Column: Sen. Stevens doesn't own the witness chair

Law | Politics

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

"Ted Stevens has sat on many things during his 40 years in the Senate.

The 84-year-old Alaskan has had a seat on the commerce committee longer than any Republican in history, he boasted during his trial on corruption-related charges. He also sat on the Senate committees on appropriations, rules, governmental affairs and ethics -- in the chairman's seat, no less. As the former Senate president pro tempore, he sat frequently in the presiding officer's chair. And Stevens, the longest-sitting Republican in the Senate, often rests his haunches at his center-aisle desk on the Senate floor.

But what got Stevens in trouble was another seat he chose to occupy: a $2,695 vibrating Shiatsu massage lounger from Brookstone.

And that has set up perhaps the cruelest irony in the whole sad Stevens trial: The chairman is in danger of being unseated by a chair.

Prosecutor Brenda Morris, toward the end of her cross-examination of the senator yesterday, settled in for a long discussion about the chair, which Alaska restaurateur Bob Persons bought for Stevens as a gift seven years ago -- but which Stevens never reported on his Senate disclosure forms.

"And the chair is still at your house?" Morris asked.

"Yes," Stevens conceded.

"How is that not a gift?"

"He bought that chair as a gift, but I refused it as a gift," Stevens explained. "He put it there and said it was my chair. I told him I would not accept it as a gift.""

Get the Story:
Washington Sketch: Taking the Witness Chair, but Not Owning It (The Washington Post 10/21)
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Sen. Stevens Wraps Up Testimony in His Trial (The Washington Post 10/21)
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Prosecutor Confronts Alaska Senator in Ethics Trial (The New York Times 10/21)
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