SHADES OF TED STEVENS? Byron York: An unusual turn in the Michael Flynn case. New judge. Delayed sentencing. Mueller ordered to produce evidence. Talks about “sensitive material.”

ROLL CALL: FBI Agent ‘Severely Disciplined’ for Misconduct in Ted Stevens Case, Director Says.

FBI Director James Comey told a Senate subcommittee Thursday that an agent faced discipline for conduct related to the investigation of late Sen. Ted Stevens.

Comey was ready for a line of questioning from Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski about the FBI’s conduct in the probe of her former Alaska colleague. Murkowski asked for an update from 2012 on allegations made by FBI whistleblower Special Agent Chad Joy about inappropriate conduct by a fellow agent.

“I did learn about this in the last week and get briefed in detail. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) inside FBI did investigate in response and identified an agent who had engaged in improper conduct there, and the agent was severely disciplined,” Comey said. “The discipline has been imposed.”

Comey was sworn-in as FBI director last September, succeeding longtime director Robert S. Mueller. Mueller previously faced questioning at the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce-Justice-Science about the Stevens case from both Murkowski and then-Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

While Comey did not identify the agent disciplined by name, details of Joy’s complaint went public in 2009. Joy made a series of allegations of impropriety against FBI Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner, outlined in a report from the Anchorage Daily News.

But the bogus charges against Stevens swung the election, producing just enough votes to pass ObamaCare. What punishment is enough for that?

A COMMENT ON THE TOM DELAY CASE: “Between Ted Stevens, the IRS case, and now this — people are going to seriously start asking if there’s organized use of the federal government against Republicans.” The Delay case was a state prosecution, but prosecutor Ronnie Earle was clearly playing politics, as were the DOJ people going after Ted Stevens. And the IRS folks, too, obviously.

Meanwhile, what accountability for Ronnie Earle now?

TED STEVENS’ PROSECUTORS are “lawyering up big time.”

MISSING FROM THIS WASHINGTON POST ANALYSIS OF THE TED STEVENS PROSECUTION DEBACLE is any hint of a political agenda on the part of the prosecutors.

SUSAN ESTRICH ON Ted Stevens and prosecutorial corruption.

MORE QUESTIONS ABOUT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT: “The bungled trial of former GOP Sen. Ted Stevens tainted more than just the Justice Department. It probably tipped the balance of a close election, and the fallout from that is far from over.”

WELL, THE ELECTION’S OVER: All Ted Stevens charges dropped. “The U.S. Justice Department has decided to drop all charges against former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens amid charges of prosecutorial misconduct, NPR reported on Wednesday, citing Justice officials.” He was a disgrace, but apparently not a criminal one. Dan Riehl comments: “Good thing he didn’t work for AIG.”

PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT IN THE TED STEVENS TRIAL. As InstaPundit readers know, I’m no Ted Stevens fan, but this does kind of stink.

AH, THE MEMORIES:  Ted Stevens on earmarks.

DUMBEST QUOTE OF THE YEAR? Don Young in defense of Ted Stevens.

LIKE A STOPPED CLOCK? A moment of honesty from Ted Stevens.

QUESTIONING THE TIMING of the Ted Stevens indictment.

PORKER, BUSTED: Ted Stevens has been indicted: “Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator and a figure in Alaska politics since before statehood, has been indicted on seven counts of falsely reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in services he received from a company that helped renovate his home. Stevens, 84, has been dogged by a federal investigation into whether he pushed for fishing legislation that also benefited his son, an Alaska lobbyist.”

Hmm. Didn’t I suggest to the Republicans a while back that they needed to encourage him to resign? Now it’s a bit late.

UPDATE: Reader Jo Schroeder isn’t impressed:

Why can’t the Feds make real convictions on real crimes? Now it’s just False Statements. What a crock

Yes, as my colleague Peter Morgan noted in the Northwestern University Law Review some years ago (It’s not on the Web, alas), the False Statements Act is an overused weapon in the prosecutorial arsenal. Which isn’t to say that Stevens isn’t a sleaze . . . .

And reader Vic Havens comments:

Unlike Rep. Jefferson (D-LA), Sen. Stevens (R-AK) will be pressured to resign by his party fellow-members. Unlike Rep. Jefferson (D-LA), Sen. Stevens (R-AK) will resign.

Brendan Loy, meanwhile, predicts widespread blogger schadenfreude on both the left and right.

MORE: RedState: Ted Stevens Must Resign.

TED STEVENS, ex-Senator? I’ve been telling the Repubs they should get rid of him. They should have listened. As usual.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: More trouble for Ted Stevens:

The 83-year-old senator is under scrutiny in a far-reaching Alaska corruption investigation. The FBI has been looking into whether Stevens received illegal gifts from a once powerful energy contractor, Veco Corp. Last week, a former Alaska House speaker was convicted of taking bribes from the same company. And during that former legislator’s trial, bruising details of the bribery scandal—which has engulfed several former state lawmakers, including Stevens’s son—have come to light.

Chipping away. No charges have been filed against Stevens or his son, and the senator maintains his innocence, as does his son, Ben Stevens. But the recent revelations appear to be chipping away at the elder Stevens’s support base. GOP Gov. Sarah Palin has called on Stevens to explain himself, and one independent poll taken this summer showed that 44 percent of voters in Anchorage had a negative view of the senator.

Stevens should retire now. But I doubt that he will.

JOHN FUND: Republicans should shun Ted Stevens:

It’s time for Senate Republicans to step up to the plate. It’s increasingly clear that their Sen. Stevens has ethically compromised himself and brought shame to the Senate. Will his colleagues continue to kowtow to him as a powerful Appropriations Committee member and allow him to serve on other key committees? Or will they send a signal that they are prepared to shun senators who abuse the public trust?

Read the whole thing. I have to say I agree.

IT’S TIME FOR THEM TO GO: More Ted Stevens troubles: “The FBI is investigating the National Science Foundation’s award of $170 million in contracts to the oil field services company that oversaw renovations on U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens’ home, McClatchy Newspapers has learned. . . . The disclosure provides further evidence of the degree to which the investigation of public corruption in the Alaska legislature has widened to include at least two of the state’s three members of Congress. Alaska’s sole congressman, U.S. Rep. Don Young, is also under investigation for his ties to Veco.”

I don’t know how much there is to this story, but Stevens’ questionable dealings continue to mount, and Young isn’t looking much better. If the GOP is smart, they’ll be encouraged to retire in time to run somebody obviously non-criminal in the next election.

MORE TROUBLE FOR TED STEVENS: Seems like it would be a good time for him to retire. But what Republican will deliver that message?

TED STEVENS’ HOUSE searched by the FBI. And IRS.

UPDATE: Don Surber: “Alaska’s three Republicans in Congress are an embarrassment. They should be impeached, er, expelled.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Stevens:

Top White House political advisor Karl Rove told a bunch of us over lunch last week that corruption was the single biggest issue in last fall’s election that overturned the GOP congressional majority. I have always agreed with this assessment, based on exit polls that showed corruption and runaway budget spending were actually more important to voters than Iraq.

So this Stevens business has to be swept away. The GOP should not defend him if he is guilty. Just clean house.

They should. They won’t. And it’ll cost them.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Ted Stevens is back in the news:

In 2004, two business partners of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) sold an empty lot in Anchorage to the National Archives and Records Administration for just over $3.5 million, more than doubling their year-old investment in the property.

Stevens earmarked the appropriation for NARA to purchase a site, although there is no indication he received any direct benefit from the deal and his spokesman said the Senator had nothing to do with the selection of the specific property.

But the project is one of several valuable contracts that the developers, Leonard Hyde and Jonathan Rubini, entered into with federal agencies while Stevens was either the ranking member or chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee — and had significant investments in several Rubini/Hyde companies.

Stevens’ investments with the two real estate magnates over a seven-year period turned him from one of the Senate’s least wealthy Members into a millionaire, according to his financial records and statements by Stevens over the years.

That relationship has prompted questions from watchdogs who say, at the least, it raises the potential for an appearance of a conflict of interest.

Gee, do you think. It also creates the appearance — really more like the certainty — that the Senate rules aren’t doing the job:

“It absolutely raises flags when you have a Member having a business relationship with someone who may benefit from the Member’s official actions,” even in an indirect way, said Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, a watchdog group that pushes for greater disclosure by lawmakers. “The way [disclosure is] being handled now is just completely inadequate,” Allison added.

Allison and other watchdogs argue the lack of adequate disclosure rules in the Senate makes it extremely difficult for the public to make an informed judgment on whether Stevens, for example, is acting appropriately, and they have called for more stringent rules.

Nothing should get in any bill without it being clear who put it in and why. How hard is that?

DAVID OBEY IS THE NEW TED STEVENS:

Sen. Ted Stevens was the butt of blogosphere jokes and target of blog swarm after blog swarm for the better part of two years when Republicans controlled Congress. But with Democrats in control, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., appears to be working hard to replace Stevens as Blogosphere Enemy No. 1.

Obey caused an uproar among liberal bloggers in March when he referred to the “idiot liberals” opposed to an emergency spending bill for military operations in Afghanistan in Iraq. Now he is under fire from bloggers on the right for moving to undermine Democrats’ pledge to be more transparent about “earmarking” projects in lawmakers’ districts for federal spending.

Actually, plenty of folks on the left are unhappy with him, too.

AS THE SCANDALS SWIRL IN ALASKA, Republicans might want to think of a plan B in case Ted Stevens has to go.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Feeling the heat in Alaska:

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has dropped his support for a controversial salmon marketing program he created that has funneled tens of millions of federal dollars to fishing industry interests in Alaska and has become an element of a Justice Department corruption investigation into the Senator’s former aide and his son, ex-state Sen. Ben Stevens (R). . . .

The AFMB’s connection to the FBI probe of Stevens’ son has brought renewed scrutiny on the project and the way it has doled out millions of federal dollars since 2003. Critics of the AFMB, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), have long complained that it is little more than a pork-barrel conduit for special interests and large fishing companies in Alaska.

Perhaps the most high-profile example of what McCain and others call wasteful spending was a grant from the AFMB to Alaska Airlines to paint a jumbo jet to resemble a salmon, a project that cost millions but that was justified as a way to advertise Alaska salmon products.

In the state, however, the AFMB has long been seen as a mechanism for companies and individuals close to Stevens and other members of the state’s Congressional delegation to secure federal dollars.

Pork isn’t just about helping the folks back home, or wasting taxpayer dollars. It’s about corruption.

TED STEVENS: Ban Wikipedia! Wikipedia problems notwithstanding, this is dumb. I can only conclude that somewhere in Alaska, someone is developing a federally-funded Wikipedia competitor. I’ll call it “the Wiki to nowhere!”

Okay, Stevens’ dumb proposal goes way beyond Wikipedia, but I couldn’t resist that shot.