Scott Horton, a lawyer and Harper’s Magazine writer, kept the Siegelman case alive in print when almost no national outlet would touch it. Governor Siegelman credits his reporting with helping drive the wave of editorials that followed, and says the New York Times alone ran 17.

In this episode, Horton joins Governor Siegelman and host Nick Collado to explain why he called the Governor “America’s most prominent political prisoner.” He says he first learned of the case not from Siegelman, whom he hadn’t met, but from people inside the Justice Department who were alarmed at what they were seeing.

Horton lays out his thesis: that Karl Rove was the common thread in politically charged prosecutions of Democrats in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. He says the goal was to remove promising candidates and cut off their campaign money. He describes what he says he learned from interviews inside the U.S. Attorney’s office and from staff of Justice Department official David Margolis. He also explains why he believes U.S. Attorney Leura Canary’s “recusal” existed in name only.

He and the Governor also cover the bribery charge, which Horton calls “worse than thin,” Judge Mark Fuller and Doss Aviation, the Governor’s account of retired FBI agents hired to build the case, and Rove’s 2009 congressional interview and its Christmas cards. Horton compares the guardrails that once kept politics out of federal prosecutions with what he sees at the Justice Department today.

This is Episode 11 of Me and the Gov, a series of in-depth conversations with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, hosted by Nick Collado.

🎙️ Subscribe for the full series, available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

#ScottHorton #DonSiegelman #MeAndTheGov #HarpersMagazine #KarlRove #PoliticalProsecution #PoliticalPrisoner #JusticeDepartment #DavidMargolis #LeuraCanary #AlabamaPolitics #InvestigativeJournalism #Podcast #TrueCrime

Most people picture prosecutorial misconduct as one rogue lawyer hiding one document. Professor Bennett Gershman, a former New York prosecutor and author of the treatise Prosecutorial Misconduct, says that when it’s deliberate and coordinated, it looks like what happened to Governor Don Siegelman. In 2014 he called it “one of the most egregiously bad faith prosecutions by the Justice Department ever.”

In this episode, Professor Gershman, Governor Siegelman, and host Nick Collado go through how a case like this comes together: the key witness, the conflicts of interest, the judge, and the jury.

Gershman says he has never seen a witness handled the way Nick Bailey was, citing 71 interviews with prosecutors. He also says he learned during his research that prosecutors asked for a life sentence over a campaign contribution to a ballot initiative. The Governor adds his account of the jury’s questions, the judge’s instructions, and the jurors’ messages during deliberations. He also covers Judge Mark Fuller’s history, the 911 call, and the federal judiciary’s findings before Fuller resigned.

Then they take on the bigger question: why prosecutors are almost never held accountable. Gershman explains absolute immunity, why prosecutors are rarely prosecuted or disciplined, and why he separates deliberate misconduct from honest mistakes. He still sees signs of change: federal judges who say they no longer trust prosecutors, grand juries refusing to indict, and a new prosecutor conduct commission in New York. The Governor describes his request for the records of Bailey’s interviews, and says the Obama and Biden administrations refused to turn them over. Gershman also draws comparisons to prosecutions in the news today.

The episode closes with the Governor thanking Gershman for writing in his defense, including a request that President Obama pardon him.

This is Episode [#] of Me and the Gov, a series of in-depth conversations with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, hosted by Nick Collado.

🎙️ Subscribe for the full series, available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Governor Jim Doyle on the Woman Who Went to Prison Instead of Him | Me and The Gov Episode 10

In 2006, Georgia Thompson — a career Wisconsin civil servant Governor Jim Doyle had never even met — was convicted and sent to federal prison over a $1 million travel contract. No bribe. No kickback. No money ever changed hands. She served four months before a federal appeals court took the almost unheard-of step of ordering her released the same day, live from the bench, calling the case against her "beyond thin."

In this episode, former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle joins Governor Don Siegelman and host Nick Collado to walk through what actually happened — including the real courtroom audio from her hearing, and the actual Republican-aligned attack ad that ran statewide against Doyle off her conviction. Doyle reveals that after Thompson was convicted, prosecutors approached her again and offered to keep her out of prison if she'd simply change her sworn testimony. She refused, and went to prison anyway.

The two governors trace the same names through both of their cases — David Margolis, the DOJ official who approved the charging decision against Thompson and was separately deeply involved in Siegelman's own prosecution, and Jack Abramoff, who Siegelman says laundered $20 million in casino money specifically to defeat both of them in the same election cycle.

The episode also plays a clip from former Republican Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods, who says on camera that Siegelman was targeted because Republicans "couldn't beat him fair and square" — and closes with Doyle's own raw reaction, recorded the day Thompson walked free.

This is Episode 10 of Me and the Gov — a series of in-depth conversations with former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, hosted by Nick Collado.

🎙️ Subscribe for the full series, available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

#JimDoyle #DonSiegelman #MeAndTheGov #Podcast #GeorgiaThompson #PoliticalCorruption #WisconsinPolitics #KarlRove #DavidMargolis #JackAbramoff #PoliticalScandal #TrueCrime