http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/26/washington/26stevens.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin A Justice Department prosecutor told a jury Thursday that Ted Stevens, who has represented Alaska in the Senate for 40 years, engaged in “a scheme to conceal from the public” a variety of gifts and home renovation services he received.
In her opening statement of what is expected to be a nearly monthlong trial, the prosecutor, Brenda Morris, said Mr. Stevens knowingly did not list on Senate disclosure forms goods and services totaling $250,000 that he received from an Alaska contractor, Bill Allen. Mr. Stevens, 84, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate’s history, has pleaded not guilty to seven felony counts of filing false statements.
Ms. Morris listed several items she said Mr. Stevens had received in recent years, including a sled dog and a massage chair, but at the heart of the case, she noted, was the makeover of the Stevens family home in Girdwood, Alaska. She said Mr. Allen, a freewheeling oil services contractor and onetime friend of Mr. Stevens, paid for most of the renovations, which included a new first floor built after jacking up the house, along with two new decks, a garage, lighting and a built-in gas grill.
In his opening statement, Mr. Stevens’s lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, told the jury that the senator did not “intentionally violate the law” and was misled by Mr. Allen about the exact costs. But Mr. Sullivan also offered a new and striking assertion: that Mr. Stevens had not been familiar with the details of the project and could not have knowingly concealed the costs, because Mr. Stevens’s wife of 28 years, Catherine Stevens, had the principal responsibility to look after the details of the renovation.
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