How the Heck Do They Screw This Up So Badly

Let's be clear about this: while it is clear that Ted Stevens is guilty of accepting bribes, he was only convicted of the easier-to-prove failure to report gifts.

In the process of prosecuting this case, the prosecution mad basic, and what appear to me (IANAL) to be very elementary errors in things like discovery and errors in the indictment, and now we have a whistle blower claiming irregularities in terms of witness contacts:

• A member of the prosecution accepted "multiple things of value" from a "cooperating source" (most likely former Veco CEO Bill Allen, his name shows up in the redacted complaint)
• An "inappropriate scheme" was created to relocate a witness.

I'm wondering if someone on the prosecution team was trying to throw the case. Bush, and Bush before him, and Reagan before him, have done their level best to politicize the DoJ, and this could be the fruit.

I find simple incompetence to be an inadequate discussion explanation.