In his bombshell new book, What Happened, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan lashes out at his old employer in a massive Bush-administration-wide bus-throwing-under. Better late than never? To assist Mr. McClellan with his big media sales push, we thought we might go back and revisit some of the lowlights from back when what he said actually mattered …
High-res version at Veracifier.com.
Late Update: A huge thanks to all the readers/viewers who e-mailed in with their favorite Scottie memories. We hope you find yours in there.
Folks, I think we’ve got a live one on the line out in Colorado.
You’ve already met GOP senate candidate, and former representative, Bob Schaffer. His main claim to fame in this cycle has been stumbling into fulsome praise for the Mariana Islands sweatshop program that revealed his ties to Jack Abramoff, Jack’s island sweatshop junkets and generally carrying Jack’s clients’ water up on Capitol Hill.
Now Schaffer’s got another 
great story cooking that’s sure to help his flagging senate campaign.
The nuts and bolts of it basically go like this. A Denver businessman named Bill Orr lobbies Congress and gets a $3.6 million earmark to help develop some new kind of non-polluting fuel. And he sets up the National Alternative Fuels Foundation to get your tax dollars for the earmark. The only problem was that “science” Orr used to get the EPA to fork over $2 million of the $3.6 million of earmarked money was apparently bogus. And as will happen in such cases, it’s gotten him indicted by the Feds for multiple counts of defrauding the government.
Now, Schaffer was still in the House when Orr got his prized earmark. And then not long after he gave up his House seat, he signed on as a “director” at Orr’s highly-credible-sounding National Alternative Fuels Foundation. In other words, Schaffer was a board member of Orr’s outfit/racket during at least part of the time Orr was allegedly bilking the government out of its money.
Part of Schaffer’s explanation for this awkward confluence of events, as relayed by his campaign manager Dick Wadhams, is that he got involved with Orr on the recommendation of one of Schaffer’s Colorado associates-cum-handlers Scott Shires. But that may not be a great association either since back in 2006 Shires copped a plea over his role in the scam and agreed to testify against Orr.
The jury in the case had been deliberating. But just this afternoon they returned their verdict: guilty on 22 counts. So the outlook is not looking good for Orr. But what about Schaffer?
Schaffer has been accused of no crime, though he may be called to testify at Orr’s sentencing. But what about those earmarks? Democrats in Colorado are asking whether Schaffer was the one who got Orr the $3.6 million earmark. And while the case that he did is highly circumstantial and fairly thin at that, no one’s stepping forward to say who got Orr the money and Schaffer’s campaign is rather conspicuously not answering any questions about the earmarks origins.
One way or another, Schaffer is now at best unwittingly tied to an organization that was based in large part on criminal acts. So that can’t be any more helpful than Schaffer’s ties to Jack Abramoff.
Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons is out to prove that what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas.
From Roll Call (sub.req.): Hastert to Join Dickstein Shapiro.
(ed.note: In case, you’re wondering, it’s a law/lobbying firm.)
Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) keeps trying to link his Democratic opponent, former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, to San Francisco. Hmmm. I wonder why?
He’s got another ad out, almost as hippie groovy as the first one he ran.
In case you missed it, we’ve put together a whacky highlight reel of the best and worst congressional TV ads to run so far this year.
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) blames Chuck Schumer and “New York politics” for his re-election woes:
This has occurred to me too. In his statement today John McCain said that “we have drawn down to pre-surge levels.” But of course that that’s not remotely accurate. We won’t even be fully down to pre-surge levels this summer. And now in response to criticism on this point, the McCain camp is now attacking the Obama campaign and any press outlet that picks this up for “nit-pick[ing] the tense of the verb.”
Now, I think it’s true that gotchas over verb tense can often be a bit much. I know from experience that you can say all sorts of funny stuff while speaking extemporaneously. But, c’mon. This is McCain’s signature issue. It’s almost the totality of his campaign — Iraq and the purported success of the surge.
This is hardly nit-picking.
If you’re just whiling away your Friday afternoon at the office, staring at the clock, then you might enjoy our highlight reel of Scott McClellan’s greatest hits as White House press secretary:
Two weeks ago, in my farewell post to TPMmuckraker alum Paul Kiel, I noted his critical and too-little-credited role in our coverage of the US Attorney firing scandal. But while that is entirely accurate, I failed to note an important part of the story.
By the time the story really broke open it was just me and Paul working the story at TPM since Justin Rood had already moved on to his current job at ABC’s The Blotter. But key work on the story happened before a lot of the public and the rest of the news media really began to take notice — particularly the initial work of compiling the initial list of seven US Attorneys who we then believed (and now know) had been fired. This was in some ways the Rosetta Stone from which the rest of the story unfolded over the spring and summer of 2007. And Justin was every bit a part of that reporting.
This is of course sort of inside baseball. It doesn’t change the merits or implications of the story. But it’s one that we’re proud of here at TPM and one that’s gotten a lot of attention. So I wanted to clarify this point and set the record straight.