A little, unknown federal agency called the “Office of Special Counsel” is preparing to investigate Rove. The LA Times gives us this description of the OSC:
Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.
In other words, they make sure federal employees are following the rules laid out in the Hatch Act.
So what are they looking for? It appears everything over the past six years, involving the aggressive politicizing of the White House:
But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.
The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.
First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.
Reading through the entire article, it appears that Rove’s now infamous Power Point presentations was the final straw. If you get a minute, read the LA Times article to get an idea of how much these presentations were used and how they violated the law in terms of federal employees engaging in political activities while on the tax payers payroll.
The more we hear about Rove getting into trouble, the more you got to wonder what he has on Bush. There has to be something big, or Bush would have eliminated this liability a long time ago.