Once again Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.)confirms clearly that the Obama administration offered him a federal job in order to get him to drop out of the Democratic race against Arlen Specter. That is a crime and the White House has been "stonewalling" for the last few months since Sestak first dropped the bombshell.
The Hill reports that even Democrats are concerned with the unanswered allegation and trying to encourage the White House to provide some answers.
Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) called on the White House on Monday to detail conversations it allegedly had with Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to try to convince him to drop his Senate bid.
Weiner said that allegations that White House officials had offered Sestak an administration job in exchange for his dropping of his primary bid against Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) had become a growing political liability.
"I think what the White House should do is, to some degree, say, 'Here are the facts,' " Weiner said Monday morning during an appearance on MSNBC. "If there's not a lot [to] what's going on here, then just say what happened."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs continues to evade questions about the offered deal, claiming nothing "problematic" occurred.
Legal experts have said federal statutes concerning bribery or interference with an election might have been violated if the White House made a job offer as a quid-pro-quo for Sestak to abandon the primary against Specter that Sestak had won Tuesday.
Several reporters asked Gibbs about the matter Thursday during the White House briefing.
“I don’t have anything to add to that,” Gibbs said repeatedly.
He said he answered the question in March, when he told reporters, “I’ve talked to several people in the White House; I’ve talked to people that have talked to others in the White House. I’m told that whatever conversations have been had are not problematic. I think Congressman Sestak has discussed that this is – whatever happened is in the past, and he’s focused on his primary election.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has officialy asked Eric Holder, Attorney General to assign a special prosecutor to investigate Sestak's allegations.
Perhaps then Sestak will be more forthcoming about what the job offer was for and who made it and then perhaps the Obama administration would be forced to show that transparency they continue to claim they will show.
Sestak has stayed consistent since dropping the bombshell in February in saying yes a job was offered but refusing to detail which position he was offered and by whom, specifically.
