Former Bush aide: Scott Pelley deserved to be fired because he was mean to me

A former aide to President George W. Bush argued that former “60 Minutes” anchor Scott Pelley deserved to be fired by newly-appointed CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss — because Pelley was mean to him.

“Mr. Pelley, like many others in the elite media, is out of touch,” wrote Karl Rove, who served as one of Bush’s top advisers, in an editorial for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. “Though he wasn’t present, Mr. Pelley says his colleagues were ‘shocked’ when Ms. Weiss asked a meeting of CBS journalists, ‘Why does the country think you’re biased?’ The answer to Ms. Weiss’s question is: Because so much of the legacy media is biased.”

After characterizing journalists as “insular and biased against flyover America,” Rove detailed his personal experience with Pelley, who asked Rove probing questions about his alleged vendetta against a formerly-powerful Democratic politician, Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama.

“In February 2008, he interviewed Jill Simpson, a small-town Alabama lawyer, on ‘60 Minutes,’” Rove wrote. “She claimed that in 2001, when I was a White House aide, I asked her to gather evidence against the state’s then governor, Don Siegelman. As Mr. Pelley put it in interviewing Ms. Simpson: ‘Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman in a compromising sexual position with one of his aides.’”

Rove added, “This was sheer nonsense. I’d never met Ms. Simpson and never asked her or anyone else to snoop into the governor’s activities. As far as I know, Mr. Siegelman has never been credibly accused of adultery.” He then characterized Pelley’s decision to ask the question without prior evidence, corroboration or receipts as a failure to undertake “due diligence,” claiming that he was instead motivated by ideology and partisanship.

“Basic due diligence would also have stopped CBS’s Dan Rather from alleging that Mr. Bush used political connections to join the National Guard in 1973,” Rove added, referring to an infamous scandal in which CBS News used a falsified document in its reporting. “That too was fake—based on a document produced with Microsoft Word, which didn’t exist in 1973. Mr. Rather resigned.”

While there is no evidence that Rove tried to obtain compromising sexual material about Siegelman, a number of sources claim that Rove was fixated on destroying the popular Democrat’s political career. Siegelman himself claimed as much to Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman in 2012.

“No one wants to go to prison for something that is not a crime, and especially one orchestrated by Karl Rove,” Siegelman said. “Everyone remembers the eight attorney—the eight U.S. attorneys who were fired by Rove during the Bush administration because they would not pursue political prosecutions. Well, the U.S. attorney in Alabama, appointed by Bush, vetted by Rove, pursued a political prosecution, and this is the flip side of that congressional investigation that stirred up a stink about how Rove was using the Department of Justice as a political weapon.”

He added that because a number of casino interests and powerful Alabama politicians opposed Siegelman’s effort to establish a lottery that would help Alabama’s low-income students get a free college education, they worked with Rove to destroy him.

“I was raising money, and I had asked a gentleman to raise money for this state referendum,” Siegelman said. “He did, and later I appointed him to the same board on which he had served through three previous governors. And it’s interesting to note that all three of these previous governors had received contributions directly from this CEO. I received a contribution, but it went to a referendum campaign, yet I was targeted and convicted with—for bribery.”

He added, “The other interesting note here is that the judge lowered the standard by which juries can convict to not an expressed quid pro quo or an explicitly asserted quid pro quo, but, in my case, an implied quid pro quo. So, now we have a standard in Alabama where people can be convicted not on evidence that they actually got together and decided to swap money for favors, but to allow the jury to assume or to imply that there was such a deal.”

In 2017 a documentary called “Atticus v. Architect: The Political Assassination of Don Siegelman” directed and written by Steve Wimberly, chronicled the numerous individuals who believed Siegelman was unjustly targeted by Rove and other powerful Republicans.

“Insiders, both Republicans and Democrats alike, have come together to tell the world about the horrible injustice that occurred in this case, and reveal the overwhelming evidence of judicial misconduct remained hidden for far too long,” the press release explained. “The prosecutor that indicted Siegelman for bribery was married to the campaign manager of Siegelman's opponent in an upcoming election. Prosecutors were allowed to get away with a staggering degree of prosecutorial misconduct including. Siegelman political foe, Mark Fuller, was selected to preside over the trial, and has since been forced off the bench for ethics violations.”

It added, “The judicial abuse and malfeasance ran so deep, that for the first time in American history, 113 former States Attorneys General from both parties united together to protest the deliberate injustice that was directed at former Gov. Siegelman.”