Drip, drip, drip. The politicization scandal at the Department of Defense grows a little each day as more Republicans come forward. Two more have gone public with notices from the Air Force that their files got handed over their confidential files to Abraham Payton of Due Diligence Group (DDG), a Democrat oppo-research firm that worked for House Democrats last cycle.
And kudos to Politico for staying on top of it, too:
Sam Peters, a Republican who challenged Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) in November, and Kevin Dellicker, who fell short in the GOP primary race to take on Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), both received Feb. 8 letters from the Air Force notifying them that Abraham Payton of Due Diligence Group made “multiple requests” for their military personnel records last year.
In both Peters and Dellicker’s cases, the Air Force identified Payton, a former research director for the Democratic group American Bridge, as having “inappropriately requested” copies of their records for “for the stated purpose of employment and benefits.”
Yesterday we learned that Reps. Don Bacon and Zach Nunn also were among the eleven candidates whose files got leaked to DDG, increasing the pressure to get answers from the DoD. Committee chairs Mike Rogers and James Comer have already demanded documentary response from Lloyd Austin not just on the scope of the eleven leaks, but also on who was involved and what disciplinary and prosecutorial efforts are taking place within the DoD and the Air Force.
The claimed technique involved here more than suggests that the effort may well go beyond the eleven cases cited by the Secretary of the Air Force. Want to bet that DDG pulled the same trick on the other service branches — assuming that this is even accurate? It worked on the Air Force, so why would Payton and DDG have limited it to just these eleven files?
And even then, this explanation seems a little too pat to take at face value. Legitimate requests for records to verify employment and benefits would have to come with signed releases from the veterans involved. Either (a) someone forged releases, (b) the DoD records person on each request was unusually sloppy in handling confidential records, or (c) Payton and DDG have a source willing to leak the records. It’s difficult to believe that Payton would risk criminal prosecution with (a). It’s equally difficult to believe that he lucked out eleven times in explanation (b). Option (c) seems the most realistic — and if so, it won’t have stopped at eleven.
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Peters and Dellicker think that the effort may involve others, too. Like, say, the House Democrats’ own campaign committee:
Specifically, the affected Republicans want to know what role, if any, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and their Democratic challengers played in receiving and using information that the Air Force improperly disclosed.
“Look, you sanction a hitman to kill somebody, you’re guilty of a crime. You sanction somebody to steal, you’re guilty of a crime,” Peters said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “And the DCCC needs to be [held to account], and I fully intend on making sure they are.”
That’s an excellent question. No doubt, the DCCC and DDG have ways to keep fingerprints isolated on these tactics, but that may not be enough, especially with the material involved. House Democrats exploited Jennifer-Ruth Green’s victimization by sexual assault while serving in the Air Force, for instance, and the DCCC had to know that the information could have only come from a leak of her confidential record. If the other Republicans targeted in these leaks can also point to specific attacks by Democrats based on such records, it’s going to point back to the DCCC no matter how many firewalls they have erected between themselves and Payton.
As I said, kudos to Politico for staying on top of this scandal, which certainly adds to the weight of evidence that the federal bureaucracy has become partisanized as well as politicized. The Washington Post has no mention of this story, with searches for “Due Diligence” or “Jennifer-Ruth” producing no links to the scandal in the past week. Ditto for the New York Times on “Jennifer-Ruth” and “Due Diligence.” Give credit to CNN for covering it on Tuesday, but they never bothered to report that DDG is a Democrat oppo-research group — and haven’t updated the story since.
And the media wonders why its industry faces a financial and credibility crisis.
