{"id":3973,"date":"2005-04-14T14:28:38","date_gmt":"2005-04-14T18:28:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3973.html"},"modified":"2005-04-14T14:28:38","modified_gmt":"2005-04-14T18:28:38","slug":"bush-gang-impedes-investigation-into-armstrong-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-gang-impedes-investigation-into-armstrong-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush gang impedes investigation into Armstrong Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The only upside to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/washington\/2005-01-06-williams-whitehouse_x.htm\">Armstrong Williams fiasco<\/a> was the fact that his $241,000 payment was under investigation. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A53421-2005Apr14.html\">Or so we thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Bush administration is impeding an investigation into the Education Department&#8217;s hiring of commentator Armstrong Williams by refusing to allow key White House officials to be interviewed, a Democratic lawmaker briefed on the review said Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., said Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is considering invoking a privilege that he said would require information to be deleted when the final version is publicly released, which is expected within days.<\/p>\n<p>Miller called for Jack Higgins, the inspector general at the Education Department, to delay the report until Spellings agrees not to invoke &#8220;deliberative process privilege&#8221; and the White House grants interviews with current or former officials familiar with the deal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The public&#8217;s right to know is absolutely more important than any claim of privilege that the White House or the Department of Education might make,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;The public has a right to all the facts about possible misconduct.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As a rule, when Bush administration officials act like they have something to hide, it&#8217;s because they have something to hide.<\/p>\n<p>Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The only upside to the Armstrong Williams fiasco was the fact that his $241,000 payment was under investigation. Or so we thought. The Bush administration is impeding an investigation into the Education Department&#8217;s hiring of commentator Armstrong Williams by refusing to allow key White House officials to be interviewed, a Democratic lawmaker briefed on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}