of the Siegelman prosecution. On July 17, 2007, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D, MI-14) and Reps. Linda Sánchez (D, CA-39), Artur Davis (D, AL-07), and Tammy Baldwin (D, WI-02) sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, asking him to provide documents and information about former Alabama Democratic Governor Don Siegelman's recent conviction, among others, that may have been part of a pattern of selective political prosecutions by a number of U.S. Attorneys across the country. The deadline for the Attorney General's office to provide the information to Congress was July 27, 2007. The documents had not been produced by August 28, 2007, when Gonzales announced that he would resign. In an editorial that day, The New York Times said that despite Gonzales' departure, "[M]any questions remain to be answered. High on the list: what role politics played in dubious prosecutions, like those of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, and Georgia Thompson, a Wisconsin civil servant." Press reports have suggested that perhaps U.S. Attorney Leura Canary did not follow proper Department of Justice procedures in recusing herself from the Siegelman matter. There were no court filings to that effect and DOJ refused to disclose her recusal form under a Freedom of Information Act inquiry. On October 10, 2007, the House Judiciary Committee released testimony in which Dana Jill Simpson alleged that Karl Rove "had spoken with the Department of Justice" about "pursuing" Siegelman with help from two of Alabama's U.S. attorneys, and that Governor Bob Riley had named the judge who was eventually assigned to the case. She also claimed that Riley told her the judge would "hang Don Siegelman." In contrast with what she told 60 Minutes, in her sworn testimony before Congress, she never mentioned having met or spoken with Rove. Wider public Siegelman defenders note that more than 100 federal charges were thrown out by three different judges. Further, they argue that there was an obvious conflict of interest in the prosecution against Siegelman, since the investigating U.S. Attorney was married to the campaign manager of his political opponent in the 2002 gubernatorial campaign. Siegelman defenders argue that the sentence is unprecedented and the punishment excessive. By contrast, former Alabama Governor H. Guy Hunt, a Republican, was found guilty in state court of personally pocketing $200,000. State prosecutors sought probation, not jail time, in the Hunt case. Federal Communications Commission investigation 60 Minutes aired