Not content with Bill Frist's sacrificial lamb, Senate Dems are now demanding a criminal investigation from the Department of Justice after Republicans stole thousands of Democratic documents from a shared Justice committee server.
From the registration only Roll Call:
Key Senate Democrats predicted Monday that the internal investigation into the Judiciary Committee's leaked memos would be turned into a full-blown criminal investigation.
Exiting a 90-minute briefing about the probe with Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Bill Pickle, a quartet of senior Judiciary Democrats declared that what they had heard led them to believe a criminal inquiry, most likely with the Justice Department handling it, should occur.
"Eventually, this has to be looked at as a criminal matter," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking member on Judiciary.
Leahy sat in on the Senators-only briefing with Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), all of whom declined to speak of the details of where Pickle stands in his three-month investigation into how GOP staffers took what now appears to be thousands of Democratic files off of their computers.
While their levels of belief in the probability of a criminal investigation varied slightly, each of the Senators raised the issue of an increasing likelihood that the probe would bring about criminal charges.
"I think there's a possibility of a criminal investigation," Feinstein said. Kennedy added that the accessing of memos was "probably criminal."
Republicans, in defending the theft, refer to the matter as a "technical glitch" and deny that the stolen memos amount to criminal wrongdoing. So if a Democratic staffer walked past the Office of the Majority Leader, saw the door unlocked, he would be well within his rights to exploit that "glitch', walk in, rifle through their files, and cart of thousands of them.
Right. Somehow I doubt they'd be that understanding of such a Watergate manouver. And I hope Justice is equally doubtful of such a ridiculous defense.
"Technical glitch" indeed...