Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Will Sara Taylor's Congressional Subpoena Implicate Mitch McConnell?

Congressional subpoenas were issued this week for former White House Political Director Sara Taylor, as she will be forced to testify on her role in the firings of 8 U.S. Attorneys:

Two congressional committees are issuing subpoenas for testimony from former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor on their roles in the firings of eight federal prosecutors, according to two officials familiar with the investigation.

Remember that Taylor's deputy in the White House was Scott Jennings, the former Political Director for Mitch McConnell. Jennings is currently being investigated for both his role in the U.S. Attorney firings and also his alleged political presentation to the General Services Administration:
Violation of the Hatch Act, enacted to protect federal executive branch employees from being coerced into engaging in political activity, is not a criminal act but could result in Doan’s removal from office. Doan, 49, a former educator and businesswoman, and her husband were major donors to Republican causes before Bush nominated her in April 2006 as the first woman to head the GSA.
She is to testify on Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The special counsel’s office said it had interviewed 21 of the 36 GSA political appointees who attended the Jan. 26 meeting with J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy director of the Office of Political Affairs. The counsel’s office also talked to Jennings and interviewed Doan for nine hours over two days.
Questions will now likely be asked about communications between Scott Jennings and his mentor Mitch McConnell during the U.S. Attorney scandal. Also look for Congress to subpoena emails that Jennings sent from his RNC email account to try and circumvent the Open Records Act. Anyone think these some of these emails were sent to Mitch McConnell? Remember:

J. Scott Jennings, a political operative from Dawson Springs who has emerged as a key player in the growing maelstrom over the firings of eight U.S. attorneys allegedly for political reasons, was back in the national news last week.

Jennings is the former political director for Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell and is now the White House's deputy director of political affairs under Karl Rove.

E-mail messages handed over to a congressional committee show Jennings used a Republican National Committee e-mail address to discuss the firings with aides to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Also look for Taylor to be questioned into how David Huber, Mitch McConnell's good friend who was originally on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired, was magically removed:
The top federal prosecutor for Louisville and western Kentucky was on an initial list of prosecutors recommended for removal from office.

David Huber, the U.S. attorney in Louisville since 2003 and former general counsel to U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, was one of 13 prosecutors whose name was sent by the Justice Department to the White House on Feb. 24, 2005, with a recommendation that they be replaced. Seven of the 13 either resigned or were fired...

The memo sent by D. Kyle Sampson, then the chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, did not list reasons why the various prosecutors were listed.

The big question is: Did either Taylor or Jennings violate federal laws by using an RNC email account to discuss David Huber's status with Mitch McConnell?