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Even though they feared they’d be fired for refusing a direct order from Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt or his top aides, the two men balked when told to destroy e-mail backup tapes in violation of state laws.
Which tells you that at least someone in Missouri’s capital is looking out for the people’s interests.
As for all the governor’s men, let’s put it this way: Public disclosure wasn’t priority No. 1 with the Blunt administration, as we learn with each new legal filing in the e-mail fiasco.
In true Nixonian fashion (as in Richard Nixon), the focus was and continues to be self-preservation.
What secret Blunt and his top aides want to protect, we still don’t know. But keeping it from becoming public was and continues to be all-important.
Even if that meant at one point trying to ruin the reputation of a once-loyal staffer, Scott Eckersley, who had the bad judgment of suggesting that government e-mails were public records and shouldn’t be destroyed.
Even if it meant ignoring that advice (after firing Eckersley) by ordering the Office of Administration to break the law by destroying the e-mail backup tapes.
Even if it means continuing to stonewall an independent investigation that Blunt alleges is politically motivated — a rationale that has far less credence than it might have had in the beginning.
After all, Blunt is no longer running for re-election, which was itself a strange development that may or may not have been tied to the e-mail controversy.
Or as Alice said, it just gets curiouser and curiouser.
Just what is Blunt trying to hide by refusing to turn over the e-mail tapes that those two bureaucrats refused to destroy?
Certainly not the fact that his administration engaged in a cover-up of something. That we’ve known for months.
This week’s revelations only provided more damning detail.
No, there must be something else. What is so damaging in those internal e-mails that Blunt would continue to resist producing the records long after that made any political sense?
Blunt and his aides have consistently refused to comment. However, it might help to remember how this all started.
It was a message that Blunt’s former chief of staff, Ed Martin, sent to political supporters from his state e-mail account at 9:23 on the night of Aug. 20, 2007.
In that e-mail, Martin advised anti-abortion activists on ways to undermine a lawsuit filed by Planned Parenthood against a new state abortion law.
We know this because a copy of that e-mail fell into the hands of a now former columnist for the Springfield News-Leader. The writer, Tony Messenger, said it smacked of Martin conducting illegal political activity with state resources.
He requested more e-mails under the state’s Sunshine Law, which set in motion the cover-up that continues to this day.
What is Blunt’s motivation for refusing to clear this up?
I can see where the cover-up itself would have been damaging to his re-election chances. The issue would have kept coming up.
But why remain dug in now?
Is there something in those e-mails that might ruin Blunt’s chances of resuming his political career at some point?
The only other alternative I can think of is stubbornness — that Blunt sees this legal battle as a proxy for the political contest he and Attorney General Jay Nixon might have waged had Blunt not backed out so unexpectedly in January.
I don’t think the Boy Governor is that self-destructive, given all the speculation it has caused.
Either way, the special investigator appointed by Nixon has a good point when he argues in the suit he filed this week that a judge should take possession of the e-mail backup tapes.
Let a court decide which e-mails should be turned over to the independent investigators and which are necessarily confidential.
That shouldn’t be up to the person with the most to lose if something embarrassing or worse becomes public.
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