Jill Simpson goes to Washington

John H. Hinderaker continues to do the heavy lifting on the Jill Simpson story.  From his Weekly Standard column:

Jill Simpson is an unusual woman. A lawyer, she has scratched out an uncertain living in DeKalb County, Alabama. Fellow DeKalb County lawyers describe her as "a very strange person" who "lives in her own world." The daughter of rabid Democrats, she has rarely if ever been known to participate in politics as even a low-level volunteer. Yet today, she is a minor celebrity who is unvaryingly described in the press as a "Republican operative." Those who know her in DeKalb County scoff at the idea that she is a Republican at all.

...Jill Simpson, who barely got by in Alabama, is now toasted by the national Democratic party and featured on network and cable news. All this because she has testified--without a shred of supporting evidence--to a conspiracy so vast as to be not just implausible, but ridiculous.

Simpson claims to have participated in a phone conversation with several Alabama Republicans in which she was made privy to a plot involving the Republican governor of Alabama, Bob Riley, a former justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, a federal judge, two United States attorneys, several assistant United States attorneys, the Air Force, and, apparently 12 jurors, to "railroad" former governor Don Siegelman into his 2006 conviction for bribery and mail fraud...

And a final conspirator: Karl Rove, who, according to Simpson, orchestrated the plot against Siegelman.

This woman's story is so full of holes you could drive an eighteen wheeler through it.  So what?  Who needs facts when you can nail Karl Rove.  House Democrats, 60 Minutes and MSNBC's Don Abrams (who seems to have gone completely off the deep end on this story) are determined to give her the credibility she's never had in Alabama.  How's this for objective journalistic principles...from Abrams' webpage at MSNBC where he links to the stories he's done on the Simpson/Siegelman story:

Bush League Justice
A look at how the Bush Administration has politicized the Justice Department.

No forgone conclusions there. 

As Hinderaker points out, Simpson has offered no evidence whatsoever for her claims, the most outlandish being she was hired by Karl Rove to spy on Siegelman, to try and photograph him "in a compromising sexual position" with one of his aides.  This whole elaborate conspiracy concocted by Simpson is bordering on the insane.  In the extremely unlikely event any of it turns out to be true, truth would indeed be stranger than fiction.

From John Hinderaker's March 1, 2008, post at Power Line: 

Actually, every single person whose name Simpson invokes as she spins her stories says that she is either lying or deluded. Even Don Siegelman. Simpson says that she signed her affidavit after repeated urging by Siegelman, whom she spoke with several times on the telephone. Untrue, says Siegelman. As the Justice Department wrote in a letter to John Conyers' Judiciary Committee:

The alleged conversation described by Ms. Simpson has been denied by all of the alleged participants except Ms. Simpson. Indeed, even Mr. Siegelman states that Ms. Simpson's affidavit is false as it relates to him. Moreover, according to Ms. Simpson, she met with Mr. Siegelman and his co-defendant Richard Scrushy for several months before signing the statement at their urging. She also claims to have provided legal advice to them. She contends she drafted but did not sign a motion filed by Mr. Scrushy seeking to have the federal judge removed from the case.

Sometimes denial is just a river in Egypt.

There is a bit of good news, according to Hinderaker's column Jill Simpson is leaving Alabama, heading for the suburbs of Washington, D.C.  Good move on her part, plenty of targets there for her "lunatic" conspiracies, all in one place.

Scott Johnson writes about the conspiracy in today's Power Line here.

Comments

[linda]

Someone needs to write a play about this!

[Julie]

Do you think people would say it's too unrealistic? We could just call it a fantasy.