Today’s Must ReadYou know it’s bad news for the White House when agencies you’d never even heard of start launching investigations into the administration.
This time, it’s the Office of Special Counsel, a federal investigative unit that’s charged with monitoring federal employees, not to be confused with a special counsel or special prosecutor such as Patrick Fitzgerald. The OSC is charged with policing Hatch Act violations and protecting whistleblowers, among other duties. It’s a permanent federal agency, and it’s prosecutions are not criminal prosecutions.
But the OSC does have teeth. If it successfully prosecutes a federal employee before the Merit Systems Protection Board (which acts as its judge), then that employee can be terminated. That employee, in this instance, is Karl Rove.
Well, it’s Rove and others in his office… and possibly others still. Here’s how The Los Angeles Times frames the OSC investigation:
… the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.
The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House….
“We will take the evidence where it leads us,” Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. “We will not leave any stone unturned.”
Bloch (who is, by the way, a Bush appointee) seems to have combined a host of investigations — 1) whether U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias was wrongly terminated due to his Navy reserve service, and 2) the White House’s use of RNC-issued email accounts to conduct government business, and 3) Rove’s and his deputy’s presentations to federal employees about Republican electoral prospects — into one big stew pot of wrongdoing.
Of all three, Rove’s now-infamous briefings would seem to be the most fertile investigatory ground for Bloch. As Tom Hamburger reports, Rove has been giving those presentations to federal employees since the beginning of the administration:
…Rove and his top aides met each year with presidential appointees throughout the government, using PowerPoint presentations to review polling data and describe high-priority congressional and other campaigns around the country….
A former Interior Department official, Wayne R. Smith, who sat through briefings from Rove and his then-deputy Ken Mehlman, said that during President Bush’s first term, he and other appointees were frequently briefed on political priorities.
“We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results,” Smith said.
Employees, Hamburger reports, “got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans.”
It’s hard to imagine how such presentations are not violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using federal resources for political ends. But that doesn’t mean that the White House isn’t already trying out a line of defense. Yesterday, 25 Democratic senators wrote the White House to demand answers about the presentations. And the White House replied, via a spokesman:
“It is entirely appropriate for the president’s staff to provide informational briefings to appointees throughout the federal government about the political landscape in which they implement the president’s policies and priorities.”
It sounds so innocuous, doesn’t it? Much more innocuous than the slides themselves.
Update: A number of readers have written in to point out that Bloch, who heads up an agency that is supposed to protect federal whistleblowers, is himself under investigation for intimidating and threatening his own employees. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Shakespeare’s Sister has more.
