GOP Lawyer Testifies about Rove Role in Siegelman Case

In an interview she gave under oath to House investigators, Republican lawyer Dana Jill Simpson expanded on her previous statement about Karl Rove’s role in the prosecution of Gov. Don Siegelman (D-AL), implicating Rove in using the Justice Deparment to stymie Siegelman’s campaigns in 2002 and again in 2005.

In the interview, first obtained by Time and released today by the committee, Simpson explains the context in which she knew what Alabama Republican operative William Canary meant on a campaign conference call in 2002 when he said “Karl” had gotten the Justice Department on Siegelman. Simpson told House investigators that the son of Gov. Bob Riley (R), Rob Riley, had told her about the conversations between Rove and Canary. From the transcript:

But I knew from conversations that I had had with Rob that Bill Canary was very connected to Karl Rove. Additionally, there was some talk — and that’s not in my affidavit — about Karl had — about Washington; that Karl had it taken care of in Washington.

Simpson also told investigators that three years later, during Bob Riley’s 2005 campaign, Rob Riley told her that Rove had intervened again, this time going directly to the Public Integrity Section of the Department of Justice. The intervention came after the US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama “messed up” a case against Siegelman to keep him from running, Simpson told investigators. According to the interview transcript, Simpson said Rove made sure all the bases were covered to properly prosecute Siegelman:

Q: Okay. And did Rob give you the name of the person at — I’m just going to call it Public Integrity — that he thought he understood Karl Rove had spoken to?

[Simpson]: No, he said it was the head guy there and he said that that guy had agreed to allocate whatever resources, so evidently the guy had the power to allocate resources, you know.

Q: To the Siegelman prosecution?

[Simpson] Yes. And that he’d allocate all resources necessary.

Previously, Rob Riley has denied knowing Karl Rove, but Simpson offered the House panel an email with a hand-written note which reads “To Jill, I e-mailed this to Karl…Rob,” from Riley that she argues shows he did in fact know Rove at the time. (You can see the email here.) Riley claims the Karl refers to a lawyer he knows, not Rove. Nonetheless Time quotes one of Riley’s clients saying that he had mentioned “four or five times” that Rove could help with their business in Washington.