Since We’re Talking About The GSA Scandal,

here’s another GSA whopper during the George W. Bush administration.
Lurita Doan’s “resignation” as head of GSA was announced without fanfare by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, that memorable font of misinformation.

Lurita Alexis Doan (R) Resigned as head of the General Services Administration. She was under scrutiny for conflict of interest and violations of the Hatch Act. Among other things she asked GSA employees how they could “help Republican candidates.” For more on the level of this scandal see here and here.

And here’s a semi-GSA-whopper:

David Safavian GSA (General Services Administration) Chief of Staff, found guilty of obstructing justice and lying ti authorities about playing footsie with Jack Abramoff and sentenced to 12 months

Here are some other executive branch scandals during the George W. Bush administration:

“Lawyergate” Or the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys’ controversy refers to President Bush firing, without explanation, eleven Republican federal prosecutors whom he himself had appointed. It is alleged they were fired for prosecuting Republicans and not prosecuting Democrats. When Congressional hearings were called, a number of senior Justice Department officials cited executive privilege and refused to testify under oath, including:

1) Michael A. Battle (R) Director of Executive Office of US Attorneys in the Justice Department.
2) Bradley Schlozman (R) Director of Executive Office of US Attorneys who replaced Battle
3) Michael Elston (R) Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty
4) Paul McNulty (R) Deputy Attorney General to William Mercer
5) William W. Mercer (R) Associate Attorney General to Alberto Gonzales
6) Kyle Sampson (R) Chief of Staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
7) Alberto Gonzales (R) Attorney General of the United States
8) Monica Goodling (R) Liaison between President Bush and the Justice Department
9) Joshua Bolten (R) Deputy Chief of Staff to President Bush was found in Contempt of Congress
10) Sara M. Taylor (R) Aid to Presidential Advisor Karl Rove
11) Karl Rove (R) Advisor to President Bush
12) Harriet Miers (R) Legal Counsel to President Bush, was found in Contempt of Congress

Lewis Libby (R) Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney (R), ‘Scooter’ was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Plame Affair on March 6, 2007

Alphonso Jackson (R) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development resigned while under investigation by the FBI for revoking the contract of a vendor who told Jackson he did not like President George W. Bush (R).

Karl Rove (R) Senior Adviser to President George W. Bush was investigated by the Office of Special Counsel for “improper political influence over government decision-making”, as well as for his involvement in several other scandals such as Lawyergate, Bush White House e-mail controversy and Plame affair. He resigned in April 2007.

Bush White House e-mail controversy – During the Lawyergate investigation it was discovered that the Bush administration used Republican National Committee (RNC) web servers for millions of emails which were then destroyed, lost or deleted in possible violation of the Presidential Records Act and the Hatch Act. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Andrew Card, Sara Taylor and Scott Jennings all used RNC webservers for the majority of their emails. Of 88 officials, no emails at all were discovered for 51 of them. As many as 5 million e-mails requested by Congressional investigators of other Bush administration scandals were therefore unavailable, lost, or deleted.

Roger Stillwell (R) Staff in the Department of the Interior under George W. Bush, also caught in the Abramoff scandal. Pleaded guilty and received two years suspended sentence.

Susan B. Ralston (R) Special Assistant to the President and Senior Advisor to Karl Rove, resigned October 6, 2006 after it became known that she accepted gifts and passed information to her former boss Jack Abramoff.

J. Steven Griles (R) former Deputy to the Secretary of the Interior pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to 10 months – Abramoff scandal.

Italia Federici (R) staff to the Secretary of Interior, and President of the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, pled guilty to tax evasion and obstruction of justice in re Abramofff. She was sentenced to four-year probation.

Mark Zachares (R) staff in the Department of Labor, bribed by Abramoff, guilty of conspiracy to defraud.

Robert E. Coughlin (R) Deputy Chief of Staff, Crimianl Division of the Justice Department pleaded guilty to conflict of interest after accepting bribes from Jack Abramoff.

Kyle Foggo Executive director of the CIA was convicted of honest services fraud in the awarding of a government contract and sentenced to 37 months in federal prison. On September 29, 2008, Foggo pleaded guilty to one count of the indictment, admitting that while he was the CIA executive director, he acted to steer a CIA contract to the firm of his lifelong friend, Brent R. Wilkes.

Julie MacDonald (R) Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Department of the Interior, resigned May 1, 2007 after giving government documents to developers.

Lester Crawford (R) Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, resigned after 2 months. Pled guilty to conflict of interest and received 3 years suspended sentence and fined $90,000.
Bush administration payment of columnists with federal funds to say nice things about Republican policies. Illegal payments were made to journalists Armstrong Williams (R), Maggie Gallagher (R) and Michael McManus (R) (2004–2005).

Sandy Berger (D) former Clinton security adviser pleads guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unlawfully removing classified documents from the National Archives in

Plame affair (2004), in which CIA agent Valerie Plame’s name was leaked by Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State, to the press in retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the reports used by George W. Bush to legitimize the Iraq war.

Thomas A. Scully, (R) administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), withheld information from Congress about the projected cost of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, and allegedly threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary, Richard Foster, if Foster provided the data to Congress. Scully resigned on December 16, 2003.

Janet Rehnquist (R) appointed Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services by George W. Bush. In 2002, Governor Jeb Bush’s (R-FL) Chief of Staff Kathleen Shanahan asked Rehnquist to delay auditing a $571 million federal overpayment to the State of Florida. Rehnquist ordered her staff to delay the investigation for five months until after the Florida elections. When Congress began an investigation into the matter, Rehnquist resigned in March 2003.

The Obama Administration has some catching up to do, but, let’s give him another term to do so. After all, the Bush II administration had eight years to compile their record.

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