Archive for the 'RNC Email Scandal' Category

Hell, Hast Thou Frozen Over?

Terri Whitehouse June 27th, 2007

Laurie Kellman of the AP reports:

The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush’s warrant-free eavesdropping program.

Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

The committee wants documents that might shed light on internal squabbles within the administration over the legality of the program, said a congressional official speaking on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas had not been made public.

Oy! Executive immunity, anyone?

Addendum: Nope, that didn’t take long at all!

Sen. Mitch McConnell’s Ally Mike Duncan Is Subpoenaed To Appear Before Congress

The Hound Dog April 27th, 2007

The House Government and Oversight Committee issued a subpoena to call RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, the banker from Inez, Kentucky and close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell to appear and answer questions about the use of RNC email accounts by Karl Rove and former Mitch McConnell political director J. Scott Jennings.

The subpoena to the RNC directed the committee to produce information about the use of its e-mail accounts by White House officials. A separate subpoena was authorized to call RNC Chairman Mike Duncan to appear before the committee.

Looks like Mike Duncan is going to be asked some questions about exactly how many RNC email accounts are being used to try and circumvent the Hatch Act.

Interesting Developments in McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings scandals

Matt Gunterman April 24th, 2007

This development is very interesting, and the activities of Senator Mitch McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings are at the center of the entire investigation. You can read Tom Hamburger’s entire article from the LA Times here.

Low-key office launches high-profile inquiry
The Office of Special Counsel will investigate U.S. attorney firings and other political activities led by Karl Rove.

WASHINGTON — Most of the time, an 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.

But the 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 Karl Rove.

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.

[...]

How long until Bush fires the entire office for not being loyal Bushies? I’m sure they serve “at his pleasure,” and surely he’ll find this process terribly displeasing.

Question of the Week: While at the center of three major scandals, how long can corrupt McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings keep his job?

Matt Gunterman April 16th, 2007

Given President George W. Bush’s history of standing proudly at the side of every loser in his administration until the very end, my guess is that J. Scott Jennings won’t be going anywhere soon.

Sounding off on what The Hound Dog just posted below, it does make you stop to think about how Senator Mitch McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings managed to get himself at the center of three major scandals. You know, you just don’t end up in the midst of three major scandals without being scandalous by nature and nurture, quite frankly. We all know where J. Scott Jennings learned the tricks of the corruption trade: at the political teat of Senator Mitch McConnell.

Just to remind you what those three scandals are: first, there’s the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, where the continuing release of Jennings’ emails are providing important revelations about how high and how deep the scandals goes; second, there’s the RNC Email scandal, where Jennings, like many other political operatives in the White House, was using a private, Republican-sponsored email account to get around email archiving regulations; third, there’s the scandal, which the Washington Post editorialized about today, about Jennings using the resources of the United States government, through his PowerPoint presentations, etc., to do the political bidding of the Republican Party to the detriment of the American people.

With a record like this, no doubt President Bush believes that Jennings is doing a heck of a job.

The J. Scott Jennings/Mitch McConnell Scandal

The Hound Dog April 16th, 2007

Joseph Gerth’s Political Notebook in the Courier Journal today was a start piece, but we have yet to see more written on what is really going on with the missing emails in the US Attorney scandal: One political operative of Senator Mitch McConnell is protecting another. Is anyone else surprised that the banker from Inez, Kentucky who is now RNC Chairman, Mike Duncan, is protecting the former political director to Sen. Mitch McConnell from Dawson Springs, Kentucky, J. Scott Jennings?

Jennings is the former political director for Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and is now the White House’s deputy director of political affairs under Karl Rove.

E-mail messages handed over to a congressional committee show Jennings used a Republican National Committee e-mail address to discuss the firings with aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales…

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee authorized its chairman, Patrick Leahy, to subpoena Jennings and compel him to reveal his role in the firings.

And House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers wrote another Kentuckian, RNC Chairman Mike Duncan, an Inez banker, asking him to provide all firing-related e-mail from government employees to his committee before turning them over to the White House.

Cross-posted at CliffSchecter.com

McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings’s Career is about to End

Matt Gunterman April 14th, 2007

McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings

Wow. The crisis of corruption in the White House just intensifies day on day. I wonder if Senator Mitch McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings learned all these tricks of the corruption trade during his time in Sen. McConnell’s office? What’s below is bad news for J. Scott Jennings, but likely worse news for Republican Senator Pete Domenici.

From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo (And this is the link to images of the incriminating emails that the excerpt below is referencing):

(April 13, 2007 — 11:35 PM EDT)

J. Scott Jennings, Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director, Office of Political Affairs to Karl Rove, Kyle Sampson, Fred Fielding, et al., February 28th, 2007: “[Sen. Domenici's Chief of Staff Steve] Bell said Domenici’s idea is not to respond [to Iglesias's accusations], and hopefully make this a one day story. They have already been contacted by McClatchy … They have not confirmed to the reporter they were one of the Members.”

AP, March 1st, 2007 …

In a brief interview Thursday, Domenici also denied the accusation. “I don’t have any comment,” he told The Associated Press. “I have no idea what he’s talking about.”

Mitch McConnell is at center of culture of corruption in DC

Matt Gunterman April 12th, 2007

Mitch McConnell is the nation’s #1 money-grubbing, influence-mongering, Bush-enabling U.S. Senator. That’s well established. In fact, Sen. Mitch McConnell would likely wholly agree with the substance of that statement, but he’d probably use slightly more flattering words. Probably not on the “Bush-enabling,” though; he’d probably use those words. I mean, Sen. McConnell and his crazy, foaming-at-the-mouth base of supporters believe George W. Bush is some holy instrument to bring about Armageddon. I bet McConnell in his sick little head takes real pride in enabling that load of crap.

Look at how much corruption surrounds this man and look at how corrupt the people who are products of his political machine are. You’ve got McConnell’s protégé J. Scott Jennings, now the right-hand man in the White House of Karl Rove, at the center of the biggest White House scandal since Nixon’s Watergate. This trouble is just the Washington side of McConnell’s corrupt and inept organization. When you combine it with the Kentucky side, it’s a sad, sad monstrosity that is tearing down the very fabric of our nation and commonwealth.

From Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker:

A U.S. congressional panel investigating the firing of federal prosecutors authorized subpoenas on Thursday for e-mails the White House has declared may be missing.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., challenged the White House assertion, saying, “It’s not a question of e-mails being lost, it’s e-mails they don’t want to retrieve.”

The White House disclosed on Wednesday some of its staffers, including President George W. Bush’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove, and several of his deputies, wrote e-mail messages on official business on Republican Party accounts, and some may have been wrongly deleted.

On a voice vote, the Judiciary Committee authorized subpoenas for these and other White House documents as well as for records it has sought from the Justice Department.

The panel also authorized subpoenas for Associate Deputy Attorney General William Moschella, and Scott Jennings, an aide to Rove, permitting Leahy to sign subpoenas compelling the Bush administration to surrender hundreds of new documents and force Moschella and Jennings to reveal their roles in the firings.

The votes authorize subpoenas to be issued if the administration records are not turned over and if Moschella and Jennings decline to appear before the panel.

McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings scandal heating up again

Matt Gunterman April 11th, 2007

Remember that infamous 18-minute gap in the Nixon White House tapes?

Well, it appears some of those RNC emails that no-one outside the Bush inner circle was supposed to know existed (so that the evidence of the illegal activities that were being carried on through them would never be archived) have come up missing. They’ve been deleted.

And even though the White House supposedly instituted a policy in 2004 that those emails should not be deleted, some on the staff appear to have taken the initiative — against official policy — to delete those emails, anyway.

Wonder if Senator Mitch McConnell protégé J. Scott Jennings was one of those on the ball?

Just a mistake, I’m sure. President Bush will probably tell them that, despite their gross incompetence, they’re still doing “a heck of a job.”