The U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has been investigating members of the Bush administration to see if they violated federal law in the last national election. They now believe they have found their first violator of the law, specifically the Hatch Act.
The OSC says that General Services Administration head Lurita Alexis Doan violated the Hatch Act during a January 26th meeting at the GSA, where GSA personnel met with J. Scott Jennings. Jennings is the Deputy Director of Political Affairs in Karl Rove's office at the White House.
After Jennings finished a presentation on the upcoming mid-term elections of 2006, Ms. Doan asked, "How can we help our candidates?" OSC investigators have taken sworn statements from several GSA personnel who remember the remark by Doan.
The OSC report says, "Her actions, to be certain, constitute an obvious misuse of her official authority and were made for the purpose of affecting the result of an election. One can imagine no greater violation of the Hatch Act than to invoke the machinery of an agency, with all its contracts and buildings, in the service of a partisan campaign to retake Congress and the Governors' mansions."
For her part, Doan says she does not remember making the statement. In fact, Doan says she doesn't remember what happened in the meeting because she spent the meeting sending and receiving e-mails on her BlackBerry. That might have worked, except the investigators obtained her e-mail records and said they were "unable to corroborate that Administrator Doan was utilizing her BlackBerry or other personal digital assistant during the January 26 meeting."
So she not only violated the law, when she was caught she lied about it. Pretty typical behavior for a Bush appointee, most of whom think the laws shouldn't apply to them. She needs to resign and follow Attorney General Gonzales right out the administration door.
Of course, Karl Rove is the architect of this effort to subvert the law and use government employees to affect the election. Hopefully, he will be the next to go.
Is there anyone in the Bush administration that respects the law?
"Of course, Karl Rove is the architect of this effort to subvert the law and use government employees to affect the election.
ReplyDeleteI am simply curuious as to what evidence you have of that accusation.
The evidence is everywhere, Boda. There are none so blind as those that will not see.
ReplyDeletejobs: Thanks for posting oon a topic that's gotten scare coverage even in the blogosphere.
The Office of Special Counsel said that Rove was the main subject of their inquiry. All of the aides sent out to do these presentations were from Rove's office.
ReplyDeleteIt's obviously a Rove operation - that is not questioned in Washington. The only question is whether it's legal or not. I don't think it is, and it looks like the OSC doesn't either.
The Office of Special Counsel said that Rove was the main subject of their inquiry. All of the aides sent out to do these presentations were from Rove's office.
ReplyDeleteIt's deja vu all over again.
What a difference a year makes? Apparently not much.
How many times can the Left cry "Wolf"?
When the wolf is at the door, it's not inappropriate to cry wolf.
ReplyDeleteHere's another example of crying wolf from April 2006, this time from Wally Whateley's House of Horrors in Lubbock. If you read the comments, you'll see that Wally was so bound and determined to believe that President Bush was the leaker of Valerie Plame's identity that he couldn't (or wouldn't) see the illogic of his argument.
ReplyDeleteTo Wally, Bush's involvement in Plamegate was every bit as "obvious" as Rove's was to Jason Leopold one month later, and apparently Rove's involvement in this affair is to you.
All I'm trying to say that in Washington, nothing is "obvious." The Republicans played this same game with the Clintons over Cattlegate, Filegate, and any number of other "gates" with similar results (technically, Whitewater wasn't a "gate").