WASHINGTON — Sen. Ted Stevens was clueless about the cost and scope of a pricey makeover of his Alaska cabin that led to federal corruption charges and threatened his lengthy career, his attorney said Thursday at the opening of his trial.
Federal prosecutors allege that Stevens — one of Congress’ most powerful Republicans and a patriarch of Alaska politics for generations — lied on Senate forms about more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from a wealthy oil contractor and close friend, Bill Allen, who expected political favors in return.
But defense attorney Brendan Sullivan, in making the first public defense of the 84-year-old senator, shifted blame to Allen and responsibility to Stevens’ wife, Catherine.
“You cannot report what you don’t know,” Sullivan said. “You can’t fill out a form and say what’s been kept from you by the deviousness of someone like Bill Allen.”
Sullivan said the senator’s wife handled all the project’s finances and was the driving force behind the renovations.
“They have a saying in their house that when it comes to things in and around the tepee, the wife controls,” Sullivan said.
A longtime Senate powerhouse, Stevens has been highly successful in steering billions of federal dollars to his home state.
Prosecutor Brenda Morris dismissed the theory that he was oblivious to what went on around him. She portrayed Stevens as a crafty politician whose decades in office schooled him in the art of cultivating cronies and concealing gifts and favors.
“You do not survive politics in this town for that long without being very, very smart, very, very deliberate, very forceful and, at the same time, knowing how to fly under the radar,” Morris said.
