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By Tim Kalich, The Greenwood Commonwealth
August 16, 2008

I usually shy away from conspiracy theories.

When the Democrats and their attorneys began claiming last year that the Bush administration was using its prosecutorial might to target opposition candidates and their major financial supporters, I greeted the allegation with a skeptical eye.

I'm not so sure anymore.

This past week's developments in the four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant seem timed to help derail Democrat Ronnie Musgrove's bid to snatch one of the state's two U.S. Senate seats from Republican hands.

Three Georgia businessmen, one by one over the course of four days, entered guilty pleas to federal charges arising out of the Yalobusha County beef plant's quick and costly demise.

The three, all executives with The Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., were largely left off the hook on the more serious charges that they had swindled the state out of at least $2 million and had left the plant's vendors and contractors holding the bag.

Instead, they were allowed in a plea bargain to confess to trying to buy influence with Musgrove by steering $25,000 to the then-governor's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2003.

The orchestrated guilty pleas -- and the prosecutors' suggestion that more indictments could be forthcoming -- are a boon to the campaign of Republican Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the vacant Senate seat in December but is considered vulnerable. They leave a cloud over Musgrove in voters' minds and provide more fodder for negative campaign ads from the GOP camp, even though Musgrove has not been charged with any wrongdoing and there's nothing in the court records to document he did anything illegal.

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