Senators to Justice Department: Apologize to family of Sen. Ted Stevens
thehill.com

A bipartisan group of senators is calling on the Justice Department to apologize to the family of the late Sen. Ted Stevens and fire the attorneys accused of the withholding of evidence that contributed to his criminal conviction.

The former colleagues of the long-serving Alaskan Republican told The Hill that the DOJ’s prosecution of Stevens was a disgrace.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a close friend of Stevens’s, said DOJ handled the case against the former senator “vindictively” and recommended the disbarment of the attorneys responsible for the botched trial. Hatch said the failure of the prosecutors to turn over key evidence was “the lowest” level of law and indicative of a hunger to convict powerful politicians even in the face of conflicting testimony.

“There are a lot of good people down at Justice, and they continue on no matter what, but there’s been a growth of ambitious prosecutors in this country — some are U.S. attorneys — who don’t care about justice, they just care about winning,” Hatch said in an interview.

“In this case, one of the most basic principles of law was ignored, and that was exculpatory evidence that would have cleared Stevens that should have said to them, ‘This man should never have been indicted to begin with,’ ” he said.

Several senators on both sides of the aisle agreed with Hatch, although the lawmakers noted the mishandling of the case has not undermined their confidence in the agency’s Public Integrity Section as a whole.