Ted Stevens Circling The Drain

Although smart money has stopped flowing into Ted Stevens' campaign coffers-- many people prefer not to donate to candidates who are likely to be using it to enrich criminal lawyers in messy, scandalous trials-- he had already raised over $4 million before he was indicted and is still sitting on over $1.6 million, double what Democrat Mark Begich has on hand. Between July 1 and last week Begich, who is leading in voter polls, did much better than Stevens in fundraising-- $412,549.02 to $269,274.00.

But not everyone is abandoning ship as the SS Stevens heads for the bottom. Other than law firms, Big Oil has been the biggest financier of Stevens' political career, having stuffed $469,440 into his campaigns, even more than lobbyists (at $455,506). This year Big Oil, which he has served so faithfully, and lobbyists are still there for him, respectively at $108,900 and $182,584.

Although Stevens has made sure that Big Oil has gotten everything-- from billions of dollars in tax breaks to the kinds of legislation that has guaranteed that they could raise the price of gasoline beyond $4/gallon-- after today's news, even they may decide to stop financing his doomed campaign. The front page of this morning's Anchorage Daily News has startled even Alaska residents who are now used to hearing about their political leaders being arrested, indicted, tried and imprisoned. For anyone who was buying into Stevens' claims that the case against him was no big deal and that the charges weren't serious... well, that's over. The Feds have started presenting evidence that is so damning that it now seems likely that Stevens is going to have to spend some of that immense cash-on-hand to win his primary!

Federal prosecutors offered a glimpse of previously unseen evidence against U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens in new court filings Thursday, including allegations that Stevens used insider help to turn a secret $5,000 investment in a Florida condo development into more than $100,000 in quick profits.

The government also dismissed assertions by Stevens that his conduct was shielded by the constitution as a member of Congress, citing nine examples of Stevens' "errands" and requests involving Veco that had nothing to do with protected lawmaking.

Among them: an intercepted telephone call in which Stevens discusses how his son Ben, then the state Senate President, planned to push a bill favored by the oil industry as a prelude to gas development.

The new filings go substantially further than the indictment handed up against Stevens last month charging him with seven counts of failing to disclose gifts from 1999 through 2006. Most of the alleged gifts were from the former Alaska-based oil field service company Veco and its politically active chairman, Bill Allen. Allen and Veco vice president Rick Smith have pleaded guilty to bribing elected officials and are working with government prosecutors and are expected to testify at Stevens' trial, tentatively scheduled to start with jury selection Sept. 22.

Stevens wants the trial moved to Alaska, where there would probably be a hung jury. I suspect Democrats would like the same thing since contesting a battle with Stevens after a hung jury outcome would likely turn Begich's current 13 point lead into a 20-25 point landslide.

The Daily News story spotlights damning new allegations against Stevens, allegations that go right to the heart of reformers' demands that the entire campaign finance system be overhauled from top to bottom to eliminate the epidemic Culture of Corruption outrages which has been actually been made even worse by McCain's fake "reforms."

On Feb. 4, 2001, Stevens and his wife, Catherine, signed a purchase contract with a development company about to build a condo project in Florida, agreeing to buy a garden unit for $360,000. The contract was a standard one and required a 10 percent down payment-- $36,000-- but Stevens only put down $5,000, the motion says.

The development company was only described as "Company B." One of Company B's partners was "Person C," a personal friend of the Stevens, the government said.

Rather than require Stevens to put down the normal amount, Person C fronted the $31,000 in an interest-free loan that he paid to an escrow company "for the benefit of 'Theodore and Catherine Stevens,' " the government said.

There was evidence that the Stevenses never intended to live in the condo but merely saw it as a quick way to turn a buck, the document says.

On Aug. 21, 2001, Person C wrote Stevens that the deal was about to turn out "as I told you." Though the condo was still unbuilt, Company B had just accepted an offer on Stevens' garden apartment for $515,000-- the same one Stevens were offered for $360,000 six months earlier. The buyer would assume Stevens' liabilities.

It was after that buyout that the Stevens' repaid Person C for the $31,000 loan, sending a $15,000 check on Sept. 12, 2001 and a $16,000 check on Dec. 11, 2001.

The government said Stevens was required to disclose any loan over $10,000 during 2001, but failed when it came to the condo loan.

"Although Stevens knowingly carried debt on a $31,000 interest-free loan from his personal friend for more than 10 months during 2001, Stevens did not list such a liability on his 2001 disclosure form," the government said.

JEEP CHEROKEE

The vehicle transaction in 2005 follows up an earlier one in 1999 that is referenced in Stevens' indictment. In the first deal, Stevens was looking for a car for his daughter, Lily, then 18. He was accused of not reporting the trade of a 35-year-old Mustang worth $20,000, plus $5,000 cash, for a new Land Rover Discovery bought by Allen worth $44,000 -- for a net benefit of around $20,000.

By 2005, Lily Stevens needed a new car, the government said in its filing Thursday. So Stevens returned to the original source: Allen.

"Allen offered to get Stevens' daughter a new car in exchange for the 1999 Land Rover, and Stevens agreed," the government said.

This time, the SUV would be a new Jeep Grand Cherokee. The deal was made between Stevens' daughter and a Veco employee "for the purpose of hiding Allen's involvement in the transaction." Allen wrote a personal check to the employee for $35,000, who bought the Jeep July 15, 2005, for a little more than $34,000 from a dealer.

Veco shipped the car to Seattle, paid the employee to fly to Seattle, pick up the car, and deliver it to Berkeley, Calif. Lily Stevens earned her law degree at the University of California at Berkeley, according to her wedding announcement in May.

Lily Stevens paid the Veco employee $13,000 plus her old car, valued at about $9,000, for the $34,000 Jeep, the government said.

PHOENIX JOB

In March 2006, after the government had begun tapping Allen's phones, Stevens asked a lobbyist to ask Allen for a job in Phoenix for one of his three sons. The son was unnamed, but Walter Stevens, a multimedia management specialist, lived in Phoenix, at least in the 1990s.

In a recorded conversation, the unidentified lobbyist told Allen, "I saw (Sen. Stevens) at lunch and he asked if you-- I'm not sure why he mentioned it to me-- but he asked me to, I think, find out if you had any business contacts in Phoenix with respect to his son who is down there, who finds himself without a job at this point." The lobbyist said Stevens mentioned Allen by name.

Allen ordered company officials to find a job for the son in Alaska in the summer of 2006, the government said. "Stevens' son accepted the position with Veco and also received a personal loan from Allen."

GAS LINE

In another filing Thursday, this one in response to Stevens' assertion of his immunity as a congressman, the government said Stevens' activities went well beyond his legislative role and should not be protected. One example prosecutors cited was Stevens pushing for state legislation on a proposed natural gas pipeline sought for years by Veco.

Stevens used his official position to try to get the state Legislature to approve construction of a gas line during the 2006 legislative session, the new filing says-- a session already shown to be tainted by corruption.

Between January and June 2006, the FBI secretly recorded telephone calls between Allen, Stevens, his legislative staff and his son, then-state Senate President Ben Stevens. They discussed the gas line, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski's negotiations with oil producers and legislation, the filing says. In one call, Stevens promised Allen he would "whittle down" the federal permitting and reviews, the document says.

In a call on June 25, 2006, Stevens and Allen talked about hearings coming up before a state Senate committee on which Ben Stevens served. Prosecutors say Stevens told Allen he was working with his son.

"I'm gonna try to see if I can get some bigwigs from back here to go up there and say, 'Look, uh, you just gotta make up your mind, you gotta get this done. There's no politics in it, there's necessity in it for the Federal government,' " Stevens told Allen, according to the filing.

He asked how he could help Allen, and said he was going to try to get the Secretary of Energy and head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to Alaska regarding the need to act on the pipeline, prosecutors contend.

On July 7, 2006, Stevens traveled to Alaska and addressed the Senate committee, "urging it to cease infighting and pass the pipeline legislation before liquefied natural gas monopolizes the marketplace," prosecutors say.

Three days later, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a report with a similar message.

Stevens is demanding the case be thrown out, hoping, no doubt, for some sympathetic right-wing ideologue judge Bush has degraded the Justice system with. But a far more likely outcome is that Alaska voters will throw him out of office and that he'll spend the rest of his miserable, hypocritical life behind bars, a warning to other members of Congress that the public trough isn't a perk of elective office. There is virtually no chance that Rep. Don Young will not be following him to prison.

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