EVANS: Did Obama know about Sestak?

OPINION:

Ethics reform in Washington was touted by both President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders after they emerged victorious from the 2008 elections. “Openness” and “transparency” with regard to ethics and legislation also were promised repeatedly.

All those pledges are gone with the wind, especially underscored after Rep. Joe Sestak, Pennsylvania Democrat, acknowledged in a February media interview that he was offered a federal position by an unnamed White House official to drop out of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary. As this is written, Mr. Sestak still isn’t offering any specifics of the conversation. “I was offered a job, and I answered that,” Mr. Sestak told NBC TV’s David Gregory. “Anything that goes beyond that is for others to talk about.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs lamely said that “nothing inappropriate” occurred. But then the story broke that it was former President Bill Clinton who offered Mr. Sestak a non-paying job, which doesn’t make sense because Mr. Sestak specifically said his job offer came from the Obama White House.

At the time of the federal job offer, the White House was supporting Republican-turned-Democratic incumbent Arlen Specter, and it didn’t want Mr. Sestak as a messy primary challenger to Mr. Specter. It is past time now, however, for both the accuser and the accused to tell the American people about any purported job fix. After all, if such an enticement were made, it would constitute serious violations of federal law - specifically, Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 211, which covers “bribery, graft and conflicts of interest.”

The statute imposes a fine and/or possible imprisonment on anyone who “solicits or receives … any money or thing of value in consideration of the promise of support or use of influence in obtaining for any person any appointive office or place under the United States.” Oddly enough, these are the same statutes at play in the criminal trial of Rod Blagojevich, who is accused of trading Mr. Obama’s U.S. Senate seat for money.

The former Illinois governor argues that such political horse trading is commonplace and is not illegal. To prove his case, Mr. Blagojevich wants Mr. Obama to testify. The president wants no part of it, but it appears that his White House did the same thing.

Notwithstanding the obvious parallels, “watchdog” groups are nowhere to be found. While they find time to attack everyone else, groups such as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have, strangely enough, little appetite for getting engaged as to who knew what, who said what and when.

Indeed, prominent liberal newspaper editorial pages and journalists who have long been insistent that presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were responsible for the words and deeds of their White House staff and all administration officials have been missing in action. Shouldn’t Mr. Obama be held to this same standard?

The White House spin machine has assured Americans that Mr. Obama does “know” what’s going on with a wide range of issues. In light of all the White House assurances that the president is in control, it would be confusing to hear that the politically savvy Mr. Obama and his hands-on Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had no clue about the Sestak job offer coming from his team. Undoubtedly, his team already knows exactly who made the offer, what the offer was and how it was communicated. From his hands-on experience in Illinois (as undoubtedly noted in taped conversations in the Blagojevich investigation), his team knows how it works. And from the indictment of the U. S. attorney, the team also knows it is flatly illegal.

So why all the secrecy? Well, the Obama administration steadfastly favors giving Miranda warnings to every accused criminal in sight, including dangerous Islamic terrorists who seek to kill Americans regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans. Maybe the reason the White House is bobbing and weaving on Mr. Sestak’s confirmation of the job offer is because it believes so fervently in the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Otherwise, there is no legitimate reason not to come clean.

Let’s unravel the mystery by naming a nonpartisan special prosecutor to investigate whether criminal charges should be pursued in the Sestak case. The mainstream media have demanded such White House-related probes beginning with Watergate. Why stop now?

Randy Evans is former counsel to the Georgia Republican Party and served as counsel to speakers of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and Dennis Hastert.