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Ted Stevens's defense team told a federal jury Thursday that the Alaska Republican is a man of good character and honesty and that he had never intended to make any false statements on Senate financial disclosure reports.
Brendan Sullivan, Stevens’s lead lawyer, said the government’s allegations that the senator knowingly concealed more than $250,000 in gifts from the now-defunct oil-services firm Veco Corp. are false. He said that any errors on his financial disclosure forms were the result of miscommunication between Stevens, his wife Catherine and staff members, and efforts by Bill Allen, the chief executive of Veco, to conceal any bills that Stevens should have paid.
“The evidence will show he didn’t want these things, he didn’t ask for these things,” Sullivan said of some of the renovations that were made to his home in the ski town of Girdwood, Alaska. Sullivan said Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history, paid every bill he was given. In his opening remarks, the attorney added that the senator did not know he was receiving handsome renovations because he rarely stays in Girdwood. When he's not in Washington, he typically travels the geographically large state of Alaska, Sullivan said.
"They are lucky to spend 20 days a year in that residence," Sullivan said.
Stevens, 84, is facing seven counts of felony for not disclosing the gifts on his Senate financial disclosure forms. He is hoping to be exonerated before November, when he faces reelection for a seventh full term.
Sullivan said the defense was prepared to call other sitting senators, including Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), to vouch for the senator’s character.
“This is not window dressing,” Sullivan said, adding that evidence of good character “goes to the core” of the case.
Jurors will also hear about Stevens’s life, like when his first wife was killed in a 1978 plane crash, and his efforts to secure Alaskan statehood in the late 1950s.
"You’ll learn a lot about the man himself," Sullivan said, calling him the "workhorse of the Senate."
The government will spend the next three weeks making its case, and Stevens's lawyers said they need only a week to make theirs.
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