Just a few quick links on the Claude Allen Shoplifting From Target Scandal. Digby lays it out quite nicely, while Josh Marshall explains the “evil twin” theory that is shaping up as his best defense!I guess he could also use the newly available “Hey, at least I didn’t shoot a man in the face” defense!
Oh, yeah - Remember this?
Yesterday at the Whitehouse press briefing Scottie layed out a timeline of when they knew about this guys "legal problems". They have known about this for a long time but didn't do anything about it. He also said something about it being right in the middle of preparing for the SOTU speech and they needed him for that.
ReplyDeleteI'll find the transcript later and post it.
Here is the McClellan - Allen timeline.
ReplyDeleteMR. McCLELLAN: Well, let me just lay out the facts for you, April. Maybe that's the best way to start here.
On January 2nd, there was an incident that took place. Claude Allen immediately reported that evening to Andy Card that an incident had taken place at a store. He spoke with Andy Card the very next morning. Andy Card then directed him to speak with Harriet Miers, the White House Counsel. And he assured both Andy and Harriet that this was a misunderstanding. The way he explained it to Harriet was that he was returning some merchandise, and there was some confusion with some credit cards because he had moved a number of times.
Now, within a few days of that time period -- and this would have been early January -- Claude came to Andy and Harriet and indicated that he had been thinking about leaving for some time. He said that he had been putting in long hours, he wanted to be able to spend more time with his family, and he thought the right thing to do would be to resign, so that he could spend more time with his family.
Now, he is someone who has gone through a number of background checks. His background has been investigated. And given his history and based on those background checks, I think he was given the benefit of the doubt. He assured them that he had done nothing wrong, and that he was working to get the matter cleared up.
Back in -- going back to what he said, in terms of leaving the White House, he was also working on a number of initiatives at the time that the President was finalizing for the State of the Union, particularly on the competitiveness agenda, the education side of that. So when he made the decision that he was going to leave the White House he indicated to Andy that he wanted to find a good time to transition. And he felt a good time to transition would be after the State of the Union. And so then we announced that he would be leaving, I believe it was on February 9th, and his last day at the White House was on February 17th.
i love your blog
ReplyDelete