The March of Stonewall McClellan

I alluded to this in an earlier post, but it's really fascinating. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan was asked 15 days ago about visits by convicted criminal Jack Abramoff to the White House for meetings with members of the staff.

Q Any update on the Abramoff visits to the White House beyond the three parties that he attended?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I indicated yesterday that I think there were some — a few staff-level meetings. But, no, I’m making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I’ll get that to you, hopefully very soon.

As soon as he got that "thorough report," McClellan decided that it was not Administration policy to discuss staff-level meetings.

Q Specific staff? You were going to get back to us on the specific staff —

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, my understanding from the check that we did was that there are just a few staff-level meetings in addition to those.

Q Who was in the staff meetings?

MR. McCLELLAN: I don’t get into discussing staff-level meetings.

First of all, that's not true. I've heard about meetings between the President and his advisers countless times from that podium. Second of all, if it's not Administration policy to discuss staff-level meetings, why did McClellan promise a "thorough report"? Third of all, we know that there are published reports of at least some staff-level contacts with Abramoff. The White House is not denying them. How much more damaging can it be if they're already acknowledging meetings? And if it's just "a few meetings" with low-level staffers, what is the harm in delineating what they were and with whom?

Maybe because they weren't so low-level:

Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Another report suggests that Abramoff may have appealed to his former secretary to get a senior White House official involved in stopping a Justice Department investigation:

In 2002 Bush himself fired a prosecutor, Frederick Black, investigating Abramoff over a scandal in Guam.  Rove recommended the replacement and the inquiry of Abramoff ended! ""The demotion of ... Black looks political and should be investigated," Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW, said in a press release." It would be Obstruction of Justice by Bush if true, and I personally believe it to be Obstruction, given what we already know.

Here's a bit more from the article:

A U.S. grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor and the inquiry ended soon after.

The transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to a copy obtained by The Times. The subpoena demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, release records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.

A day later, the chief prosecutor, U.S. Atty. Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.

There are definitely major contacts going on here, and the White House is clamming up about them. For some reason, nobody in the media outside the Press Room is calling the Administration to account on this. Krugman summed it up like this:

So I have a question for my colleagues in the news media: Why isn't the decision by the White House to stonewall on the largest corruption scandal since Warren Harding considered major news?

Dunno.

P.S. I noticed that George Clooney used Abramoff's name as a punch line in his acceptance speech at the Golden Globes. This is something the Right does all the time, and it wouldn't hurt to emulate. Humor can be a powerful way to get your message across, and a ridiculed public figure quickly becomes radioactive. See Michael Moore.