Two times?? No. According to Larry Kane, it was “many times”....
How Long Does It Take The White House To Get A Story Right?
3:48 pm in Barack Obama, Politics, The Clintons | 350 views
On February 18, Larry Kane, a television news anchor in Philadelphia, asked Congressman and former Admiral Joe Sestak:
“Were you ever offered a job to get out of this race?” Kane was referring to the Democratic Senate primary against Arlen Specter.
“Yes,” Sestak answered.
“Was it Navy Secretary?”
“No comment,” said Sestak.
According to Kane, Sestak talked about staying in the race but added that he “was called many times” to pull out. Later, Kane asked:
“So you were offered a job by someone in the White House?”
“Yes.”
At the end of the taping, Sestak looked surprised and said, “You are the first person who ever asked me that question.”
His response to Kane appeared spontaneous and unscripted.
Kane called the White House Press Office that afternoon and played the interview for a staffer, who promised that someone would call Kane back.
A few minutes later, at 3:45 PM, another staffer called and said the White House would call back with a reaction “shortly.”
Kane’s station played the report aired all night.
At 6:45 the next morning, 15 hours later, a Deputy Press Secretary called and said, “You can say the White House says it’s not true.
“On the Friday before Memorial Day, 100 days later, a classic news dump day, the White House Counsel Robert Bauer issued his report. He claimed that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel enlisted the support of Bill Clinton, “who agreed to raise with Congressman Sestak options of service on a Presidential or other Senior Executive Branch Advisory Board.”
Remember, when Kane asked a second time, “So you were offered a job by someone in the White House,” Sestak did not equivocate.
He said nothing about an “uncompensated” advisory position or an offer by a White House liaison, he simply said, “Yes.”
Someone’s lying, and Scooter Libby went to jail for less.
Now that there has been sufficient time to construct a story that would imply the least amount of collateral damage: Bill Clinton and Joe Sestak, both decide to come clean about the story at almost the same instant on the late Friday afternoon before Memorial Day, right after the President has lunch with Bill Clinton.
The Obama White House typically uses this technique to drop the more dubious and ambiguous news stories to avoid the most intense media scrutiny.
This is Joe Sestak’s version:
“Last summer, I received a phone call from President Clinton. During the course of the conversation, he expressed concern over my prospects if I were to enter the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and the value of having me stay in the House of Representatives because of my military background. He said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had spoken with him about my being on a Presidential Board while remaining in the House of Representatives.
I said no. I told President Clinton that my only consideration in getting into the Senate race or not was whether it was the right thing to do for Pennsylvania working families and not any offer. The former President said he knew I’d say that, and the conversation moved on to other subjects.”
Bringing in President Clinton to conduct questionable election negotiations as stated while his wife is Secretary of State raises interesting questions of ethics, if Clinton has been chosen because of his apparent immunity to past charges of perjury, his teflon-like coating may be wearing thin and the unlikely premise that the ‘position’ offered was with zero pay is inconsequential as far as using illegal methods to influence election results.
The question is whether the offer by the White House violated federal bribery and extortion laws. Last month, Congressman Darrel Issa R CA, asked Attorney General Holder to conduct an independent investigation into the matter, not surprisingly the Justice Department has been slow to initiate the investigation.
“It’s not the kind of thing anybody likes to talk about, but it does go on,” said former Reagan Justice Department official Michael Carvin. “But it does fall within the literal language of the statute.”
This situation is a possible violation of the law, it has been compounded by the tendency of the White House to assume that the regional Machine politics of Chicago will work in DC, that lies and obfuscation will make problems disappear.
This Chicago attitude of Obama and Rahm will probably be their undoing.
chicago attitude! yep, you nailed it. good post, you are all over this. now lets watch how the media will (course not), cover this like they attacked from 6/’72 thru 8/’74. what a crock that entire episode was.
good.
What I brought out was that Krauthammer commented on the White House’s official statement - the WH says in their official statement that they made two contacts with Sestak. They say they made one in June of 2009 and one in July of 2009.
Again, as I said before in another post, what Sestak has said does not line up with what the White House has said.
***People need to continue to compare Sestak’s comments with White House’s official statements and keep on doing this. They don’t line up.***
Something is fishy...
Oh, I certainly HOPE so!