As if the administration didn’t have enough problems, the controversy surrounding the politicization of the General Services Administration seems to be yet another debacle gone horribly awry.
We learned on Monday that GSA Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan and White House Deputy Political Director Scott Jennings joined in a videoconference in January to discuss how the agency could be used to help Republican congressional candidates nationwide. Jennings delivered an obviously-partisan PowerPoint presentation, which Doan followed by asking GSA political appointees how they could “help ‘our candidates'” in the 2008 elections.
As one might imagine, Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had a few concerns about this, and called Doan to testify under oath in an open hearing today. It really didn’t go well for the administration — Doan probably would have been better off resigning instead of humiliating herself the way she did today.
Here’s a clip from this morning’s House government reform committee hearing, investigating General Services Administration Chief Lurita Doan.
In this clip, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) grills her on a PowerPoint presentation (pdf) given by Karl Rove’s deputy Scott Jennings to GSA personnel in January. The slides (13 pages) detailed which seats were “House Targets” and which “Senate Targets”, which states were “Republican Offense,” and which “Republican Defense.” After the presentation, Doan reportedly asked other employees how the agency could help “our candidates.” The GSA, remember, is the government’s contracting agency, in charge of almost $60 billion each year. All of this seems like a clear violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits using federal resources to aid political parties.
Loan doesn’t have a good answer for Braley’s questions, stuttering out “I don’t recall”s and something about how the meeting was a “brown bag lunch” for the purpose of “team building.”
Braley completely took her apart. It was quite an impressive display.
He’d show Doan a series of slides, prepared by Karl Rove’s office, with a list of candidates who were identified as “vulnerable” or “targets.” Doan would deny that she even understood what the slides meant.
Braley asked, “Can you tell us what, if anything, these slides have to do with the GSA’s core purpose of procuring supplies and managing federal buildings?”
Doan replied, “This brown-bag luncheon, I believe, has been mischaracterized. This is a meeting, that is a team-building meeting.”
This wasn’t persuasive. “This was a partisan political briefing; it occurred on GSA property, during work hours, and it had nothing to do with the GSA mission. You identified ‘team building’ as one of the purposes of this meeting. Can you explain to the taxpayers of this country how holding this partisan political briefing helped with team-building?”
Doan couldn’t explain. It didn’t matter — she was busted. The Hatch Act explicitly prohibits partisan campaign activities on federal property and Doan’s GSA obviously violated it.
“I think the American taxpayers have a very good reason to wonder whether the only ‘team’ that was being helped during this briefing was the Republican Party team,” Braley concluded.
Watch the video. It’s as thorough a takedown as I’ve ever seen. I kind of hope the administration tries to defend what happened here, because at this point, Doan and the GSA have been caught red-handed.
Update: Wow: “Listening into the live webcast of the GSA hearings just now, the camera was down, but the audio was still up and you could here GSA Administrator Lurita Doan griping about the investigation and telling one of her people to take her glass, cause she doesn’t want ‘them to have my fingerprints. They’ve got me totally paranoid!'”