WASHINGTON — A combative Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska sparred with a top Justice Department attorney Friday, exhibiting from the witness stand at his corruption trial the pugnacity that long has been his trademark on Capitol Hill.
Grilled for 90 minutes by Brenda Morris in a pivotal moment in the case, Stevens ardently defended the way he handled disclosures of benefits he received from an oilman.
In the process, he derided some of the questions posed to him. He complained that the government was drawing unwarranted conclusions about his conduct.
And the long-serving Republican, a Harvard Law School graduate, offered some advice to Morris about how to frame her queries.
"I think you better rephrase your question," he said acerbically at one point. "Your question is tautological."
Stevens, 84, is charged with failing to report more than $250,000 in home improvements and gifts he allegedly received from Bill J. Allen, former owner of VECO Corp., an oil field services firm in Alaska.
Stevens contends that he and his wife paid for much of the home renovation but that Allen may have held back some bills from them. The senator and his wife have acknowledged that other items of value showed up at the home, located in a ski town known as Girdwood, southeast of Anchorage. But they say they never considered them gifts that required reporting under Senate rules.
The cross-examination, expected to conclude Monday, followed Stevens' high-stakes decision to take the stand in his own defense.
How jurors react to Stevens could be key to the trial's outcome. But legal experts said he had little choice but to have the jury hear him assert his innocence in his own voice.
Morris quizzed Stevens on why, if the flow of goods and services he received from Allen was unwanted, he did not try harder to stop it.
Stevens testified that it was the habit of his then-friend Allen to leave items of value that Stevens neither wanted nor requested, including a Viking gas grill and bronze artwork, at the home.
One year, he said, he asked Allen to have someone handle the installation of his Christmas lights. Allen responded by providing an elaborate display worth about $20,000.
"Well, sir, if you didn't want all these items, why didn't you just ask Bill Allen for your key back?" Morris asked. "You were the lion of the Senate, but you did not know how to stop a man from putting big-ticket items in your home?"
