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Judiciary Republicans Call for Special Prosecutor


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NYTimes:



All seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee joined together on Wednesday to request appointment of a special prosecutor to look into Representative Joe Sestak’s claim that the White House offered him a job to drop out of the Senate Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the Republican senators said the assertions are “very serious and, if true, suggest a possible violation of various federal criminal laws intended to safeguard our political process from the taint of bribes and political machine manipulation.”

The Justice Department as recently as last Friday said it sees no need for a special prosecutor and presumably has not changed its mind in the last five days. But the letter from the Judiciary Republicans raises the profile of a matter President Obama’s advisers wish would just go away and underscores the political perils in the White House strategy of refusing to disclose its conversations with Mr. Sestak.

Mr. Sestak first said in February that the White House had proposed an administration job if he would back off his challenge to Senator Arlen Specter, but he refused and went on to win the primary last week. In the days since, Republicans have revived and pressed the matter, while the White House and Mr. Sestak have refused to provide details of what happened. The White House has said it looked into the situation and determined nothing inappropriate happened.

“The White House cannot possibly manage an internal investigation of potential criminal misconduct while simultaneously crafting a public narrative to rebut the claim that misconduct occurred,” the Republican senators said in the letter.

Those signing were Senators Jeff Sessions of Mississippi, Jon Kyl of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, John Cornyn of Texas and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah.

The White House had no comment on Wednesday and the Justice Department pointed to a letter sent last Friday by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich to Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, in response to a similar request.

Mr. Weich did not address the merits of the allegations, only that the Justice Department was capable of evaluating them without a special prosecutor. The department, he wrote, “has a long history of handling investigations of high level officials professionally and independently, without the need to appoint a special counsel.”
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