A few more points on this matter of the Senate Judiciary committee staff memos.
The unredacted version of the report was accidentally released to the media. The Dems first suspected that it may have been done to taint some later trial. Then the Republicans got in a huff thinking it may have been done to somehow smear ancillary figures mentioned in the report.
Now Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Pickle has been tasked with what The Hill rightly calls “the oddly postmodern task of investigating a Senate leak of a report on the investigation of a Senate leak.”
In any case, this caught my attention. Democrats want to make a direct criminal referral to the Justice Department (though it seems it would actually be more like a ‘sense of the committee’ vote). The Republicans want to refer the matter to the Secret Service who will then decide whether to refer it to Justice.
I’m not an expert on the Secret Service’s jurisdiction. But on its face this doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me, again, just on jurisdictional grounds.
Whatever the merits of the matter, both sides are playing to interest. The Dems are trying to advance the case to a criminal investigation; the Republicans are trying to put barriers in the way of a criminal investigation.
Now, here’s the point of my interest. The vote is tomorrow. One Republican has defected to the Democratic side — former House impeachment manager and now Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). On the other hand, Arlen Specter, who is up for election this year and facing a primary challenge from the right, says he’s not sure how he’s going to vote.
