In a concession to Republicans, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) has promised to ask the National Archives for documents relating to President Bill Clinton’s Office of Political Affairs.
As a result, a Democratic push to investigate the activities of former White House senior adviser Karl Rove and other aides to President Bush could mean fresh scrutiny and publicity for long-forgotten meetings and presentations during the Clinton administration.
In a letter this week, Waxman suggested Republicans satisfy their curiosity by reexamining what he estimates are more than 2 million pages of documents about the Clinton White House and the Democratic National Committee that House investigators amassed in the 1990s.
Ahhh...here's the rub:
The extraordinary search was prompted by revelations that Bush aides have conducted political briefings for GOP appointees at federal agencies before big elections. Democrats have complained that the sessions could violate the Hatch Act, which is designed to insulate federal employees from political pressure.
The broadening inquiry, which Republicans contend will take the committee down unpredictable avenues, could be a headache for the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who is trying to push a message of change amid unwanted reminders of her husband’s administration, including a scandal centered on one of her biggest financial supporters.
Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the committee’s ranking member, has repeatedly prodded Waxman to see if the Clinton administration had done anything similar to the Bush White House’s political briefings.
In a five-page letter to Davis dated Monday that was provided to Politico, Waxman agreed to request the documents.
“You have asked that the committee make a number of document requests of the National Archives for records of the Clinton administration,” Waxman wrote. “The Clinton administration was subject to vastly more scrutiny by this committee than the Bush administration has been, and many of the records you seek may already be in the committee archives."
“However,” Waxman continued, “I do agree that the committee would benefit from requesting copies of any political briefings that the Office of Political Affairs in the Clinton administration may have given to federal agencies.”- I bet he said this with his fingers crossed behind his back.
