The Office of Special Counsel is generally a fairly obscure federal investigative unit. The OSC is generally responsible for looking into whistleblower complains, Hatch Act violations, charges of discrimination in the federal workforce, etc. Important work, to be sure, but rarely front-page stuff.
Now, however, the OSC is launching an investigation into a bigger matter. Much bigger.
[T]he 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 [tag]Karl Rove[/tag].
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.
First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.
“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.”
There can be little doubt that the OSC’s investigation into Rove’s political operation is entirely justified. Indeed, given the last few weeks, the agency hardly had any choice. There’s one common denominator among the prosecutor purge, Hatch Act violations at the General Services Administration and other executive branch agencies, and the missing emails and the violation of the Presidential Records Act: Karl Rove’s office. Each of these controversies would draw OSC scrutiny; why not just have the OSC conduct a review of Rove’s entire operation?
Is this just an obscure federal agency going through the motions? Perhaps not. “This is a big deal,” Paul C. Light, a New York University expert on the executive branch, said of Bloch’s plan. “It is a significant moment for the administration and Karl Rove. It speaks to the growing sense that there is a nexus at the White House that explains what’s going on in these disparate investigations.”
The 106-person Office of Special Counsel has never conducted such a broad and high-profile inquiry in its history. One of its primary missions has been to enforce the Hatch Act, a law enacted in 1939 to preserve the integrity of the civil service.
Bloch said the new investigation grew from two narrower inquiries his staff had begun in recent weeks.
One involved the fired U.S. attorney from New Mexico, David C. Iglesias.
The other centered on a PowerPoint presentation that a Rove aide, J. Scott Jennings, made at the General Services Administration this year.
That presentation listed recent polls and the outlook for battleground House and Senate races in 2008. After the presentation, GSA Administrator Lorita Doan encouraged agency managers to “support our candidates,” according to half a dozen witnesses. Doan said she could not recall making such comments.
The Los Angeles Times has learned that similar presentations were made by other White House staff members, including Rove, to other Cabinet agencies. During such presentations, employees said they got a not-so-subtle message about helping endangered Republicans.
It gets back to the notion of “Kremlin justice” we talked about last week, in which the Bush administration sought to subvert democracy by using the power of the executive branch exclusively as a tool to protect the ruling party.
This was Rove’s idea and it was Rove’s implementation. Let’s see what the OSC digs up.
Update: My friend Melissa reminds me that the OSC’s Scott Bloch, who launched this investigation, has a disconcerting background, which long-time readers may recall I wrote about in ’05. Given this, as many of you have noted in comments, there’s reason for some skepticism about the integrity of this probe against Rove.
That’s fair, but I would add one thing: Bloch has been relatively even-handed over the last couple of years, and has even launched some legitimate investigations. I wouldn’t necessarily assume that this look into Rove’s operation is meaningless.