2nd Strain of Probe Proceeds Far from Stevens’ Sway

As the Anchorage Daily News reported yesterday, a federal grand jury has been investigating Sen. Ted Stevens’ (R-AK) ties to the corrupt Alaskan oil company, Veco. Both the former CEO and vice president have pled guilty to corruption charges.

But just as surprising as the fact of the investigation is the location of it: far away from Alaska, in Washington, D.C.

The heavy lifting in the probe so far has been done by a grand jury in Anchorage, Alaska. That investigation has resulted in a number of guilty pleas by executives and indictments of state lawmakers.

But the existence of the second grand jury raises the question of why prosecutors split the investigation. ADN went to the experts and came up with a number of theories:

Legal experts in corruption cases said that while it’s unusual for prosecutors to use grand juries in separate jurisdictions in an investigation, they may have sound reasons. The experts also cautioned that even though prosecutors may be presenting evidence to a grand jury, that doesn’t mean crimes have been committed.

Paul Butler, a law professor at George Washington University and a former federal attorney who prosecuted a U.S. senator and several FBI agents, said it could simply be a matter of convenience for witnesses.

Jules Epstein, a law professor at the Widener University School of Law in Wilmington, Del., and a criminal defense lawyer, said the grand juries could be investigating separate, unlinked crimes.

Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said prosecutors might bring a case against a popular elected official in Washington to avoid being “home-courted.”

Given that witnesses in the probe have been flying out from Alaska to testify, I think it’s fair to discount the “convenience” explanation.

But that prosecutors might have chosen D.C. as the venue to make their case against Stevens — and perhaps his son, Ben, a former state senator, who’s been implicated in charging documents — makes a whole lot of sense. There’s simply not a more powerful figure in Alaska (or perhaps in the history of Alaskan politics) than Sen. Stevens, who’s served in the Senate since 1968, and who even, back in 1958, played a role in shepherding Alaska to statehood while working at the Interior Department.

By bringing their case in D.C., prosecutors avoided the task of making their case in Stevens’ backyard, where the vestiges of his power are everywhere. As the senior senator from the state, Stevens has traditionally even been responsible for tapping candidates for the local U.S. attorney spot — though the Justice Department notably overruled the senator when appointing a replacement last September.

Prosecutors also avoid having to convince a jury full of Alaskans who grew up surrounded by landmarks named after Stevens, who’s responsible for bringing back tens of billions of dollars to the state over the past forty years.

One of the lawyers involved in the case certainly thought that’s what prosecutors are up to:

Penney’s attorney, Bruce Gagnon, said of [Alaska businessman Bob] Penney’s appearance before the grand jury: “I think you know as well as I do what they’re interested in.” Asked whether that was Ted Stevens and Ben Stevens, Gagnon said, “Yeah, yeah.”

“And why are they going off in Washington, D.C., as well as here?” Gagnon wondered out loud. “It may well be because they want to try this case back there.”