President Obama’s White House has released its report into accusations that the administration offered Rep. Joe Sestak a job if he would drop out of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary against Sen. Arlen Specter.
“We have concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the law,” White House counsel Bob Bauer wrote in a 2-page memo released to reporters this morning. Read the memo in full here.
Bauer says flatly in the memo that reports Sestak (D-PA) was offered the Secretary of the Navy position in exchange for backing off the challenge to Specter (which he won May 18) are “false.” Sestak first acknowledged there was some sort of offer in an interview earlier this spring, and has declined repeatedly to get into the details. The White House has maintained nothing improper happened.
The report today states White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel asked former President Clinton to reach out to Sestak. “White House staff did not discuss these options,” which would have helped avoid a “divisive Senate primary,” Bauer writes.
During that communication with Sestak in June and July of 2009, Clinton raised the idea of an unpaid advisory board position for which he was highly qualified, the White House said. But Sestak “declined the suggested alternatives.”
Bauer concludes the memo with:
There have been numerous, reported instances in the past when prior Administrations — both Democratic and Republican, and motivated by the same goals — discussed alternative paths to service for qualified individuals also considering campaigns for public office. Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.
Obama promised yesterday the report would clear up the matter, which Republicans have been harping on for weeks.
Late Update: Sestak confirms the White House account, asks to move on.
Additional reporting by Lucy Madison
