Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “Karl the Anti-Spammer!”

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September 12, 2006

Karl the Anti-Spammer!

Hatched by Dafydd

But if the accusation is true, does it hurt or help?

Attorneys for a man accused of fraud say he was charged at the behest of presidential adviser Karl Rove in retaliation for a flood of spam e-mails sent to a campaign Web site. A federal prosecutor says the claim is "absurd."

Assistant U.S. Attorney David M. Siegal urged U.S. District Judge Laura Taylor Swain on Monday to reject arguments that Rove caused the criminal investigation that led to charges against Robert McAllister.

Siegal said lawyers for McAllister made the "patently absurd argument that the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District is a shill for Karl Rove and has arrested and indicted their client in some sort of vindictive retaliation."

McAllister's lawyer Gerald L. Shargel said Monday he plans to try to call Rove as a witness, if the court allows it.

I would dismiss this as the desperate lie by a typically desperate defense attorney, and I would assume the risibility factor alone would make this defense a non-starter... except for one point: Laura Taylor Swain is a black, female Clinton appointee (2000) who got her degree from Harvard Law, and I think it better than 50-50 that she's going to seize upon this wild-eyed charge to launch her own assault upon old Karl.

In fact, I think there's a reasonable chance that she suggested the charge in the first place!

Even the last suggestion, calling Rove as a witness, which should be in the "no-fly zone," is a possibility; Swain may use her authority as a federal judge, once Rove is in the witness chair, to question him extensively about whether he suppressed the black vote using racist Diebold machines, thus stealing the 2004 election.

In the case before her, a huge flood of stock-scam spam inundated the website georgewbush.com, which was an add-on domain name to the website of the Republican National Committee; according to the Daily News, Rove tried to contact the company and get them to stop spamming the RNC's website:

The Daily News reported Sunday that e-mails, phone records and transcripts of phone conversations indicate Rove contacted McAllister and at least three stock promoters. The newspaper reported that White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Rove "vaguely remembered" the e- mail onslaught but could not recall whether he or any other White House worker contacted the Department of Justice.

This is the miniscule kernal of truth round which McAllister's attorney has wrapped the bizarre claim that the prosecution for stock fraud is all just a massive conspiracy to retaliate against McAllister, who is obviously the real victim here.

But I can't help think that, if his claim were bluntly put to a vote of the American people -- should stock promoters be tried on federal fraud charges merely for flooding the country with spam e-mails? -- about 90% of us would vote an emphatic Yes!

So if Judge Swain believes she will damage Karl Rove's national reputation, thus hurting the GOP's chances in November, she may be surprised by a voter backlash that instead hails him as a hero.

On the other hand, maybe she's just an ordinary, judicially minded federal judge, and she'll dismiss the claims with a single bang of the gavel... in which case, I doubt that Breitbart will see fit to report it.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, September 12, 2006, at the time of 2:46 PM