It’s now been about two months since Ted Stevens’ conviction on seven counts of making false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms, and there’s yet another twist in the case, this time in the form of new allegations of prosecutorial misconduct by an anonymous federal “whistle-blower.”
This one may end up being a lot more consequential than the last twist in the case — that juror who skipped out of the trial early to catch a horse race in California and later admitted lying about it.
The new charges came to light in a 29-page ruling issued late Friday by Judge Emmet Sullivan. The prosecution first alerted the court to the whistle-blower complaint on Dec. 11 in a sealed filing, prompting the defense to urge the judge to make the complaint public, the Washington Post reports. Sullivan described the whiste-blower as someone “significantly involved in the investigation and prosecution of the defendant.”
The Post details some of the charges:
Among the accusations were that the government intentionally “schemed to relocate a witness” and that an employee working on the investigation accepted artwork and employment for a relative from a cooperating source, according to a legal ruling issued late last night by the federal judge who presided over Stevens’s trial.
Sullivan ordered prosecutors to make a redacted version of the complaint public Monday afternoon.
The new charges are just the latest in a string of developments that will determine whether the outgoing Alaska Senator ever faces punishment for his felony convictions.
There’s a hearing scheduled for Jan. 15 for a witness who said he lied on the stand about having no immunity deal with prosecutors. Sullivan also has set a Feb. 25 hearing on Stevens’ lawyers’ motion for a new trial.
