A Long-Running Scandal and a Senate Pick Stir Corruption Qs
Feb 20, 2017 12:30:09 GMT
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Post by benson on Feb 20, 2017 12:30:09 GMT
A Long-Running Scandal and a Senate Pick Stir Corruption Questions in Alabama
When Luther Strange ran for attorney general in this scandal-weary state in 2010, he appeared in an advertisement that spoke darkly of the Alabama capital’s “corruption, grand jury investigations, insider deals, abusing the public trust.”
Mr. Strange won that year’s general election easily, and then another one in 2014. But since ascending to the United States Senate this month, he has found his popularity threatened and his fellow Republicans troubled, largely because he accepted the appointment of Gov. Robert J. Bentley, a subject of an active investigation that the new senator spent months overseeing.
A startling number of people in and around the State House openly suspect, but lack evidence to prove, that part of Mr. Bentley’s reason for appointing Mr. Strange to the Senate was to try to undermine the inquiry.
Beyond clouding Mr. Strange’s early days in the Senate, the appointment to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s new attorney general, has exacerbated the controversy that has publicly swirled around Mr. Bentley for almost a year. The maze of scandal — featuring sexually explicit conversations and the sudden firing of a top law enforcement official, and consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars from public and political bank accounts — has led to swelling demands for the impeachment of the governor, a Republican.
“It’s like every time we turn around, there’s somebody else who is potentially going to jail, or being too greedy, or being too arrogant,” said State Representative Ed Henry, a Republican who has pushed for Mr. Bentley’s ouster.
Mr. Bentley, 74, who did not agree to an interview request, has been on the defensive for nearly a year. In March, Spencer Collier, whom Mr. Bentley had fired as the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, accused the governor of having an affair with an aide and said the aide had served as the “de facto governor.”
An audio recording of Mr. Bentley, said to be in conversation with the woman, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, was leaked and left Alabama residents listening to the governor utter phrases like “when I stand behind you and I put my arms around you and I put my hands on your breasts.”
Mr. Bentley, whose wife of 50 years filed for divorce in August 2015, said he had apologized for “any conversations and behavior that was inappropriate,” but he insisted that he had not had a physical relationship with Mrs. Mason. Mrs. Mason, who declined to comment and whose husband leads the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Volunteer Service, resigned as Mr. Bentley’s senior political adviser soon after the governor’s public acknowledgment of misconduct.
Mr. Bentley’s words and Mrs. Mason’s formal exit — she and her husband have remained connected to the governor and traveled to last month’s presidential inauguration with him — did little to curb outrage. Lawsuits emerged, federal and state investigations began, and at least one grand jury here has been considering evidence.
Mr. Strange, a former lobbyist widely regarded as ambitious and long seen as the future of Republican politics in Alabama, attended some of the grand jury testimony. Then Mr. Bentley, in his second and final term, chose Mr. Strange as Mr. Sessions’s replacement in the Senate and scheduled a special election for 2018.
When his appointment was announced, Mr. Strange, 63, said the rampant speculation about an inquiry involving the governor was “unfair to him and unfair to the process.” He also said, in a remark that has since been parsed, analyzed and criticized, “We have never said in our office that we are investigating the governor.”
Less than a week later, the man Mr. Bentley chose to succeed Mr. Strange as attorney general, Steven T. Marshall, appointed Alabama’s equivalent of a special prosecutor and asked her to “assume oversight of the state’s interest in the current investigative matter relating to Gov. Robert Bentley, to include all potential criminal matters arising from that investigation.”
One of the lawyers leading the inquiry, Matt Hart, helped to secure the conviction last year of Michael G. Hubbard, then the speaker of the State House of Representatives.
Although many senior Republicans in Alabama and in Washington strongly urged Mr. Bentley to appoint Mr. Strange, the only one of six finalists to have been elected statewide, the choice and Mr. Marshall’s acknowledgment of an investigation still upset many people here.
www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/alabama-senate-pick-corruption-questions.html?_r=0
When Luther Strange ran for attorney general in this scandal-weary state in 2010, he appeared in an advertisement that spoke darkly of the Alabama capital’s “corruption, grand jury investigations, insider deals, abusing the public trust.”
Mr. Strange won that year’s general election easily, and then another one in 2014. But since ascending to the United States Senate this month, he has found his popularity threatened and his fellow Republicans troubled, largely because he accepted the appointment of Gov. Robert J. Bentley, a subject of an active investigation that the new senator spent months overseeing.
A startling number of people in and around the State House openly suspect, but lack evidence to prove, that part of Mr. Bentley’s reason for appointing Mr. Strange to the Senate was to try to undermine the inquiry.
Beyond clouding Mr. Strange’s early days in the Senate, the appointment to fill the seat of Jeff Sessions, President Trump’s new attorney general, has exacerbated the controversy that has publicly swirled around Mr. Bentley for almost a year. The maze of scandal — featuring sexually explicit conversations and the sudden firing of a top law enforcement official, and consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars from public and political bank accounts — has led to swelling demands for the impeachment of the governor, a Republican.
“It’s like every time we turn around, there’s somebody else who is potentially going to jail, or being too greedy, or being too arrogant,” said State Representative Ed Henry, a Republican who has pushed for Mr. Bentley’s ouster.
Mr. Bentley, 74, who did not agree to an interview request, has been on the defensive for nearly a year. In March, Spencer Collier, whom Mr. Bentley had fired as the head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, accused the governor of having an affair with an aide and said the aide had served as the “de facto governor.”
An audio recording of Mr. Bentley, said to be in conversation with the woman, Rebekah Caldwell Mason, was leaked and left Alabama residents listening to the governor utter phrases like “when I stand behind you and I put my arms around you and I put my hands on your breasts.”
Mr. Bentley, whose wife of 50 years filed for divorce in August 2015, said he had apologized for “any conversations and behavior that was inappropriate,” but he insisted that he had not had a physical relationship with Mrs. Mason. Mrs. Mason, who declined to comment and whose husband leads the Governor’s Office of Faith-Based and Volunteer Service, resigned as Mr. Bentley’s senior political adviser soon after the governor’s public acknowledgment of misconduct.
Mr. Bentley’s words and Mrs. Mason’s formal exit — she and her husband have remained connected to the governor and traveled to last month’s presidential inauguration with him — did little to curb outrage. Lawsuits emerged, federal and state investigations began, and at least one grand jury here has been considering evidence.
Mr. Strange, a former lobbyist widely regarded as ambitious and long seen as the future of Republican politics in Alabama, attended some of the grand jury testimony. Then Mr. Bentley, in his second and final term, chose Mr. Strange as Mr. Sessions’s replacement in the Senate and scheduled a special election for 2018.
When his appointment was announced, Mr. Strange, 63, said the rampant speculation about an inquiry involving the governor was “unfair to him and unfair to the process.” He also said, in a remark that has since been parsed, analyzed and criticized, “We have never said in our office that we are investigating the governor.”
Less than a week later, the man Mr. Bentley chose to succeed Mr. Strange as attorney general, Steven T. Marshall, appointed Alabama’s equivalent of a special prosecutor and asked her to “assume oversight of the state’s interest in the current investigative matter relating to Gov. Robert Bentley, to include all potential criminal matters arising from that investigation.”
One of the lawyers leading the inquiry, Matt Hart, helped to secure the conviction last year of Michael G. Hubbard, then the speaker of the State House of Representatives.
Although many senior Republicans in Alabama and in Washington strongly urged Mr. Bentley to appoint Mr. Strange, the only one of six finalists to have been elected statewide, the choice and Mr. Marshall’s acknowledgment of an investigation still upset many people here.
www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/us/alabama-senate-pick-corruption-questions.html?_r=0