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Gov't Watchdogs Call the OSC's Rove Investigation Dead in the Water

As Dan Schulman reported this week, the Project on Government Oversight—a reputable nonprofit dedicated to rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in government—has expressed doubt that Scott Bloch and the Office of Special Counsel have the authority to investigate Karl Rove as they've promised to do. Today, POGO and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility issued a joint press release detailing their objections. First the obvious: OSC head Bloch is under investigation by the White House, so how can he impartially investigate the White House?

Bloch aside, PEER and POGO claim it is "unclear at best" whether the OSC has the authority to oversee White House (and RNC) activities. The office almost certainly doesn't have the authority to look into former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias's claim that his firing amounted to discrimination against an armed services member (one of the rationales the DOJ gave for firing him was that he was out of the office too often; he serves in the Navy Reserves). Finally, the OSC can issue subpoenas, but can't enforce them. Do you really think Rove would submit to such a weak legal request?

Finally, as Dan reported in the current issue of the magazine, Mr. Bloch has hardly been an overachiever in the past, and has very little experience conducting large-scale investigations. PEER director Jeff Ruch put it this way: "Scott Bloch brings the investigative acumen of an Inspector Clouseau to a very complicated and delicate matter."

Posted by Cameron Scott on 04/26/07 at 4:20 PM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |