Posted on 12/06/2007 8:47:51 AM PST by McGruff
When his former senior aide puts the lie to his alibi on working to free Wayne Dumond, what does Mike Huckabee do? Blame it on liberals, of course. Among those not buying: Talking Points Memo.
And then there's this from Editor and Publisher, repeating the smoking cannon of pardons aide Butch Reeves' disputation of his boss' account of the secret parole board meeting at which Huckabee lobbied for Dumond's release. This adds another former aide, David Sanders, to the pants-on-fire chorus:
ABC News' Brian Ross is also out with a report in this vein today. It includes a quote from David J. Sanders, a political columnist for Stephens Media in Arkansas: "The record clearly shows now Mike Huckabee did advocate for Wayne Dumond's release. I think there are real questions about whether he has been forthright on this issue."
Waas added a surprising update later in the day, reporting that, contradicting Huckabee's claims, his former senior aide told Huffington Post that, as governor of Arkansas, "Huckabee indeed told the state's parole board that he supported the release of a convicted rapist."
The senior aide, Olan W. "Butch" Reeves, attended a controversial parole board meeting with Huckabee in Oct. 1996. "The clear impression that I came away with from the meeting was that he favored Dumond's release," Reeves said. "And I can understand why board members would believe that to be the case."
Huckabee had repeated at a press conference today that he "did not ask [the board] to do anything."
UPDATE: Here's a long statement from the Huckabee camp finally admitting after all these years that Huckabee indeed talked to the parole board at some length about Dumond and the injustice he'd suffered, but NOT, he insists, as an argument for parole. He merely was explaining why he'd earlier considered executive clemency for Dumond. Uh huh.
Also today: Under the heading, "They're Not the Ten Suggestions, Mr. Huckabee," and accompanied by a photo of the passage about false witness, Americablog's John Aravosis writes:
All politicians lie. But it takes a special kind of politician to be a liar and a preacher. That puts his lie in a special category of deception.
Also, I'm loving Huckabee's whine that it is not fair to bring this up -- that is, something from his record -- during the election season. Consider a candidate's record instead of his glib one-liners? What a horrible idea. Especially for a dishonest candidate.
DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN: Spotted on the streets downtown -- Newsweek's Mike Isikoff, captain of the panty posse during the late great Whitewater Etc. snipe hunt. His presence -- and that of other Newsweek writers -- indicates a cover story might be in the works. More hype? Or a little something contrarian? We'll see. Presumably Butch Reeves is now on Mike's to-see list.
I also think it worth posting that Freepers check out the Ark Times site. Read past issues, you will discover they are most leftist leaning. And Max Brantly is one of the worst. I did a whole series of email exchanges with Brantly a few years ago when he referred to Bush supporters as being nothing better than “hicks with rifle racks on the back window of their pickemup trucks”.
DuMont? Isn’t he the guy who had his testicles chopped off?
Hey McG...
I’ve been following this story and I’ll be honest here...it’s that bit about Dumond’s rape victim being Bill Clinton’s cousin.
Before I go on...I’m not kidding. Well maybe I’m half-kidding, but the coincidence here with Clinton is a bit startling. Or seriously, is everyone in Arkansas really related?
So moving on...first...why would a Governor be doing everything this Huckabee feller did for the fine Mr. Dumond? From what I’ve read I gather that Huckabee thought that Dumond was railroaded, that the evidence against him was stark.
But seriously folks, do governors really get all that involved in these sorts of things? Yes I can understand a governor having a conscience, a desire to seek the truth...duh though nowadays with the dishonest political class we have who knows...but wouldn’t a governor, even a decent honest one who sought the truth...pass down a more in-depth investigation to an underling, someone more knowledgeable than the governor? Wouldn’t a governor then send the highest guy in the prosecutorial ladder in that state to a parole meeting to discuss the governor’s case?
Because as I understand it Huck went to that parole board meeting himself and Hotair.com has a timeline of all this Dumond stuff and nowhere does it indicate someone from Huck’s admin or the Arkansas justice system went to that parole board before Huck took up the matter himself.
I think the whole timeline is odd as all get out but I admit that I know pretty much nothing about the movements of governors. Just using common sense and this whole story seems askew.
As for the Clinton connection, well hey I wear a tinfoil hat as well as most anybody on FreeRepublic, but when I see the words Clinton, rape and rapists being freed....well I tend to think there’s a connection. Except, I know, that it was the victim that was Bill’s cousin but still...
This is just starting to look like Huck did someone a favor, someone important enough to require direct governor intervention and pressure. So sue me.
Further, man I’d love to see this gotten to the bottom of. It just smells.
And this fine Mr. Dumond went on to later rape and murder a young woman as I understand it? A woman who should be now attending her childrens’ weddings and tending her gardens.
This whole thing bothers me all to hell.
Not to mention adding to my wariness about this fellow and his friendly, aw-shucks smile.
Maybe it’s a Clinton thing.
Dumond case revisited: A reminder of Huckabee's role in his freedom
Unless the facts presented by this paper can be disputed, I think these stories deserve to be posted for review and for Freepers to make up their own minds and not just be tossed aside due to the source's usual bias.
I just read Wikipedia, and I’m totally confused:
DuMond was convicted of rape. Before sentencing, he had his nuts ripped off. He was sentenced to what was widely seen as an unusally long term by Gov. Clinton, who was related to the victim. Clinton’s Lt Gov., Jim-Guy Tucker, reduced his sentence to “only” 40 years, making his eligible for release in 15. Huckabee met with the parole board, which subsequently released him. He then murdered another woman.
What is Huckabee charged with? Evidentally, there is some disagreement in characterizing his meeting with the parole board, but Huckabee never said he didn’t want the guy released, did he? How is this “lying” and not merely quibbling over characterizations?
I ask these questions out of ignorance, not out of trying to rhetorically defend Huckabee. I don’t particularly LIKE Huckabee, but I also am wondering what all the hubbub is over a potential future Republican presidential candidate. IS there any THERE there, or are we just doing Hillary’s dirty work for her?
Agreed: My only point was that Freepers take the given information by this source with a grain of salt given their extreme bias.
I read the Gazette article. I won’t deny that Democrat bias was likely the *motivation* underlying the piece; even discounting for that, the article is carefully written and contains a lot of FACTS about the event.
The facts presenting are damning, if true. And the facts are easily checked.
From the Boston Globe article: Huckabee could face hurdles from the past Parole of rapist haunts campaign
...After becoming governor in 1996, he [Huckabee] announced his desire to commute Dumond's sentence. Dumond's rape victim, Ashley Stevens, saw it differently.
Stevens, now 40 and living in the western United States, said she tried to persuade Huckabee not to shorten the sentence for Dumond.
"I told [Huckabee]: If you ever let him out, he's going to do it again," she said in an interview.
She was able to get a meeting with the governor - who, she said, had not spoken to her before announcing his intention to commute Dumond's sentence - but realized Huckabee had "made up his mind." So Stevens stood up, she said, walked over to Huckabee, who was seated on a sofa, squatted down and thrust her face inches from his.
"I said, 'This is how close I was to Dumond's face for an hour,' " Stevens recalled. " 'I'll never forget his face, and you'll never forget mine.' "
The parole board - following a closed meeting with Huckabee - decided to let Dumond go. The following year, Dumond committed the Missouri slaying."
Can you believe it? Huckabee blew her off. He IGNORED her plea not to let Dumond out. Ashley Stevens is right, Huckabee will never forget her face. But a turd's a turd, Huckabee will just float to the top and not let the stench bother him.
Doing more research:
>> It was a process marked by deviation from accepted parole practice and direct personal lobbying by the governor, in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board… The board did not allow its recording secretary to attend a closed session with the governor regarding Dumond, nor was the session taped, a departure from custom.<<
Was it illegal, or merely a departure from custom? And what constitutes “a departure from custom?” What customs exist for dealing with a man who had his nuts torn off and proudly displayed by politicos, connected to the governor who was related to the rape victim being discussed? It’s a highly unusual case; doesn’t such a highly unusual case allow for “departure from custom” unless there’s a whiff of special interest?
>> Ermer Pondexter, a former member of the Post Prison Transfer Board, says she was persuaded by the parole board chairman Brownlee to vote for Dumond’s release and because she knew the governor supported it. <<
“Knew the governor supported it” is a curiously indirect way of saying “the governor told me to,” unless the governor did not, in fact, tell her to.
>> Dumond was transferred to the Tucker unit in December 1996, after his request for rehearing. Had he stayed at Varner, he could not have been scheduled for a new hearing before Jan. 20, 1997, Huckabee’s deadline to act on his announcement that he was considering commuting Dumond’s sentence. His transfer — which the Department of Corrections has explained in conflicting ways — allowed him to get on the Tucker hearing schedule, which let the board parole Dumond before Huckabee’s deadline — and thus take the heat for his release. <<
Is the Times insinuating Huckabee got him transferred?
>> “The reason that I voted as I did was because Mr. Brownlee specifically asked me to vote for the parole,” Pondexter said. “I thought that Mr. Brownlee was acting on behalf of the governor, and I was trying to support the chairman of the board, and I was trying to support the governor ... “I signed the [parole] papers because the governor wanted Dumond paroled. I was thinking the governor was working for the best interests of the state. So I signed it.” <<
So, in other words, the governor never requested it of Ms. Poindexter. She just asserts that she figured the governor wanted her to. In other words, this does not contradict Huckabee.
What it does is establish that a bunch of Clinton appointees are differing with Huckabee’s characterization, but can’t objectively come up with anything Huckabee actually did or said wrong. And a liberal rag with resolutely sang praises of every rape and molestation the Clintons ever committed is characterizing those characterizations as accusations, using innuendo (“his [Dumont’s] transfer”) because they know they can’t even make an allegation (“Huckabee transferred him [Dumont] because…”)
And FReepers are stoking this?
I’ve admittedly moved from neutral to highly skeptical, unless someone cares to set me straight about this case.
Some reporter will get around to asking him directly if he believes Drumond was guilty of the rape/murder and he'd be stupid to admit that he believes Drumond was framed and wrongly convicted since he'll never be able to prove it.
Yes they are. Someone on another thread tried to excuse Huckabee by saying that the board was full of Democrats not appointed by Huckabee. Only one problem with that...according to the board's website, Board Chairman Leroy Brownlee is still on the board and was originally appointed in 1994, and since they are 7 year terms, it proves he was reappointed by Huckabee after this case was over.
I don’t think his involvement in the matter should have been a serious difficulty for his presidential nomination.
But if the reports that he’s trying to conceal his involvement turn out to be true, that would be a great concern. IT would make him truly “clintonesque”.
I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I’ve been trying to do so the past two days since most of his accusers were democrats. But his denials seem particularly specific and absolute compared to what looks like the logical conclusion from the various stories — that he DID have something good to say about the guy.
As I said, if he had come out and said “Yes, I told the board I supported parole, because I had some doubts as to his case, because of the extenuating circumstances of his castration, and because he had been an exemplary prisoner who showed no signs of being a continued threat to society.”, I could have argued he had a rational case.
But it sure looks like he’s denying the truth here.
LOL, Fishtalk, I'd like you to meet my brother Darryl, my uncle Darryl, my other brother Darryl, ...
One point of clarification: The article is in the Ark Times a totally different paper from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
>> The article is in the Ark Times a totally different paper from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Right you are! Sorry, my bad.
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