Mrs. O on the hook in IG-Gate?

The Washington Times raises interesting questions:

In the past 10 days, two major developments have occurred. First, Obama administration attorneys continued their efforts to deny Mr. Walpin his day in court. On Dec. 7, they filed reply briefs rearguing their demand that the case be dismissed without even a hearing. Second, Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Sen. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, both Republicans, have openly questioned the honesty of CNCS Chairman Alan D. Solomont. Most explosively of all, dirty deeds may have been employed to hide extensive involvement in the affair by the office of first lady Michelle Obama, whom the White House months earlier had announced would play "a central role in the national service agenda." . . .
Mr. Issa, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, wrote a scathing letter to Mr. Solomont on Dec. 11. Parts of it are worth quoting at length:
"After Mr. Walpin's removal, there was speculation in the press that former Chief of Staff to the First Lady Jackie Norris may have influenced the President's action because she left the White House to become a senior advisor at CNCS around the time of Mr. Walpin's removal. Accordingly, Committee investigators specifically asked if you discussed any Corporation business, including the issues relating to the Corporation's Office of Inspector General, with Ms. Norris. You indicated that you did not. ... The White House announced on June 4, 2009 that Ms. Norris had been appointed Senior Advisor to the Corporation. ... In light of all this, it seems highly implausible that you would meet with Ms. Norris on June 9, 2009 and not discuss the IG," who was fired the very next day. . . . .
Mr. Issa is right to smell a rat, especially since White House aides reportedly cut short congressional staff questioning of Mr. Solomont when the line of questioning began to lead to Mrs. Obama. . . .

Read the rest. The inference of a cover-up is obvious, the evidence of an actual crime is less so. However, remember that the FBI has also been asking questions in the Walpin case. If anybody questioned in this case lies to the FBI, that's a crime. If anybody destroys evidence relevant to a federal investigation, that's another crime. The question is whether Obama administrations will begin snitching on one another, rather than to risk prison sentences.

I've said all along that this story -- not just Walpin/AmeriCorp but the other inspector general stories, including AmTrak and SIGTARP -- is not going to go away. Whether it results in a takedown of any major administration figure, there's enough here to keep making news for months to come.

IG-Gate: The Sacramento Sex Scandal Obama and MSM Want You to Ignore

Yeah, this kind of stuff could get embarrassing:

About 11:00 p.m., Mr. Johnson arrived at St. Hope and instructed [her] to gather her things and come with him. Mr. Johnson drove to [her] apartment, which is managed by St. Hope Development and houses its AmeriCorps members, purportedly so that they could review the students' grades. While in [her] apartment, in which another AmeriCorps member had a separate bedroom, Mr. Johnson laid down on [her] bed. [The woman] sat on the edge of the bed to show him the grades, at which time Mr. Johnson "layed [sic] down behind me, cupping his body around mine like the letter C. After about 2-3 minutes or so, I felt his hand on my left side where my hip bone is."

That's from WorldNetDaily, digging up more gold from the motherlode Grassley-Issa report (PDF) on the firing of AmeriCorps IG Gerald Walpin. The Democratic mayor of Sacramento seemed to think he could use the federally-funded St. HOPE program the way Eliot Spitzer used the Emperor's Club VIP call-girl agency.

Kevin Johnson's fiancee -- who just happens to be the boss of D.C. public schools -- tried to sweet-talk Walpin out of blowing the whistle on her sweetie and, when Walpin wouldn't play ball for Obama's buddies, the White House fired Walpin and lied about it. And then there are those magic words: "Hush money."

All of which adds up to one heckuva sex scandal, but you're not seeing much about this in the MSM, are you? The New York Times buried the story inside Saturday's paper with the bland headline, "G.O.P. Report Connects Official to Fiancé’s Case."

If Kevin Johnson and Michelle Rhee weren't Democrats, the New York Times would be running 72-point headlines on Page One: REPUBLICANS ROCKED BY TEEN SEX 'HUSH MONEY' CHARGES!

But like Professor Glenn Reynolds says, "When the press can ignore a sex scandal, you know it's covering for politicians, not covering them."

More at Memeorandum and the IG-Gate blog.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! What offends me about this is that the newspaper business is in meltdown mode and, hey, sex sells, right? This story is a headline-writer's dream:

SACRAMENTO SEX SCANDAL!
Hizzoner's Hush-Money Teen Tango
Watchdog Whistle-Blower Claims
White House Arranged Cover-Up

Watever happened to selling newspapers, people? Dibs on the "Michelle Rhee sex video" Google-bomb, BTW. Now, somebody needs to hit my tip jar. My wife wants to go holiday shopping Friday.

That sound you just heard . . .

. . . was my head exploding:

On June 27, 2008, Michelle Rhee, head of the Washington, D.C., school system, paid a visit to Gerald Walpin, who was inspector general of the government volunteer organization AmeriCorps. . . .
Rhee, who later became engaged to marry Johnson, had been on St. Hope’s board of directors before taking over as chief of the District of Columbia system. Her apparent goal, as she visited Walpin, was to vouch for Johnson.
"The basic point of her meeting with me was to tell me what a great guy he was," Walpin recalls, "and what wonderful work he has done, and that maybe he had made mistakes administratively, but that she thought I should give as much consideration as possible to his good work in deciding what to do."

OK, my head exploded not merely because Byron York scooped me again -- he's a good reporter -- but because the sex-scandal angle in the IG-Gate story is being ignored by the MSM.

Here you've got Johnson, accused of sexual misconduct by three different St. HOPE students, and one of the St. HOPE board members -- who also happens to be Johnson's fiancee -- is trying to get the Inspector General to drop his investigation, in the middle of Johnson's 2008 campaign for mayor. The accused sexual predador is a close friend of the president, and Little Miss Predator-Enabler is the head of D.C. public schools?

On what planet is this not front-page news?

IG-Gate: White House Walpin Spin Game BUMPED: Grassley-Issa Report Added UPDATE: Sex Scandal + 'Hush Money' = Not News?

UPDATE 9:20 p.m.: My report at the American Spectator:

Sexual abuse accusations by St. HOPE Academy students against Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson were apparently covered up, possibly with "hush money," according to a 61-page report issued by congressional investigators. . . .
The Grassley-Issa report says that agents of the inspector's general office who investigated the St. HOPE sex-abuse charges "immediately recognized what appeared to be improper handling of this allegation . . . and unethical conduct by Mr. Johnson's attorney," Kevin Hiestand, who was also the mayor's business partner.

And at the Hot Air Green Room:

What makes this so amazing to me is how the MSM’s political bias apparently trumps their basic news judgment.
Teenage girls? Sex abuse? Powerful politicians? "Hush money"? Dude, if that story’s not front-page news, I don’t know is.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin notices that the MSM is missing in action on the IG-Gate story, and Hot Air's Ed Morrissey says:

Will the national media finally take some interest in the story now? The White House not only deliberately misled Congress on Walpin’s firing, they also withheld these new documents until after Grassley and Issa made their initial report on the investigation on Friday. As Byron York notes, that takes the traditional Friday-night document dump to a whole new level. It also completely refutes any claim on transparency and openness from this administration.

The joint report of House and Senate Republican investigative staff is here (PDF).

PREVIOUSLY (11:46 a.m.): Byron York has a report today on the way the Obama White House played "hide the facts" about the firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin. Good work, Byron.

Eric Holder is in deep doo-doo. This is classic "Culture of Corruption" stuff that Michelle Malkin has relentlessly exposed.