion book is receiving good reader reviews and it reports about legal skullduggery of a kind often suspected in Alabama. That's a state where one-party domination creates lucrative opportunities for those close to office-holders and thwarts checks-and-balances, as evidenced by the ouster of the state's governor and House speaker for unrelated scandals in recent years.

More generally, Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation, published in June by former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, covers much of the same ground as the Gallion book.

Siegelman, a Jones client and a Democrat who served from 1999 until the Republican Riley took office in 2003, was imprisoned on corruption charges in 2007 in what became a notorious case worldwide because of allegations supported by whistle blowers and legal scholars that he and others had been framed for political reasons.

Kreig writes that Jones' power base has been built on a form of "go-along-to-get along careerism":

At first impression, the moderate and sometimes pro-Trump Jones voting record in the Senate confers confirmable status, especially coupled with Jones's former work as a Judiciary Committee Senate staffer.

But some in the Democratic base are already complaining about Jones as too moderate. That could escalate with wider recognition that he tilts to “go-along-to-get-along” careerism. It hardly helps that he is a white man and that reform pressures are coming most heavily from minorities and civil rights groups, including the NAACP.

Most relevant here is that Jones's connections failed to save his client in one of his biggest legal cases, aside from his duly-praised successes in leading a 1990s civil rights federal prosecution of 1960s Alabama church bombing murderers.

This case, the Bush Administration prosecution of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, became a worldwide human rights scandal. A seemingly separate civil lawsuit enriched Jones with legal fees, helping make it possible for him to secure the support enabling his ongoing leadership in the fractured, cash-strapped and largely ineffective Alabama Democratic Party.

Jones thus ascended in 2017 to the Senate seat, which he lost in November’s elections. He is now positioning himself as a front runner for the AG post.

 

 Does Jones merit front-runner status? No, says Kreig:

Vulnerabilities of Jones are well-documented and are likely to embarrass the Biden team if he is nominated.

That’s especially so because the Jones problems illustrate the concerns that Black and Hispanic criminal justice reformers are voicing already (albeit without the specifics below) about a need for a hard-hitting expert voice helming the Justice Department.

My conclusions endorsing those criticisms of Jones are based on more than a decade of in-depth investigation by the non-partisan Justice Integrity Project of mind-boggling abuses in Alabama where Jones built his career with only occasional demonstrations of extraordinary commitment to rectifying the state's massive official corruption. . . . 

What could all of this mean for Joe Biden's presidency? Writes Kreig:

Before providing a Jones rebuttal to these allegations of defense shortcomings, let’s sketch some of the implications for the incoming Biden-Harris administration.

For one thing, the Obama-Biden Justice Department remained oblivious at best to the allegations and evidence, and at worst aggressively assisted the cover-up for reasons hard to explain, except at best a “don’t rock the boat” mentality.

Thus, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder fired Justice Department paralegal Tamarah Grimes in 2009 when she stepped forward to document what Grimes regarded as outrageous conduct by Leura Canary in supervising Siegelman’s prosecution and specific abuses on a near-daily basis. The conduct included vast spending at the Air Force base, according to Grimes, even though Canary supposedly recused herself. Siegelman, Scrushy and their attorneys have never been able to obtain the paperwork on Canary’s supposed “recusal” despite innumerable requests dating back to their trials.

For another thing, the Obama Justice Department vigorously resisted the appeals of Siegelman and Scrushy, just as it did for other obvious victims of the Bush-Rove “U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal” of 2006, whereby up to nine of the nation’s presidentially appointed U.S. attorneys were fired for failing to bring dubious cases and many others were retained under pressure to indict Democrats regarded as having promising futures.

Siegelman, the only politician in Alabama history to win election to all four of the state’s top political offices, had once been regarded as a future presidential contender, in part because his popularity bridged Black and white constituencies.

Remarkably, the Obama-Biden administration kept Alabama’s Leura Canary in her presidential appointed Justice Department post for more than two years after Obama took office, and long after the scandals broke on the 2008 CBS 60 Minutes broadcast and otherwise.

Then the new Democratic administration replaced her as U.S. attorney (at the suggestion of Alabama’s two Republican senators) with George Beck, the former Nick Bailey attorney who was thus in a perfect position to maintain a cover-up of official misconduct through the end of the Obama-Biden administration.

Before Beck’s confirmation, our Justice Integrity Project published a four-part series documenting why the U.S. Senate should examine Beck’s track record and deny his confirmation. Beck, at age 62 was taking a job normally awarded to a younger attorney, thereby raising questions why he wanted it.

That series had no discernible impact on a self-absorbed Senate and Obama-Biden administration. But it did serve to provide the Bailey-supporting critic Luther "Stan" Pate with a forum to describe Beck as the worst, most despicable attorney he had ever observed because of his failure to protect his client. Beck, like judge Mark Fuller, declined comment. Fuller would go on to be forced to resign from the federal bench after his arrest for beating his second wife, who had been his court clerk during the Siegelman-Scrushy trial -- yet another curiosity in a trial marred by a host of other irregularities.

The series also enabled Jones to defend his conduct at length, via an email reprinted here:

George is eminently qualified to be US Attorney. He is a veteran lawyer who is respected by judges and lawyers on both sides of the aisle. He will be fair and balanced, and not driven by any political agenda, which is especially important for that particular U.S. Attorney position.

This is not a lifetime appointment. So, I am not concerned at all about his age. I think that office needs a seasoned lawyer with a steady hand regardless of age, and he certainly fits that bill.

With regard to his representation about Nick [Bailey], it is not a question whether he might be conflicted. He will be conflicted from any involvement in the case. I think that the real question will be whether it causes the entire office, including the Assistant U.S. Attorneys who prosecuted the case, to also be recused. A strong argument can be made that this case is so controversial that the entire office should be recused, and either another U.S. attorney appointed to oversee the case or someone out of Main Justice. That's a decision to be made by the hierarchy at DOJ.

Finally, all I can say about any questions that have after the fact been raised regarding my representation of Gov. Siegelman while also working on a civil matter against Richard Scrushy is that Don was well aware of the civil case and it was never an issue with us and that is all that matters to me. Moreover, as you know I did not represent him at trial due to a trial conflict with another matter and it is the trial where the rubber meets the road with regard to such issues. Scrushy was ultimately dismissed from our case without any settlement or judgment against him.

Any reporter, as I was throughout the early part of my career before I became a lawyer and federal judge’s clerk, appreciates the willingness of a news subject to provide comment in response to questions on highly sensitive matters that Jones, among others, was in a position to ferret out and, if he so desired, protest.

In fairness, the Jones remarks above show that he is confident and facile in his explanations, qualities that have served him very well, as indicated by such stories as the Washington Post report on Dec. 12 suggesting that he had emerged as the leading candidate for the post even compared to former Obama-Biden Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, whose management and relevant leadership is far more recent than the regional office work of Jones during the 1990s.

Thus far, Jones has been able to leverage his team’s 1990s prosecution of Alabama church-bombing racists who murdered four schoolgirls in 1964. That has provided Jones with an image of civil rights advocacy cited in most news profiles of him that counters the complaints of Black civil rights leaders who are pressuring Biden for a Black attorney general.

But true civil rights advocacy should not focus simply on identity politics and high-profile jobs for Blacks and other minorities. Instead, the Justice Department, courts and prisons need an expert, passionate and non-partisan recommitment to human rights and justice.

The abuses of the Siegelman-Scrushy case were readily apparent to Republicans like Grant Wood and Stan Pate, as well as a host of other observers. In contrast, after Eric Holder’s retirement from leading the Justice Department I asked him about the Siegelman case following a speech he delivered at the Center for American Progress. He told me as we walked together after the lecture toward his law office he was not familiar with the Siegelman case.

Bottom line: Doug Jones, well-connected as he might be to his current Senate colleagues, has lived a privileged career, buttressed with some major successes but also not buttressed with the extraordinary qualities needed for these times. There are many posts that a former senator and prosecutor can pursue with dignity but supervising the Justice Department at this time is not one of them.

And if Joe Biden and his new administration fail to see why his former staffer Jones fails this test in such a notorious case as Siegelman’s, which is by no means unique considering the untold tales elsewhere in the legal system, that failure is all the more personal to the incoming president and his party because they would have knowingly picked image over substance.

The stakes are high. And, post-Trump, the public is watching.

Does Doug Jones' past suggest his future should include a role as U.S. attorney general? Nope, says journalist-lawyer-author Andrew Kreig

Doug Jones

 

Part One

Is U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) cut from the cloth that indicates he has the right stuff to be U.S. attorney general. In a post dated 12/14/20 at the Justice Integrity Project -- under the headline "Sen. Doug Jones As ‘Confirmable’ Biden AG? Bad Idea!"-- Andrew Kreig answers with a firm no. Writes Kreig -- a journalist, lawyer, and author:

Alabama’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Doug Jones has been reported recently as at the forefront of President-elect Joe Biden’s prospects to lead the Justice Department as Attorney General.

That’s in part because Jones has served as a presidentially appointed federal prosecutor, holds a longtime relationship with Biden — and also is considered more readily “confirmable” by Senate Republicans than other top options.

A closer look at the senator’s career suggests that these supposed strengths do not meet the requirements of the job  — and are likely to blow up into controversy.

At first impression, the moderate and sometimes pro-Trump Jones voting record in the Senate confers confirmable status, especially coupled with Jones's former work as a Judiciary Committee Senate staffer.

But some in the Democratic base are already complaining about Jones as too moderate. That could escalate with wider recognition that he tilts to “go-along-to-get-along” careerism. It hardly helps that he is a white man and that reform pressures are coming most heavily from minorities and civil rights groups, including the NAACP.

Most relevant here is that Jones's connections failed to save his client in one of his biggest legal cases, aside from his duly-praised successes in leading a 1990s civil rights federal prosecution of 1960s Alabama church bombing murderers.

This case, the Bush Administration prosecution of Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, became a worldwide human rights scandal. Another related matter enriched Jones, helping make it possible for him to secure the support enabling his ongoing leadership in the fractured, cash-strapped and largely ineffective Alabama Democratic Party.

Jones thus ascended in 2017 to the Senate seat, which he lost in November’s elections. He is now positioning himself as a frontrunner for the AG post.

What about Jones' weaknesses? Kreig has studied them for years:

My conclusions endorsing those criticisms of Jones are based on more than a decade of in-depth investigation by the non-partisan Justice Integrity Project of mind-boggling abuses in Alabama where Jones built his career with only occasional demonstrations of extraordinary commitment to rectifying the state's massive official corruption.

I first learned of these abuses in 2007 from an Alabama attorney, Dana Jill Simpson,. She was a longtime Republican political operative who became a whistleblower about a nationwide plot to use the Justice Department and scandal opposition research dossiers to destroy the careers of selected targets for political purposes.

Such allegations were so prevalent and concerning after the so-called “U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal” of 2007 that, following my career in business law and trade association work in Washington, I began a reporting fellowship with Brandeis University beginning in 2009 to research the scandal. The focus was on  the harms to communities where prosecutors undertook abusive methods.

The special danger for the Biden-Harris administration going forward is that Jones was close enough to such activities in relevant times, although not personally implicated, that his Justice Department could be regarded as part of a pattern of cover-up that included the Obama-Biden administration and less as a reformer of Trump-era abuses.

These decade-old issues remain far off the Beltway radar screen, as indicated by media coverage of the Biden Transition and the rosy prospects for Jones to advance to the top Justice Department post, as indicated by recent Washington Post stories.

That's partly because Alabama politics and related civic life is so dominated by the Republican Party and media. One commentator, communications lawyer, commentator and law professor Scott Horton, has described both the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Alabama's media, for example, as part of the overall problem in both the Alabama cases and nationally. Digging beneath the surface takes more effort than national parties or media are able to provide. Rectifying that is the purpose of this column.

But perhaps also the Biden transition is simply floating names, hoping to “crowd source” research efforts before committing a nomination. Having participated as a volunteer for high-level operatives in previous presidential campaign and transition research, I’ll provide relevant background for others to assess.

This column contains an unusual feature: A detailed rebuttal near the end by Jones against the central allegations. This kind of response is highly unlikely for actual nominees before a hearing.

What about details of the Jones track record? Kreig provides them:

Doug Jones is an Alabama native, born in 1954. He began his professional career after law school working as a staff counsel for U.S. Senator Howell Heflin, an Alabama Democrat, before Jones became an assistant U.S. attorney in Alabama from 1980 to 1984.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton to become U.S. attorney for Alabama’s Birmingham-based district, his most prominent cases were the successful prosecution of two Ku Klux Klan members for a 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four African-American girls and the indictment of domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph, a white supremacist.

Jones, moving to private practice at the conclusion of Clinton's presidency in 2001, represented clients who included former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (1999-2003), a Democrat whom Republicans prosecuted in two highly dubious federal prosecutions in 2004 and 2006 on corruption charges. Jones did not represent Siegelman in the trial stage of either case, and has told us that trials "are where the rubber meets the road" in cases.

In 2007, the 2006 convictions resulted in an 88-month prison sentences for Siegelman and his co-defendant in the second case, Republican businessman Richard Scrushy. Acting as a lead co-counsel, Jones had also been representing with Siegelman's approval plaintiff investors in a civil fraud class action suit against Scrushy's company, HealthSouth, that resulted in a $455 million settlement in 2006 of a $2.7 billiion accounting fraud that almost bankrupted HealthSouth.

Scrushy was acquitted of criminal wrongdoing involving those frauds, which served largely as a backdrop and not a key element for his corruption trial with Siegelman. The charges centered on prosecution claims that Scrushy made a $250,000 donation in 1999 to the Alabama Education Foundation (which Siegelman had founded) in order for Scrushy to remain on governor-appointed Certificate of Need regulatory board overseeing hospitals.

Trial and conviction on those bribery and extortion charges prompted years of popular outcry in appeals, petitions and the media over what appeared to many as serious human rights violations. Scrushy and Siegelman asserted, for example, that Scrushy didn't even want to remain on the regulatory board and that the chief prosecution witness, Nick Bailey, perjured himself in suggesting otherwise.

The trial irregularities were even more striking to civil rights experts, in a sense, because the defendants were white men, who were well-positioned and well-financed for defense counsel. Yet even their millions of dollars in defense spending failed to find relief for highly disputable convictions affirmed up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Why the disputes? Because, among other reasons, trial evidence failed to show a “quid pro quo,” or explicit agreement, that Scrushy’s donation to the Alabama Education Foundation, a non-profit advocating better funding for the state’s K-12 public schools, was in return for Siegelman’s reappointment of Scrushy to the regulatory board. Scrushy, a Republican, had served under three previous governors, all Republicans whose campaigns Scrushy had financially supported with massive donations. But Scrushy resigned from the board at the time of Siegelman's election and Siegelman has always said that it was he who wanted the businessman on the board because of his perceived stature in 1999, and not Scrushy's own desire to serve as a volunteer on a relatively low-level board.

Why does the Siegelman-Scrushy case still stand out as an example of prosecutorial overreach?

The Siegelman-Scrushy imprisonment stands in stark contrast to what has long been standard practice at the local, state and federal level whereby political donors receive appointments (obtain ambassadorships in return for multimillion dollar contributions) and favorable federal contracts and policy consideration on a routine basis, according to critics of the Alabama prosecution.

These critics include former Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, a Republican who was also co-chair that year of GOP nominee John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. That year, Woods spoke out to a nationwide audience on CBS “60 Minutes” (Did Ex-Alabama Governor Get A Raw Deal? Scott Pelley, Feb. 21, 2008.60 Minutes Reports On Bribery Conviction Of Don Siegelman In A Case Criticized by Democrats And Republicans.)

"I haven't seen a case with this many red flags on it that pointed towards a real injustice being done," Woods said as he led, in addition to his other duties, an unprecedent effort that grew to 113 former state attorneys general (the chief law enforcers in more than 40 states) who asked Congress and the Supreme Court to investigate the case.

"I personally believe that what happened here is that they targeted Don Siegelman because they could not beat him fair and square. This was a Republican state and he was the one Democrat they could never get rid of," Woods says.

The Jones role in this raises wider implications and concerns.

Back in Alabama, the state Democratic Party has been shattered and ineffective for the most part in the years after Siegelman’s removal from politics.

His prosecutions, imprisonment and “scandal” consumed much of local activist energy after the disputed 2002 election of his Republican rival Bob Riley, right,who benefited from the mysterious late-night switch of some 6,000 electronic ballots in Republican Baldwin County in the late hours after Siegelman had been announced as statewide winner.

Gerrymandered congressional districts each year generate one Democratic seat, currently held by Rep. Terry Sewell in a “Black Belt” seat that stretches from Birmingham through Selma to the outskirts of Mobile.

But other Democrats face almost impossible odds aside from the remarkable situation in 2017 when Jones narrowly defeated sex scandal-plagued Republican Roy Moore in a special election after Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions was appointed Attorney General.

Here’s what happened to Siegelman, with reactions by Jones, one of his lead attorneys. Siegelman himself has documented his two-decade ordeal in a memoir this year, author of Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation, published in June by New South books and in a documentary film produced by Steve Wimberly, Atticus vs. The Architect.

Chief U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon the presiding judge of Siegelman’s first corruption trial in Birmingham, would force prosecutors to drop it soon after it began in 2004.

In 2009, I invited Clemon to appear at a 2009 forum at the National Press Club I organized about abusive prosecutions exposed in the U.S. Attorney Firing Scandal. The then-retired judge travelled to the nation’s capital at his own expense to speak at the event, which was cablecast for three hours by C-SPAN because of public interest in the national scandals.

In advance, the retired judge wrote Attorney General Eric Holder sharing a copy with me, that the Siegelman prosecution had been “the most unfounded criminal case” that he had presided over during his nearly three decades on the federal bench. Because there is a racial component to concern about fairness in the justice system it is worth noting that Clemon was a pioneering African-American member of the federal bench in modern times in the Deep South.

Did Jones undermine his own client? Kreig reports:

One big problem, though, was that the five-year statute of limitations for Siegelman’s 1999 and 2000 actions was set to expire.

Jones convinced Siegelman to waive the statute of limitations because of prosecutors’ supposed benign intentions, thereby subjecting defendant to indictment, imprisonment and financial ruin for his and Scrushy’s families.

There’s more, much more, and way too much to mention here except in passing.

Jones went on to co-chair with Gov. Riley’s son, Rob Riley, a plaintiff’s class action fraud suit against HealthSouth, a company that Scrushy had founded. With the Scrushy and HealthSouth defense hindered by his criminal conviction and imprisonment without bond, plaintiff lawyers won a reported $455 million judgment, with legal fees doubtless enriching the key lawyers.

In February 2008, the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes expose helped make the case a national and global human rights scandal.

The reporting by CBS correspondent Scott Pelley implicated via Republican attorney Jill Simpson Bob Riley’s campaign manager Bill Canary, head of the Alabama Business Council and a longtime ally of then-White House Senior Advisor Karl Rove, in a plan to use Canary’s “girls.” Simpson, in those days a Republican opposition researcher and attorney for contractors, said the “girls” meant Canary’s wife, Montgomery-based U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, and Birmingham-based U.S. attorney Alice Martin, who prosecuted Siegelman’s first trial, before Judge Clemon.

Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller of Montgomery, was the presiding judge for the second Siegelman-Scrushy trial in 2006. He made a number of key, pro-prosecution rulings generating considerable controversy at the time and through the years. For example, he held secret ex parte meetings just with prosecutors and declined to find significant error in communications between the jury and prosecutors, perhaps most notably a potential flirtatous interest expressed by a juror about a prosecutor who seemed attractive to her.

Separately from the CBS broadcast, Simpson showed researchers via documents that Fuller secretly owned nearly 44 percent of the shares of Doss Aviation, a federal contracting company that received $300 million in no-bid Bush contracts without disclosure to the defendants or others appearing before the judge.

This reporter broke that story in 2009 on Huffington Post, which ran it for days on its front page under this headline: Siegelman Deserves New Trial Because of Judge’s ‘Grudge’, Evidence Shows….$300 Million in Bush Military Contracts Awarded to Judge’s Private Company.

The rarely photographed Fuller invited Alabama photo-journalist Phil Fleming after the verdict to take portrait shots in chambers, which Fleming shared, bought by the Justice Integrity Project. Fuller, later forced to resign his lifetime appointment after a misdemeanor arrest for assaulting his then-wife, a court clerk assisting in the Siegelman-Scrushy trial, has declined our invitation for comment.

I used Simpson’s evidence and other materials for a front-page Huffington Post story in 2009 reporting that Fuller “hated” Siegelman because the governor had tried to expose corrupt practices by Fuller in 2002.

The other materials included a 150-page recusal motion filed by Missouri attorney Paul B. Weeks III in Fuller’s court in 2003 charging the judge with corruption in a scheme to bilk Alabama’s pension fund while Fuller was a state prosecutor, thereby generating an investigative effort by Siegelman.

The court record shows that Fuller refused to recuse himself and suppressed the text of Weeks' ethics complaint from the federal records PACER system that he controlled as his district’s chief judge. Appellate courts found no basis to grant defendant evidentiary hearings despite astonishing prosecution breaches of required procedures.

To be continued

 

Tommy Gallion's book on Alabama political corruption must be striking nerves because second edition somehow includes insert that labels it a work of fiction

 

The second edition of Montgomery lawyer Tommy Gallion's book about Alabama political corruption inexplicably contains a statement on the copyright page that the book is a work of fiction, and Gallion states in a letter (dated 10/16/20) to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos that it almost had to be a deliberate act of sabotage and demands corrective action.

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) comes under heavy criticism in the book, and Gallion's letter suggests that Jones, or someone connected to him, might be tied to the change.

The first edition of Shadow Government, Southern Style: Political Corruption from D.C. to Dixie, released by Amazon Publishing, contained a correct statement on the copyright page, near the front of the book, and it reads : "The characters and events portrayed in this book are true, based on personal knowledge, memory, and research of the author."

For the second edition, which includes Part Three, the statement says, "The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarities to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

How did the change happen? That remains unclear, but Gallion seems determined to find out. He writes to Bezos:

I spent eight years researching the material for this book. Since the book came out in the marketplace several months ago, it has done very well. Amazon has awarded it five stars. I selected Amazon Publishing to publish my book because of its alleged good reputation in the publishing field.

After the first edition was published, I received information that caused me to write a revised second edition. This revised edition was published several days ago. The first edition contained an introduction and Part One and Part Two. The second edition contains Part Three and a revised Table of Contents, which is the subject of this letter. Otherwise, the second edition was to be identical to the first edition. My editor sent the second edition to Amazon Publishing with only the above changes.

Yesterday, my phone rang off the hook with people who were confused as to the blatant and illegal changes to the book, without the permission of either my editor or me.    

This change had to be deliberate as shown above. This specious and malicious act destroyed not only the book, but my reputation and credibility that can never be repaired.

I have appeared on talk shows and am appearing before the Montgomey Lion's Club on Friday regarding the book. I have a book signing in Fairhope, Alabama, at the oldest bookstore in Alabama, to a sold-out crowd on Saturday.

My book has uncovered some of the most corrupt political prosecutions in the history of our country. The book discusses well-known politicians, both Republican and Democratic, such as former Democrat U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, his client Karl Rove, U.S. Senator Doug Jones, and many others.

Could this lead to legal action? Gallion's letter suggests the answer is yes. He writes to Bezos:

In order to mitigate my damages, I respectfully request you or someone in your organization do the following:

(1) Immediately send out the correct copyright information to every person who has bought the second edition for Amazon;

(2) Forward to me the name and contact information for the person at Amazon Publishing that made this unauthorized change to my boook;

(3) Please give any information of anyone mentioned in my book that contacted you or anyone at the Amazon organization or The Washington Post, which you own, about this book.

(4) Provide executed sworn affidavits from you and the head of Amazon Publishing attesting that both of you have no relationship of any nature with the people mentioned in my book; and 

(5) The affidavits should include you personally, any Amazon Company employee. and any Political Action Groups ("PACs") that have contributed to the election of U.S. Senator Doug Jones, directly and/or indirectly. 

I suggest you have Amazon's attorney look at the violations of copyrights contained in "Counter-notification under 17 USC Sec. 512(q)(3) referred to as DMAC." I have talked to several people in the publishing area, and all have said that this unauthorized change of my book had to be deliberate based on the facts stated above.

Your immediate response will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Thomas T. Gallion III

Don Siegelman's book, "Stealing Our Democracy," promises an inside look at perhaps the most notorious political prosecution in U.S. history -- and it's set for release in June from New South Books of Montgomery

Don Siegelman's book about the political prosecution that sent him to federal prison for roughly six years is set for release in June. Siegelman, the most recent Democrat to serve as governor of Alabama (199 to 2003), wrote most of the book while incarcerated at a facility in Oakdale, Louisiana.

Titled Stealing Our Democracy: How the Political Assassination of a Governor Threatens Our Nation, the book is being published by Montgomery-based New South books. It now is available for pre-order via Amazon, New South Books, and other outlets, with a release date of June 16, 2020.

Stealing Our Democracy comes on the heels of Atticus v. the Architect, a 2017 documentary about the Siegelman case (directed by Steve Wimberly). "The Architect" is a reference to Karl Rove, Republican consultant and senior policy advisor and deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration.

Here is a summary of the Siegelman book:

In a searing political memoir, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman explodes the myth of an impartial U.S. justice system. He should know. Arguably the most successful and promising politician in modern Alabama history, his three-decade career in public service ran afoul of Republican opponents who used the federal judicial system to take him out of contention in Alabama and nationally. Siegelman ultimately was sentenced to 88 months in federal prison and served five years, with long stretches in solitary confinement during which he was a literal political prisoner, cut off from interviews and outside contact. Stealing Our Democracy reveals how Siegelman’s enemies (including politicized prosecutors and a corrupt judge) stripped him of his freedom, his career, and his law license, and deprived him of his family and friends. His is an intensely personal account of how our system can fail and be abused for political greed. And if it could happen to him, he writes, it can happen to any of us, particularly in an era when Donald Trump is abusing his power and using the Department of Justice as a political weapon to defend himself and to destroy those who oppose him. Siegelman draws on his experience as a public servant and an inmate to show why the nation’s prisons must be reformed along with our system of indictment, prosecution, and sentencing. Finally, Stealing Our Democracy offers a blueprint for voters in 2020 of what must be done to preserve democracy.

In the video below, Siegelman discusses his plans to write a book with Bill Britt, editor of Alabama Political Reporter.

Doug Jones' effort to take over the Alabama Democratic Party includes assistance from lawyer Barry Ragsdale, who tried to keep wife-beating, Siegelman-railroading judge Mark Fuller on the bench

Doug Jones

A faction of the State Democratic Executive Committee (SDLC), led by U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) has aligned itself with a Birmingham attorney who represented former U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller in proceedings that led Fuller to resign from the bench over charges that he beat his wife in an Atlanta hotel room in 2014. Until the wife-beating episode became public, Fuller perhaps was best known as the George W. Bush appointee who handled the prosecution of former Democratic governor Don Siegelman so corruptly that it resulted in a prison sentence of more than six years for what we have described as "a crime that does not exist" and obviously could not have been committed.

Despite Fuller's unsavory conduct, Barry Ragsdale (of Sirote and Permutt in Birmingham) stepped up to represent Fuller in the wife-beating case, in which judicial investigators described Fuller's conduct as "reprehensible."

The Jones-Ragsdale-Fuller connections provide more evidence that Jones is a DINO (Democrat in Name Only), according to a veteran state political activist. A prominent commentator says the Fuller case is a classic example of the corruption that is rotting America's foundations.

Jones essentially is trying to take over the Alabama Democratic Party (ADP) with the assistance of a lawyer who supported a Republican-appointed judge -- one who engaged in demonstrably corrupt actions on the bench, with a history of abusive actions toward women in his personal life. Fuller faced allegations of physical, verbal, and substance abuse from two ex wives, but Ragsdale did his best to sweep Fuller's actions under the carpet and protect a spot for the Siegelman "hanging judge" on the federal bench.

Barry Ragsdale

Those actions failed, but now Doug Jones has sought Ragsdale's help to fight off legal challenges to his attempted takeover of the ADP. Bringing Ragsdale on board -- with his history of protecting a corrupt, wife-beating, right-wing judge -- is supposed to represent progress in Alabama? Do integrity, decency, and the rule of law have any place in Doug Jones' vision for the Democratic Party in Alabama? Is the alliance with Ragsdale another sign that Jones is beholden to his Republican boosters more than the mostly black, female voters who put him in office? From a report at al.com about this past weekend's SDLC meeting in Montgomery, where the Jones faction approved new bylaws in a major step toward replacing current party leaders Nancy Worley and Joe Reed:

The Alabama Democratic party has been deeply split over leadership for more than a year. The SDEC reelected Worley as chair in August 2018. Some Democrats challenged the results. The DNC decided there were irregularities and in February ordered the SDEC to adopt new bylaws followed by new elections for chair and vice chair.

After deadlines were missed, the DNC invalidated the national party credentials of Worley and First Vice Chair Randy Kelley. The DNC has withheld money from the state party and has not yet approved the state’s delegate selection plan for next year’s Democratic National Convention.

Worley has said those who wanted a different result in the August 2018 election for party chair are to blame for the dispute, including Sen. Doug Jones, who backed her challenger last year. . . .

Worley said the turnout at today’s meeting shows a lack of broad support for what was approved.

“While 78 attendees show ‘loyal opposition,’ that number does not show a groundswell of support for the DNC’s agenda,” Worley said in a text message. “I look forward to the October 12 meeting, at which time the SDEC members will discuss the negative effects of the Doug Jones/DNC Bylaws.”

Where does Ragsdale enter the picture? Here is more from al.com about this past Saturday's meeting:

Attorney Barry Ragsdale attended today’s meeting and said he would represent the position of the SDEC members who attended in any legal challenge to the legitimacy of the new bylaws.

Ragsdale said members at today’s meeting should attend the Oct. 12 meeting called by Worley if they wanted to.

“But it’s important to note that meeting will be guided by the bylaws that we adopted at this meeting,” Ragsdale said. “Their failure, if there is a failure to follow those bylaws, that meeting will be subject to legal challenge.”

Is the Jones-Ragsdale alliance a ruse that could trip up progressives in Alabama? We have addressed that question in several posts, including this one, showing that Jones has a history of stabbing fellow Democrats in the back:

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and U.S. Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) engaged in a heated political discussion shortly before Siegelman was forced to go to the doctor and wound up having heart surgery, sources tell Legal Schnauzer.

Siegelman had heart-bypass surgery on Feb. 9, the same day that his son, Joseph, qualified to run as a Democrat in the 2018 race for Alabama attorney general. Joseph Siegelman's political plans were at the heart of a tense conversation between Jones and Don Siegelman, sources say.

Don Siegelman, apparently under the mistaken impression that Jones would be supportive of the younger Siegelman's plans, asked the senator for an endorsement. Jones declined, which should not have been a surprise considering the evidence of his support for the other Democrat in the race, Bradley Arant lawyer Chris Christie.

Jones' negative reaction to the idea of a Joseph Siegelman endorsement should not have been a surprise for several other reasons:

(1) Jones clearly has been aligned with the so-called "Alabama Gang" of Republicans -- including Rob Riley, Bill Canary, Jeff Sessions, and Karl Rove -- dating at least to the work Jones and Riley did together in the early 2000s on a lawsuit against HealthSouth and related entities, a case that generated more than $50 million in attorney fees.

(2) Jones was Don Siegelman's defense attorney for a time in the federal bribery case that wound up unlawfully sending the former governor to federal prison for roughly six years. Jones inexplicably extended the statute of limitations for the government to build a case it obviously didn't have at the time. Jones also charged Siegelman $300,000 while doing relatively little legal work -- and then bailed out of the case before trial because of a conflict on Jones' end. We've seen no sign that Jones returned any of the money, and he has refused to answer our questions on the subject. To add insult to insult, Jones went before a Congressional committee in 2007 and talked glowingly about Bill Pryor, the current federal judge who, as Alabama AG in the late 1990s, launched the Siegelman investigation before the new governor's fanny barely had hit the office chair.

Mark Fuller mugshot

 (3) Jones apparently favors Chris Christie, even though a prominent spokesperson for the Christie campaign is Sirote Permutt lawyer Barry Ragsdale. That's the same Barry Ragsdale who helped former U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller fight charges that he beat his wife in an Atlanta hotel room -- events that led to Fuller's forced resignation from the bench. Fuller, of course, is the judge who oversaw the Siegelman trial, repeatedly making unlawful and one-sided rulings that helped ensure a conviction. Jones essentially supports a candidate whose campaign has ties to wife beating and the kind of judicial corruption that sends innocent people to prison.

Alabama progressives should be leery of the Jones-Ragsdale tag team, veteran political activist Jill Simpson said on her Facebook page yesterday. Simpson noted that three individuals who helped unmask Fuller -- herself, attorney-blogger Donald Watkins, and yours truly -- came under attack from right-wing forces aligned with Jones and Ragsdale:

What a hoot, corrupt former Republican Judge Mark Fuller's lawyer, Barry Ragsdale, is going to represent the renegade Dixiecrats' new Democratic party for Doug Jones's bunch against Joe Reed and Nancy Worley's real Alabama Democratic Party. That should be a wake up call to Alabama progressive Democrats that Doug's new party has hired the lawyer of the wife-beating judge that threw Don Siegelman in prison. 

Barry Ragsdale is who the Alabama Progressive Resistance fought tooth and toenail to remove wife beater Mark Fuller from the bench. Roger Shuler, Donald Watkins , and I worked hard day in and day out to get that crooked Republican wife-beating Judge Fuller off the bench. It was Barry Ragsdale who was trying to keep him on the bench and was our foe. 

That said, you all in the new party of Doug have a lawyer that helps a wife-beating judge, who crookedly threw your last Democratic governor in jail -- what the hell are you nitwits thinking? Now you all are getting a dose of what Doug is about -- and his Alabama Gang is about playing all sides and y'all are their blind sheep. 

Yep, I still remember Barry Ragsdale representing the wife-beating judge that mistreated Gov. Don Siegelman; it was hard for us progressive Democrats to beat him, but we beat him on Fuller and got the judge bounced off the bench, and we spent a lot of time due to Ragsdale protecting Fuller, but we got Fuller's ass thrown off the bench under the leadership of Nancy (Worley) and Joe (Reed), with Obama. All the time, Doug was behind the scenes helping Ragsdale against us. As many of you know I wrote Obama the first open letter about Fuller, the wife beater, and the need for zero tolerance for such behavior. The letter was published in a lot of places, including OpEdNews, and it asked to have that terrible wife-beating judge removed -- and I heard in D.C. that Doug and Ragsdale were trying to keep Fuller from being removed. Shortly after that is when the Alabama Bar forced me on to disability status. . . .

Now maybe you folks will start to see why we did not want Doug Jones in that Senate seat; he was playing both sides, and burning candles on both ends eventually is going to burn him in the meddle.

The influence of Judge Bill Pryor, with his ties to 1990s gay porn, seems to be growing as Trump seeks to pack Alabama courts with devotees of the Federalist Society

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