Couple developments in the case against Ted Stevens.

From The Hill:

Attorneys for indicted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens on Wednesday pressed their case for transferring the trial, claiming that witnesses, events and Stevens himself are centered in Alaska.

Washington attorneys Brendan Sullivan and Robert Cary filed a five-page rebuttal in U.S. District Court to Monday’s filing by Justice Department lawyers over whether Stevens’s corruption case should stay in Washington or be moved to his home state.

Lawyers for Stevens have already obtained an expedited trial date, but they need help figuring out the evidence.  From the Anchorage Daily News:

Lawyers for Sen. Ted Stevens, facing a stepped-up trial schedule, asked for help Wednesday trying to make sense of more than 67,000 documents and 2,800 audio files that could end up as evidence against him.

Prosecutors and lawyers for Stevens had a brief hearing Wednesday afternoon to decide how to handle discovery materials the Justice Department is handing over to Stevens' defense team. That includes recordings of roughly 10,000 phone conversations.

Stevens, 84, faces a Sept. 24 trial on charges he knowingly took home repairs and gifts worth more than $250,000 from the oil field services company, Veco Corp., and failed to report them on his annual U.S. Senate disclosure forms. Next week, a judge will decide whether to grant Stevens' request to move the trial to Alaska.

Wednesday, one of Stevens' lawyers, Alex Romain, asked the government to provide more detail about 67,000 pages of documents they scanned electronically and handed over to the defense. Some of the documents don't show where they begin and end, the defense complained. Those documents include bank records, spreadsheets and evidence that was seized from Veco Corp. computers.