Posted on 04/30/2004 5:22:39 AM PDT by SJackson
Of all the issues ripe for further investigation in the scandal over the leak of Democratic strategy memos from the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, the least relevant is whether GOP staffers "stole" the documents. That's the charge Democrats have so far successfully made to deflect attention from the memos' actual content.
On this point alone, the Justice Department's decision this week to open a criminal investigation into the matter could turn out to be useful. David Kelley, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, and a Democrat, has been tapped to lead the probe. We doubt Mr. Kelley is going to discover a "crime" resulting from the Democrats' negligence in leaving their files unprotected on a computer drive shared by Republican and Democratic staff.
Mr. Kelley has an additional, far more important, mandate. He is also tasked with exploring charges of political corruption allegedly described in some of the unpublished memos.
In a February 10 letter to the Public Integrity Section of Justice's Criminal Division, a coalition of Washington watchdog groups called for an analysis of the unpublished memos "with an eye towards ascertaining the applicability of criminal statutes to the conduct of their authors and recipients." Specifically, it asks for an investigation of charges that liberal interest groups were trying to influence the actions of Democratic Senators in exchange for promises of campaign funding and election support. A Justice official tells us that "this inquiry was referred to the Southern District of New York as well."
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
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