Investigator Wars

The Washington Post has an update to Special Counsel Scott Bloch’s alleged scheme to have geeks scrub his hard drive (for background click here). Turns out that Bloch has the files that he erased on a thumb drive, but he’s not turning them over, no sir: They’re personal. And it’s sparked a good bit of squabbling amongst the White House’s ineffectual investigative agencies (in this case the other party is the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general).

But here’s the part that’s good. Earlier this year, Bloch launched, to great fanfare, a sprawling investigation of Karl Rove’s alleged efforts to politicize the federal government, but it seems not to have gotten very far. But maybe, Bloch’s enemies are saying, the investigation was just a canny ploy to incapacitate the investigations of him:

Attorneys representing the staff members in the complaints against Bloch cited the latest dispute in calling for his resignation.

“At the time that he initiated this probe of Karl Rove, we thought he was doing this to make himself bulletproof so the White House could not take disciplinary action against him,” said Debra Katz, an attorney for the staff members. Bloch denied that charge and said the Rove investigation is the responsibility of his office.

Ah, oversight.