{"id":6832,"date":"2006-03-11T10:20:40","date_gmt":"2006-03-11T15:20:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6832"},"modified":"2006-03-11T10:20:40","modified_gmt":"2006-03-11T15:20:40","slug":"the-sad-tale-of-claude-a-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-sad-tale-of-claude-a-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"The sad tale of Claude A. Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Up until fairly recently, Claude Allen was not just a key Bush staffer, he was the top<\/i> White House adviser<\/a> on domestic policy. On everything from immigration to education to stem-cell research to the faith-based initiative, Allen was the president’s right-hand man. He was even the point man on the White House’s Katrina task force<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, Allen was more than that. Bush nominated him to the federal bench in 2003, though Senate Dems blocked him because he had no legal experience. Instead, Allen, a former Jesse Helms staffer and a self-described born-again Christian, became a key West Wing aide and solidified his role as the religious right’s favorite<\/i> member of Bush’s team. When James Dobson needed a radio guest to talk about the president’s support for abstinence-only education, the White House sent Allen. When TV preacher Pat Robertson needed a friendly administration face for The 700 Club, Allen was there.<\/p>\n

Then, a month ago, Allen abruptly, and inexplicably, resigned. There were rumors<\/a> that he left the White House because he opposed the president’s guidelines on military chaplains, but Allen categorically denied<\/a> it. Regardless, there was something about the resignation that didn’t make sense.<\/p>\n

Reporters were suspicious<\/a> because top West Wing players usually don’t quickly announce their departures on a Wednesday night. Scott McClellan said Allen wanted to “spend more time with his family,” which, for all intents and purposes, is DC code for “there’s something up.”<\/p>\n

And now we now what it is<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Claude A. Allen, who resigned last month as President Bush’s top domestic policy adviser, was arrested this week in Montgomery County for allegedly swindling Target and Hecht’s stores out of more than $5,000 in a refund scheme, police said.<\/p>\n

Allen, 45, of Gaithersburg, has been released on his own recognizance and is awaiting trial on two charges, felony theft scheme and theft over $500, said Lt. Eric Burnett, a police spokesman. Each charge is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I knew something was up with Allen’s resignation, but I never could have imagined this<\/i>. The guy made $161,000 a year<\/a>. He didn’t need some criminal scheme.<\/p>\n

And yet, Allen allegedly did it anyway.
\n
\nWhat kind of scheme are we talking about? Slate’s Rachel Shteir explains<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In general, a refund-fraud scam goes like this: You purchase an item\u2014a CD player, let’s say\u2014and leave the store with it. Then you come back to the store and pick up exactly the same CD player; you take the CD player and receipt from the original purchase to the returns desk, claiming that this is the item you bought, and get a refund for it. You keep the original CD player, and pay nothing. Professional shoplifters like refund fraud because it’s relatively safe. Since you never actually steal an object from the store, no one can chase you out to the parking lot. According to Richard Hollinger, a professor at the University of Florida-Gainesville and the author of the only yearly survey on retail theft, figures vary but “some say that figures lost to refund fraud reach $16 billion a year.”<\/p>\n

According to the department, Allen sought refunds for more than $5,000 in the past year. Allen allegedly stole items as expensive as a Bose theater system and a photo printer. Theft of more than $500 is a felony in Maryland.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hate to hear about a guy with this kind of problem, but after all the moralizing, and all the praise about Allen leading the “conservative values<\/a>” crusade, there is some stunning irony here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Up until fairly recently, Claude Allen was not just a key Bush staffer, he was the top White House adviser on domestic policy. On everything from immigration to education to stem-cell research to the faith-based initiative, Allen was the president’s right-hand man. He was even the point man on the White House’s Katrina task force. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832","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=6832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}