With Obama’s promise at yesterday’s press conference that the White House would imminently (“When I say ‘shortly,’ I mean shortly. I don’t mean weeks or months”) offer an accounting of its communications with Congressman Joe Sestak before he announced his challenge to party-switching incumbent Arlen Specter—the administration’s favored candidate—in Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary, we should have seen this coming: if it’s Friday, it’s trash day at the White House.
Months ago, when he was a confirmed underdog, Sestak told a local television interviewer that the White House had offered him a job to dissuade him from the race. Some—including Republican Representative Darrell Issa—have pointed to little cited and slightly dusty portions of the law to suggest that such an alleged quid pro quo would be illegal. It’s a slightly sticky situation for the White House, and one which, to date, they’ve been rather reluctant to address substantively on the record.
And so, today is the Friday before the Memorial Day holiday. If the empty hallways in my own building are any indication, plenty of people are already checked out for the weekend, if not literally, than perhaps mentally.
What a perfect day to release a statement, as the administration promises to do, dealing with something like this. It’s not the first time this White House, following in the footsteps of its predecessors, has saved some problematic news for a Friday, or the Friday before a long weekend. In December, the Associated Press’s Sharon Theimer ran down the list in a valuable piece on the practice that’s certainly worth a read, and not only for this priceless quote offered by spokesman Josh Earnest when asked how the administration squared the boss’s oft-toted commitment to transparency with quietly releasing uncomfortable information when the press and public might be off their guard:
“The First Amendment to the Constitution ensures that the media is independently responsible for how and when that information is covered.”
How? Yes. When? Not entirely.
18 USC 600
"Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both."
#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 28 May 2010 at 02:27 PM
If they enforced that rule, Mike H. all of Congress and every Administration would be in jail. Vote trading? Promising positions to people who support you in an election? It would be truly truly funny if we just evaluated those that are bringing up this rule to count how many times they have violated it.
#2 Posted by JS, CJR on Fri 28 May 2010 at 05:26 PM
Greg Sargent has been covering the developments on this pseudo-scandal well EG.http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/05/bush_ethics_chief_to_gop_time.html
(by the by, when swift boat funder Sam Fox was given an ambassadorship to Beligum, did anyone cry for the FBI to investigate? How about when republicans were offering loyalty tests and saving plum Iraq reconstruction contracts for contributors)
To me it makes me glad republicans are far from the power they used to have. There are a lot of similarities between where the republicans want this case to go and where the Don Seigelman case went.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Siegelman
They're not nice people.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 29 May 2010 at 04:19 AM
Just a refresher from the past, by Scott Horton:
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/03/0081943
"All of these steps were helpful to the Republican Party. But even with hacks in place, minorities disenfranchised, and dissenters punished into submission, voters could still be expected to put a Democrat into office from time to time. In these extreme cases, though, the Justice Department could once again be counted on for a remedy.
In 2007, Donald Shields and John Cragan, two retired professors, released the preliminary results of a long-term study of the Bush Justice Department’s investigations of public officials. They found that between 2001 and 2006 the Justice Department had initiated 375 investigations of public officials. They also found that 298 of those investigations targeted Democrats and 67 of them targeted Republicans. Shields and Cragan concluded that the odds of this imbalance occurring randomly were one in ten thousand.
One of those 298 Democratic targets was former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Arguably the most successful Democratic politician in recent Alabama history, Siegelman had occupied almost every statewide elective office, frequently winning by large margins...
Later that year, however, as the Mobile Press-Register was publishing a poll that showed Siegelman trouncing Riley in a rematch, the Department of Justice finally took action. It launched an investigation of Siegelman. The case was based on allegations that Siegelman had appointed Richard Scrushy, the CEO of the Birmingham-based health-care firm HealthSouth, to an uncompensated hospital-oversight board as a quid pro quo for Scrushy’s having arranged a $500,000 contribution to a 1999 initiative to promote a state lottery bill favored by Siegelman. There were several problems with the case. First, the contribution itself was legal. There was no payment to Siegelman, or even to his campaign. Also, Scrushy didn’t support Siegelman in the election. He was a Republican and had backed Riley. In addition, Scrushy had been appointed to the same board by three prior governors. And finally, according to his own uncontradicted testimony, Scrushy didn’t even want the appointment.
It was a clear case of selective prosecution—and if the theory applied to the Siegelman prosecution were to be applied uniformly, many in the Bush Administration would now be in prison. George W. Bush singled out 146 individuals who gave or gathered $100,000 (to his actual political campaign) for appointment to far more desirable postings as ambassadors, cabinet officers, or members of his transition team. Not a single one of these appointments triggered a Justice Department investigation.
Siegelman became the target of two criminal investigations by two U.S. attorneys before two federal judges. In 2004 he was told that, although a couple of issues remained, the investigations were in the process of being wrapped up. But then, as the 2006 gubernatorial election approached, the case was dusted off and resumed. Even before the trial came about, Siegelman’s reputation had been demolished by a steady process of venomous leaks to the press, which could only have come from sources close to the prosecution. Siegelman was convicted in May 2006 on a series of corruption charges, and Riley coasted to an easy reelection the following November."
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Sat 29 May 2010 at 10:42 AM