Alaska Politics Blog : Hearing Monday on Stevens witness issue

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Erika Bolstad

Erika Bolstad covers Alaska issues, including the congressional delegation, from Washington, D.C., for McClatchy Newspapers. Before joining the bureau in 2007, she spent seven years as a reporter at the Miami Herald, where she covered politics, government and the state legislature. E-mail Erika at ebolstad@adn.com.

Sean Cockerham

Sean Cockerham writes about Alaska state politics. He spent three years based in Juneau for the ADN before joining the Tacoma News-Tribune to write about Washington state politics. He went to Iraq twice for the News Tribune, and previously wrote about Alaska government and politics for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. E-mail Sean at scockerham@adn.com

Kyle Hopkins

Kyle Hopkins covers politics and other stories for the ADN. He covered the 2006 campaign for governor, has blogged extensively about Alaska politics, covered Anchorage city government and was a reporter based in the Mat-Su. He grew up in Southeast Alaska and previously was a reporter at the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and Anchorage Press. E-mail Kyle at khopkins@adn.com

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Alaska political corruption

The FBI raided state legislatures offices in Aug. 2006, and the fallout since has been epic in Alaska's political world.

Hearing Monday on Stevens witness issue

Posted by Alaska_Politics

Posted: November 25, 2008 - 2:07 pm

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From Richard Mauer in Anchorage --

The strange developments involving a prosecution witness who said he was untruthful in the case against Sen. Ted Stevens inched forward today with an order by the trial judge for a “brief hearing” in the matter Monday.

After dealing with cantankerous and AWOL jurors, a lawyer who he thought was making hand signals to a witness, and multiple accusations of prosecutorial misconduct by the defense, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan now has a witness who appears to be recanting at least part of his testimony.

Sullivan, in a one-sentence order to the attorneys in the case, indicated he was seeking ideas about how to move proceed in the matter of the witness, David Anderson, the estranged nephew of former Veco chief executive Bill Allen. Anderson, a welder by trade, helped supervise Veco-paid improvements made to Stevens’ home in Girdwood starting with a clean-up crew that spent about a week there in the spring of 1999.

Stevens’ defense team is a seeking a full-blown evidentiary hearing in February that would allow them to question FBI agents and government attorneys under oath about how they prepared Anderson for his testimony. They also want to learn whether Anderson had gotten immunity for himself, his family and friends for cooperating in the FBI’s public corruption investigation in Alaska.

Sullivan said next week’s hearing will be to “discuss” the defense requests.

Government prosecutors said Anderson lied in his letter but was truthful on the witness stand when he said he had no formal immunity agreement.

Prosecutors said last week they would respond more fully to Anderson’s letter Monday, but nothing appeared yesterday and nothing has been publicly filed yet today.

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