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It has been determined that the prosecutors investigating the late Senator Ted Stevens did not conduct a comprehensive review of the material favorable to the late senator. The report was released Thursday and it said that the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI did not conduct an appropriate review of the documents for the Stevens case. According to the report, there were some people involved in the investigation who did not know they have to hand the documents over to the legal team representing Stevens.
Special counsel Henry f. Schuelke III led the investigation, which shows that prosecutors did not review their own notes of interviews conducted with witnesses that contained significant information that was not sent to lawyers for Stevens.
“Not only was the … review unsupervised, the prosecutors themselves were unsupervised,” Schuelke’s report said.
It was found by Scheulke that two federal prosecutors purposely withheld information that was significant for the case. In response to the investigation, the attorneys for Stevens said that it “provides evidence of government corruption that is shocking in its boldness and its breadth.”
“Corrupt prosecutors obtained an illegal verdict against Senator Stevens on October 27, 2008,” Stevens’ lawyers said in a statement. “As a result, a sitting senator lost certain re-election and the balance of power shifted in the United States Senate.”
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The Justice Department released a statement that said it cooperated with the investigation completely “and provided information throughout the process.”
“While the department meets its … obligations in nearly all cases, even one failure is one too many,” the department said.
Stevens was convicted by a jury in October of 2008 for seven felony counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure documents. He was trying to hide over $100,000 in home renovations and gifts given to him by wealthy friends. Some of those gifts include a stained-glass window, an expensive sculpture and a massage chair. A couple of days after the conviction, Stevens lost his re-election bid for his Senate seat, which he had held for 40 years. He was the longest-serving Republican at the time in the Senate. The conviction was dismissed in April of 2009 following the admission of misconduct by the Justice Department in the case. On August 9, 2010, Stevens died in a plane crash.
The report also said that the attorney for Stevens, Brendan Sullivan, “was not aware when he gave his opening statement, and never learned during or after the trial, that the prosecutors possessed evidence that directly corroborated Sen. Stevens’ defense. The prosecutors never disclosed” that the foreman for the renovation “had the same understanding and belief as Sen. Stevens and his wife.”
