Tomorrow's LA Times will carry this story - Low-key office launches high-profile inquiry into Karl Rove:
[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 seven years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.
And, says the LA Times, this could be a serious 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.
But is it really? See below the fold.
What is the Office of Special Counsel? The article describes it this way:
[A]n obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.
And as a federal agency, in fact as a White House agency, it is headed by a presidential appointee, in this case Scott Bloch. Bloch's independence impressed the Times reporter:
"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."
Bloch says he was moved to do an investigation because of two things: the US attorney firings, particularly that of David Iglesias, and a Rove aide's power point presentation to GSA managers on how to help GOP candidates in the 2006 election.
The first part apparently came at least in part at Iglesias' instigation:
Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias has filed a complaint with a federal ombudsman agency [OSC] that he was fired because of the time he spent away from his office on Naval Reserve duty. Albequerque Tribune 5 Apr 07
But the OSC admits that although Iglesias may have a valid claim, the issue is complicated because US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and can be fired for any reason or none. Bloch is more concerned with the possible violation of the Hatch Act - which his office enforces - in the GSA presentations.
Rove and his top aides met each year with presidential appointees throughout the government, using PowerPoint presentations to review polling data and describe high-priority congressional and other campaigns around the country.
Some officials have said they understood that they were expected to seek opportunities to help Republicans in these races, through federal grants, policy decisions or in other ways.
A former Interior Department official, Wayne R. Smith, who sat through briefings from Rove and his then-deputy Ken Mehlman said that during President Bush's first term he and other appointees were frequently briefed on political priorities.
"We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results," Smith said....
[Q]uestions have emerged about the PowerPoint presentations, including whether Doan's comments crossed the line and whether the presentations violated rules limiting political activity on federal property. Whether legal or not, the multiple presentations revealed how widely and systematically the White House sought to deliver its list of electoral priorities.
In the course of investigating the U.S. attorney matter and the PowerPoint presentations, Democratic congressional investigators discovered e-mails written by White House personnel using accounts maintained by the Republican National Committee.
Another Jennings e-mail using the RNC account requested that department officials meet with a former New Mexico campaign advisor who wanted to "discuss the U.S. Atty situation there."
The growing controversy inspired him to act, Bloch said.
The Times guy says this looks bad for moose and squirrel:
"This is a big deal," Paul C. Light, a New York University expert on the U.S. 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."
But will it? Just who is Bloch anyway? Well, according to his official bio from when he was appointed in 2003,
Mr. Bloch brings over 17 years of experience to the Office of Special Counsel, including litigation of employment, lawyer ethics, and complex cases before state courts, federal courts and administrative tribunals. He briefed and argued cases before state and federal appellate courts and is admitted to practice in the United States Supreme Court.
From 2001-2003, Mr. Bloch served as Associate Director and then Deputy Director and Counsel to the Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked on First Amendment cases, regulations, intergovernmental outreach, and programmatic initiatives. Before serving in the Justice Department, he was a partner with Stevens & Brand, LLP, of Lawrence, Kansas, where he practiced in the areas of civil rights law, employment law, and legal ethics.
He also litigated on whistleblower cases (for both employers and employees, it says) and has apparently become something of an expert on the Hatch Act.
He is also a man described by the Boston Pheonix as Bush's "House Homophobe," who as soon as he was swornb in (by Clarence Thomas) started a legal review to remove sexual-orientation discrimination cases from OSC jurisdiction.
Their [current and former OSC employees] allegations run the gamut. They claim Bloch has denied help to gay workers who assert sexual-orientation discrimination; dismissed hundreds of whistleblower and discrimination complaints without any investigation; issued illegal gag orders and reassigned or fired employees he suspects of leaking information about him; and left critical staff vacancies open, while hiring numerous unqualified friends at high salaries for unnecessary administrative positions. Worse, they allege that he has politicized what should be a nonpartisan office by squashing investigation into whether Condoleezza Rice had broken campaign law, but speedily pursuing allegations against John Kerry; and vigorously pursuing petty complaints against Democrats and Green Party candidates, while burying complaints against Republicans.
Bush was at that point to deal with the problem, having to decide, as an OSC attorney put it, "whether this gets investigated or buried away."
We can guess at Bush's decision. (Bush, to be fair, is no homophobe himself, and the White House did issue a statement that sexual orientation was covered. But his base is homophobic, and Bloch has support from Catholic clergy who claim attacks on him are anti-Catholic bigotry.)
So what gives? How does a Bush appointee, who politicized his office on Bush's behalf, who got whistleblower protection reduced to tissue paper, how does a guy like this launch an investigation that could strike at the heart of Bush's brain?
OK, most likely this is a pre-emptive strike to take over - and bury - the GSA story. The White House can say we have an investigation under way, so we can't talk about it, and there's no need for a Congressional inquiry; we're on it. (Sitting on it.)
But I'd like to be just a tad less cynical for once (for the novelty, you understand), and speculate that Bloch may just be in it for real. Yes, he is a sexist (last year he tried to dictate a dress code for women OSC employees) and a homophobe, who treats whistleblowers like traitors. But he's also, like the rest of them, looking out for himself. In other words, is this a case of a rat deserting a sinking ship by gnawing a new hole in its side to show he's really one of the good guys?