By Daniel Pulliam
from Government Executive.com (link below)

An attorney for Lurita Doan, head of the General Services Administration, argued Friday that President Bush should reject an investigative agency’s report finding her in violation of the law that limits partisan political activity in the federal government.

In a 16-page response to the Office of Special Counsel’s May 18 report that concluded Doan violated the Hatch Act when she asked at the conclusion of a January meeting how the agency could help Republican candidates, Doan’s counsel, Michael Nardotti, said the investigation was not conducted objectively and a stigma of impropriety overshadows the case.

“When the record is examined in an objective, impartial and fair manner, it is clear that the conclusions of the OSC report are far off the mark and are based on tenuous inferences and careless leaps of logic,” Nardotti stated. “We request that the Office of the President disapprove this report and submit this matter for consideration by an appropriate entity outside the OSC.”

OSC declined to comment. The independent agency will review the letter and deliver a final report to President Bush.

Nardotti said in the letter that Doan was not treated fairly in the OSC investigative process; the report used selective testimony and evidence while omitting other information that would provide context; and the conclusion was “pure hyperbole and completely out of place in a purportedly objective, impartial and fair report.”

The OSC report stated, “One can imagine no greater violation of the Hatch Act than to invoke the machinery of an agency, with all its contracts and buildings, in the service of a partisan campaign to retake Congress and the governors’ mansions,” in reference to Doan’s role in a Jan. 26 meeting at GSA headquarters. At the meeting, Scott Jennings, special assistant to the president and a deputy of Karl Rove, showed to more than 30 GSA political appointees a 28’slide PowerPoint presentation that analyzed the results of the 2006 midterm election and prospects for the 2008 elections.

read more at Government Executive

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