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U.S. to drop charges against former Sen. Stevens: report | Politics | ReutersWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department has decided to drop all charges against former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens amid accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, NPR reported on Wednesday, citing Justice officials.
Stevens, a Republican who served longer than any other U.S. senator before losing a November re-election race, was convicted in October of seven counts of lying on a Senate disclosure form to conceal $250,000 in gifts and home renovations from an oil industry executive and other friends. Allegations of prosecutorial misconduct have delayed his sentencing.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder reviewed the case himself and decided not to continue to defend the conviction in the face of questions about prosecutors'' actions, NPR reported on its website.
There were a lot of rumors of problems on how the prosecutor's handled this case during the trial. A lot of legal scholars thought the judge should have dismissed the case based on misconduct, but it obviously never happened.
In any case, it is probably for the best that Stevens is out of the Senate. He made a major mistake in my opinion by not dropping out of the race so that a legitimate Republican candidate could run. Almost any Republican could have beat the Democrat candidate in Alaska. He cost the Republicans a badly needed Senate seat.