>> it is day number three of the oral argument before the supreme court on the health care law. in fact, the third and final day getting under way just about now with the first of two arguments that the court will hear today. justices this morning considering the question, can the individual mandate be severed from the rest of the law when considering its constitutionality? again, that oral argument likely under way right about now at the supreme court. we'll air that for you this afternoon at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span3, on c-span radio and c-span.org. later justices will consider the question of whether congress can condition federal medicaid assistance to the states on their adoption of new

eligibility and coverage thresholds. that argument this afternoon and we'll 3:15 again here on c-span3, c-span radio and c-span.org. the u.s. house will get under way at noon eastern for their legislative work of the day. likely to be a long day of debate as members today will consider the republican 2013 budget plan put forth by the paul ryan. coverage, of course, on our companion network c-span. next up, we're going to take you to a senate judiciary committee, a hearing on the attorney general -- the attorney investigating the prosecution of former alaska senator ted stevens. he will testify before the committee today. henry schuelke's final report says justice department officials withheld information that would have "seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witnesses." but he stopped short of recommending any criminal

misconduct charges. senator stevens died in a plane crash of august 2010. he was convicted of failing to report gifts in october of 2008. but that conviction was thrown out at the request of the justice department after evidence surfaced of prosecutorial misconduct. here is mr. schuelke at the witness table. this should get under way shortly. live coverage here on c-span3

waiting for the senate judiciary committee to gavel in for a hearing from the attorney who investigated the prosecution of former alaska senator ted stevens. it should get under way shortly. the senate itself is under way. they will spend the day today dealing with a bill to impose a minimum tax rate on high income earners which insures high earners don't escape paying taxes due to tax breaks and write-offs. live senate coverage on c-span2. the house today beginning work on the 2013 budget, and their legislative day starts at noon eastern. of course, you've been seeing our information about our coverage of the supreme court, two oral arguments today. we'll air one at 1:00 p.m. and the last one at 3:15 here on c-span3. president obama returned last night from the security summit in seoul, south korea. and today, up on the hill, a house service -- house armed services committee hearing on that very same issue, korean

peninsula security. that's this afternoon. that's this morning at 10:00, getting under way about now. and you can follow that on c-span.org. another hearing that we're covering online for you is the house us hearing this afternoon on the mf global bankruptcy. that's financial services subcommittee hearing that gets under way this c-span.org. getting under way at 2:00 p.m. eastern.

that's this morning at 10:00, c-span.or

>> good morning, everybody. the -- it's interesting. i'm glad to see senator feinstein here and senator cornyn as well as senator grassley and myself because probably know we have a number of hearings going on around the capitol involving members of this committee. t this is an area great deal of interest in, as you can imagine. senators of both parties have talked to me about this. a lot of different contexts that our criminal justice system is the envy of the fmework provides that all individuals a guarantee the right to fair treatment, a fair trial.

but in order for a criminal justice system to work, the courts must ensure adherence to the rule of law. defendants have to be affordedv. but i feel and i think senator cornyn who is a would agree, prosecutors bear a very special responsibility in the system. they wield so much power when it comes to charging decisions, not only to bring a charge but ain,rmining when to withhold a trial, prosecutors have to uphold the law. they have to adhere to the highest ethical standards. they have to seek justice. the inintegrity of our criminal justice system relies heavily on prosecutors. on the fact that they want to make sure all parties, the state, the defendant, witnesses, victims, whatever else have to be treated fairly.

now, much of the country is focused on the killing last month of trayvon martin in florida. it's a matter in which the police decided not to bring charges. local prosecutor has since recused himself while a special state prosecutor re-evaluates the case. last week, the civil rights division of the u.s. department of justice naubsed it had begun an investigation into this matter. i share the president's heartfelt feelings and sense there needs to be a thor role investigation to get to the truth, which is what the american people want, the truth. last week, i chaired a judiciary committee hearing that focused on one pivotal component that spoishts the integrity of our system and importance of retaining critical evidence like dna that can be used to convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent. one of the witnesses at the hearing was the outstanding

attorney in dallas, craig watkins dedicated to re-evaluating prior cases to make sure they were handled fairly. we heard about the extraordinary work that he is doing and his criminal justice integrity unit is doing and the works of the judge in that -- in dallas. an example and model how prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys can work together to ensure all criminal defendants receive fair trials. now what's going to happen today, we're going to talk about what wendt wrong. i emphasize what wendt wrong in the trial of the late senator ted stevens. we're going to hear testimony from henry schuelke or i understand he just goes by hank. is that correct? the special counsel appointed by judge emmet sullivan to investigate allegations. the federal prosecutors in the state in this case engaged in intentional prosecutorial

misconduct by not sharing expull paer to evidence with the defense. in fairness, i would note his report is the accompanied by lengthy rebuttal admissions on behalf of those investigated which challenge the evidence of intentional misconduct. this is a prosecution that took place before the election of president obama. and before his appointment of attorney general holder. in fact, it was attorney general holder who decided based upon his own review of the matter to seek to dismiss the indictment and with drew the case after the jury's guilty verdict. and the justice department has also taken recent steps to improve its training of prosecutors and as the senior official dedicated to this purpose, the attorney general has south a thorough internal investigation what happened in the stevens case by the office of professional responsibility. i've talked to the attorney general about that report. he hopes to make the report public. i intend to have this committee

review that report. but the hearing today is part of our important oversight responsibility. prosecutorial misconduct cannot be tolerated. i wouldn't tolerate it when i was a prosecutor. it shouldn't be tolerated within our federal system under any circumstances at all. what happened in the stevens case should not happen again. whether the defendant is prominent or an indigent defendant, they should all be treated the same. significant evidence was not disclosed to the defense. critical mistakes were made throughout the course of the trial that denied senator stevens a fair opportunity to the defend himself. the sloppiness, mistakes, poor decisions in connection with the stevens case disturbed the judge hearing the case. but they also disturbed me. i might say that it disturbs an awful lot of the senators on both sides of the aisle.

this is not a partisan issue. the justice department needs to ensure such a situation is never repeated. day in day out prosecutors across the nation work tirelessly to seek justice and protect our communities. they do it at the highest standards possible. i speak often my time as a prosecutor in vermont because i'm proud of the dedicated service the prosecutors and law enforcement officers with whoom i had the privilege to work but in order for the justice system to, would, good prosecutors know they have to adhere without fail to the direction to seek justice for all parties, the government and the defendants, not just convictions. senator grassley, do you want to stay something and then we'll start with our witness. >> yeah. well, obviously you deserve a big thank you for holding today's hearing because this is eight very troubling matter that warrants more attention than it has gotten.

in his famous speech titled "the federal prosecutor," then attorney general and later justice jackson said "the prosecutor has more control over life, liberty and reputation than any other person in america. while the prosecutor at his best is one of the most beneficial forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, is he one of the worst." obviously fitting words for today's hearing as we examine the conduct of the justice department prosecutors in an effort to understand what wendt wrong in the prosecution of ted stevens. the government's prosecution of senator stevens was arguably the highest profile case ever brought by the justice department's washington, d.c. based public integrity section. it had consequences far beyond the jury's guilty verdict and impacted the senate election in 2008.

while all criminal cases should be handled with the jut most professionalism, cases of of this level of importance and publicity where elections can be swayed should be shining examples of the best of the justice department. they should have the best prosecutors, best agents and should be the centerpiece of america's criminal justice system. unfortunately, this case appears to be the opposite of the ideal. according to our witness today, the prosecution of senator ted stevens was "permeated by the systemic concealment of significant exculpatory evidence which would have independently corroborated his defense and his testimony and seriously damaged the testimony and credibility of the government's key witnesses." these are shocking statements that will call into question the conduct of those involved in

this prosecution and threaten to resonate further throughout justice. like so many times before, we owe much of our insight into the department's failures to a whistleblower. fbi agent chad joy came forward january '09 with allegations of misconduct in the investigation of stevens. while there were indicators of failures to turn over exculpatory material before, it was agent joy's disclosure to the courts that instigated the investigation. according to media reports, agent joil is no long wert fbi. and, of course, i hope it's not because he was run out of the fbi for blowing the whistle on then prosecution gone wrong. he deserves our thanks for having the currently to speak up. to its credit, the justice department ultimately moved to dismiss with prejudice the case against senator stevens. to judge sullivan's credit, he

did not ignore the whistleblower. he held the prosecutors in contempt of court for failure to turn over the exculpatory evidence. he then appointed an independent special consult to investigate and prosecute criminal contempt proceedings if appropriate against the justice department lawyers involved. mr. schuelke's report was recently released on march 15th and attorney general holder has publicly stated the report has disturbing findings. i think that's an understatement. reading through this report is like reading through a case study in poor management. the case was riddled with problems right from the start when doj saw the an expedited trial date. this decision was, which is not fully explained and something i want to know more about helped put the case on a collision course for failure. why would the department ask for an expedited trial case when the

review for brady material had just started and was far from complete? from the reports detail, the brady disclosure problems appeared to s.t.e.m. from an expedited time line, inadequate staffing, a lack of defined decisions and poor supervision. two major disclosure problems were not revealed until after the conclusion of the trial. expull paer to information from one of the prosecution witnesses and with the holding of impeachment material for the prosecution's star witness bill allen. the impeachment evidence is particularly troubling because it involves the witness's effort to cover up a relationship with a 15-year-old prostitute. it also raises questions because the justice department later advised state and local prosecutors not to pursue child sexual exploitation charges against allen and then dropped

any federal charges. this has led to a second investigation at the department's office of professional responsibility as to why that prosecution was declined. in addition to the failures to disclose exculpatory material, the case also suffered from a series of questionable decisions from management at main justice. for example, prosecutors claim that conflicting involvement between public integrity section and the leadership of the criminal division created an unclear chain of command. they also claimed that conflicts in personalities developed as a result of staffing decisions decided by senior leadership in d.c. despite these superfailure oo s oozes, there is no recommendation in the report related to management of the case. i am particularly interested in this aspect because management failures such as this are sanctionable conduct by opr. it will be interesting to see how this report compares to the

final report issued by opr. opr's report should include some review of the management of this case in addition to disclosure failures. the attorney general should ensure that are full unredacted version of that opr report is provided to congress. at an oversight hearing november 11th, november last year, when the senator asked for a copy of the final opr report, holder said "that is up to the people at opr. what i have indicated was that i want to share as much as that as we possibly can given the very public nature of that the matter and the very public decision that i made to dismiss the case." despite the attorney general's purported desire to make this information public, his statement that it is "up to the people at opr" lead me to believe that we aren't likely to ever see that report. the justice department has routinely blocked the release of

opr investigations citing privacy laws. an employee writes of the attorney an agent guilty of misconduct, the attorney general ultimately oversees opr and if he truly wants that information made public, he should order it released upon the conclusion of the investigation. in the event he doesn't, the privacy act has an exemption for congress and so mr. chairman, even under the department's tortured reading of the plain text of that statute, i hope as chairman, you will be able to obtain the opr report unredacted reform. i'll be happy to work with you on that issue. a lot of things wendt wrong in the prosecution of stevens and despite a strongly -- the strongly reported report that we're discussing here today, it seems nobody has been held accountable at the justice department. a criminal defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial regardless of who he is is fundamental to our criminal justice system. yet, when those rights were

intentionally violated by the attorneys at the justice department, it seems no one was held accountable. i find this fact even more disturbing than the findings of this report and we have an obligation to hold the justice departmentwet wrong here and pr from happening in the future. thank you. >> thank you. i noted let's take it one step at a time. the attorney general deserves credit for the report dismissed. he has told me that we will be seeing it. so let's take it one step at a time. today, we have hank shul can i who was appointed by u.s. district judge emmet sullivan to investigate allegations of prosecutorial misconduct and the prosecution of u.s. senator ted stevens. mr. shul can i filed his report with the court on november 14th,

2011. by court order, it was made publicly available two weeks ago on march 15th accompanied by the submission of the six prosecutors who were the subjects of his investigation. mr. schuelke has worked in private practice income washington, d.c. since 1979 when he starred his own law firm. before that, he served for four years in the army's judge advocate general's court. three years as a military judge, seven years ars assistant u.s. attorney for the district of columbia three years executive assistant u.s. attorney. mr. schuelke, please go ahead, sir. >> thank you, sir. chairman leahy, senator grassley, senator feinstein is, senator cornyn, good morning. i appear this morning at your invitation to address whatever questions you might have concerning our report to judge sullivan on the subject of our

investigation conducted pursuant to judge sullivan's order of april 7, 2009. we were ordered to investigate and to prosecute such criminal contempt proceedings as may be appropriate against william welch, brenda morris, nicholas marsh, edward sullivan, joseph bow tinny and james goeke, the department of justice attorneys responsible for the prosecution of united states versus senator theodore f. stevens. in the united states district court for the district of columbia. i come before you this morning not as an advocate for any position. but rather to respond to your questions. i have submitted to the committee a copy of our report

which as senator leahy has indicated was filed on the public docket in the u.s. district court on march 15th. i should like to note that i was of assisted throughout our investigation by my colleague, william b. shields. and note, as well, that our work would not have been possible without the complete cooperation of the department of justice at the highest levels of the department and by the department's office of professional responsibility. with that, i will be pleased to answer your questions. >> well, thank you very much, mr. schuelke. and we have been joined by

another former prosecutor, senator klobuchar . the supreme court, we mentioned brady earlier, and that case brady versus maryland, prosecutor learns that they have a clear constitutional duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to a defendant prior to trial. it's a constitutional duty. it's also common sense. if prosecutors fail to disclose eskulpatory evidence whether intentionally or not, the integrity of the whole criminal justice system in my belief is diminished. you also end up convicting or have the risk of convicting innocent people. i mention this because in your report, you found the information withheld from the defense was i quote you, "quintessential brady information."