It took a little longer than I had hoped, but the Justice Department is finally moving on the GOP memo-theft scandal.
As you no doubt recall, GOP staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee stole thousands of documents from the committee’s Dems that showed how Dems worked to block a handful of Bush judicial nominees. Last month, the Senate’s Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle concluded a three-month investigation with a report pointing to months of GOP thefts and subsequent leaks to conservatives in the media.
Pickle also cited several federal laws that could (should) face criminal prosecutions. The Justice Department agreed and appointed a special investigator. Roll Call reported yesterday that progress is now underway.
Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor has personally opened negotiations with Senate officials to acquire evidence from the Judiciary Committee’s stolen memo case and is beginning to interview witnesses.
David Kelley, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, has been talking to the Senate’s Legal Counsel in recent weeks in order to craft the necessary resolution to obtain the evidence from a nearly four-month investigation into how GOP staffers improperly accessed more than 4,500 memos penned by Judiciary Democrats.
All documents, witness testimony and computer evidence from that internal probe, completed by Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Pickle in early March, are still in the possession of the Senate. A resolution approved by the Senate is required to transfer the evidence to Kelley, who was assigned the case by Justice Department officials in Washington eager to steer clear of any potential conflicts of interest in the case.
Early indications are that Kelley is hitting the ground running.
In fact, he’s already contacting some of the conservative groups who received the stolen documents.
Kelley is not waiting, however, to get the evidence to begin a case that will examine the inner workings of the Judiciary Committee and how staffers deal with outside interest groups. He personally called one of the heads of the outside groups which published 14 of the memos last November, a sign that Kelley has taken the case seriously enough that he has not delegated all responsibility for it to his aides.
Kelley spoke with Kay Daly, head of the Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, and is in the process of setting up an interview with her to go over the case. Daly said Friday she was not subpoenaed and that Kelley gave no indication that there was a grand jury looking into the case.
And I’m still cautiously optimistic that there’s a White House angle to this controversy.
Mr. Leahy wrote to Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel [in early March], asking if his office received any of the stolen information.
In response, Mr. Gonzales offered a denial that was less than categorical, saying: “I am not aware of any credible allegation of White House involvement in this matter. Consequently, there has been no White House investigation or effort to determine whether anyone at the White House was aware of or involved in these activities.”
Sounds a little suspicious, doesn’t it? It was a yes-or-no question about whether the White House received the memos, and the response was essentially that no one’s accused the White House of being involved. Fine, but that isn’t what Leahy asked.
Kelley’s a tough federal prosecutor, and apparently a Democrat, known for conducting tough criminal probes. I can’t wait to see what he turns up with this one.