“Whoever solicits or receives … any….thing of value, in
consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in
obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the
United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned
not more than one year, or
both.” — 18 USC Sec. 211 — Bribery, Graft
and Conflicts of Interest: Acceptance or solicitation to obtain
appointive public office
“In the face of a White House
denial, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak stuck to his story yesterday that
the Obama administration offered him a “high-ranking” government
post if he would not run against U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter in
Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer
February 19, 2010
“D.C. job alleged as attempt to deter
Romanoff”
—Denver
Post
September 27, 2009
A bombshell has just exploded in the 2010 elections.
For the second time in five months, the Obama White House
is being accused — by Democrats — of offering high ranking
government jobs in return for political favors. What no one is
reporting is that this is a violation of federal law that can
lead to prison time, a fine or both, according to Title 18,
Chapter 11, Section 211 of the United States Code.
The jobs in question? Secretary of the Navy and a position
within the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The favor requested in return? Withdrawal from Senate
challenges to two sitting United States Senators, both Democrats
supported by President Obama. The Senators are Arlen Specter in
Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado.
On Friday, Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak, the
Democrat challenging Specter for re-nomination, launched the
controversy by accusing the Obama White House of offering him a
federal job in exchange for his agreeing to abandon his race
against Specter.
In August of 2009, the Denver Post reported last
September, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina “offered
specific suggestions” for a job in the Obama Administration to
Colorado Democrat Andrew Romanoff, a former state House Speaker,
if Romanoff would agree to abandon a nomination challenge to U.S.
Senator Michael Bennet. Bennet was appointed to the seat upon the
resignation of then-Senator Ken Salazar after Salazar was
appointed by Obama to serve as Secretary of the Interior.
According to the Post, the specific job mentioned was in
the U.S. Agency for International Development. The Post
cited “several sources who described the communication to The
Denver Post.”
The paper also describes Messina as “President Barack
Obama’s deputy chief of staff and a storied fixer in the White
House political shop.” Messina’s immediate boss is White House
chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
Sestak is standing by his story. Romanoff refused to
discuss it with the Denver paper. In both instances the White
House has denied the offers took place. The Sestak story in
the Philadelphia Inquirer, reported by
Thomas Fitzgerald, can be found
here, While the Denver Post story, reported by
Michael Riley, from September 27, 2009, can be read here.
In an
interview with Philadelphia television anchor Larry Kane, who
broke the story on Larry Kane: Voice of Reason, a
Comcast Network show, Sestak says someone — unnamed — in the
Obama White House offered him a federal job if he would quit the
Senate race against Specter, the latter having the support of
President Obama, Vice President Biden and, in the state itself,
outgoing Democratic Governor Ed Rendell. Both Biden and Rendell
are longtime friends of Specter, with Biden taking personal
credit for convincing Specter to leave the Republican Party and
switch to the Democrats. Rendell served as a deputy to Specter
when the future senator’s career began as Philadelphia’s District
Attorney, a job Rendell himself would eventually hold.
Asked Kane of Sestak in the Comcast interview:
“Is it true that you were offered a high ranking job in the
administration in a bid to get you to drop out of the primary
against Arlen Specter?”
“Yes” replied Sestak.
Kane: “Was it Secretary of the Navy?”
To which the Congressman replied:
“No comment.”
Sestak is a retired Navy admiral.
In the Colorado case, the Post reported that while
Romanoff refused comment on a withdrawal-for-a-job offer,
“several top Colorado Democrats described Messina’s outreach to
Romanoff to The Post, including the discussion of specific jobs
in the administration. They asked for anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the subject.”
The Post also noted that the day after Romanoff
announced his Senate candidacy, President Obama quickly announced
his endorsement of Senator Bennet.
The discovery that the White House has now been reported on
two separate occasions in two different states to be deliberately
committing a potential violation of federal law — in order to
preserve the Democrats’ Senate majority — could prove explosive
in this highly political year. The 60-seat majority slipped to 59
seats with the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, a Democrat, and
the election of Republican Senator Scott Brown. Many political
analysts are suggesting Democrats could lose enough seats to lose
their majority altogether.
This is the stuff of congressional investigations and cable
news alerts, as an array of questions will inevitably start being
asked of the Obama White House.
Here are but a few lines of inquiry, some inevitably
straight out of Watergate.
* Who in the White House had this conversation with
Congressman Sestak?
* Did Deputy Chief of Staff Messina have the same
conversation with Sestak he is alleged to have had with Romanoff
— and has he or anyone else on the White House staff had similar
conversations with other candidates that promise federal jobs for
political favors?
* They keep logs of these calls. How quickly will they be
produced?
* How quickly would e-mails between the White House,
Sestak, Specter, Romanoff and Bennet be produced?
* Secretary of the Navy is an important job. Did this job
offer or the reported offer of the US AID position to Romanoff
have the approval of President Obama or Vice President
Biden?
* What did the President know and when did he know
it?
* What did the Vice President know and when did he know it?
(Note: Vice President Biden, in this tale, is Specter’s longtime
friend who takes credit for luring Specter to switch parties. Can
it really be that an offer of Secretary of the Navy to get Sestak
out of Specter’s race would not be known and or approved by the
Vice President? Does Messina or some other White House staffer —
like Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel — have that authority?)
* What did White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel know,
and when did he know it?
* What did Congressman Sestak know and when did he know it?
Was he aware that the offer of a federal job in return for a
political favor — his withdrawal from the Senate race — could
open the White House to a criminal investigation?
* What did Senator Specter know about any of this and when
did he know it? .
* What did Governor Rendell, who, as the titular leader of
Pennsylvania Democrats, is throwing his political weight and
machine to his old friend Specter, know about this?
And when did he know it?
* Will the Department of Justice be looking into these two
separate news stories, one supplied by a sitting United States
Congressman, that paint a clear picture of jobs for political
favors?
* Will Attorney General Holder recuse himself from such an
investigation?
While in recent years there have been bribery scandals that
centered on the exchange of favors for a business deal (Democrat
William Jefferson, a Louisiana Congressman) or cash for earmarks
(Republican Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham), the idea of
violating federal law by offering a federal job in return for a
political favor (leaving two hotly contested Senate races in this
instance) is not new.
Let’s go back in history for a moment.
It’s the spring of 1960, in the middle of a bitter fight
for the Democratic presidential nomination between then Senators
John F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, Stuart
Symington and the 1952 and 1956 nominee, ex-Illinois Governor
Adlai Stevenson.
Covering the campaign for what would become the grandfather
of all political campaign books was journalist and JFK friend
Theodore H. White. In his book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
The Making of the President 1960, published in 1961,
White tells the story of a plane flight with JFK on the
candidate’s private plane The Caroline. The nomination
fight is going on at a furious pace, and White and Kennedy are
having another of their innumerable private chats for White’s
book while the plane brings JFK back from a campaign swing where
he spoke to delegates in Montana.
The subject? Let’s let White tell the story.
The conversation began in a burst of anger. A story had
appeared in a New York newspaper that evening that an Eastern
Governor had claimed that Kennedy had offered him a cabinet
post in return for his Convention support. His anger was cold,
furious. When Kennedy is angry, he is at his most precise,
almost schoolmasterish. It is a federal offense, he said, to
offer any man a federal job in return for a favor. This was an
accusation of a federal offense. It was not so.
Let’s focus on that JFK line again:
“It is a federal offense, he said, to offer any man
a federal job in return for a favor.”
With a fine and jail time attached if convicted.
What Larry Kane discovered with the response of Congressman
Sestak — and Sestak is sticking to his story — combined with
what the Denver Post has previously reported in the
Romanoff case — appears to be a series of connecting
dots.
A connecting of dots — by Democrats — that leads from
Colorado to Pennsylvania straight into the West Wing of the White
House.
And possibly the jail house.
“It is a federal offense,” said John F. Kennedy, “to offer
any man a federal job in return for a favor.”
And so it is.
