Wall closing in…

“The FBI’s Sacramento division is investigating a former St. HOPE executive’s allegations of obstruction of justice, Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence G. Brown confirmed Tuesday.

The news fuels the controversy that has followed Mayor Kevin Johnson since 2008, when his brainchild St. HOPE Academy first was investigated for misuse of public funds.

That investigation appeared to end in April when Brown’s office announced a settlement with Johnson, St. HOPE and former executive director Dana Gonzalez.

The settlement, hotly contested by the office of the inspector general for the federal Corporation for National and Community Service, required the repayment of more than $400,000 in misused grants for AmeriCorps volunteers.

However, Rick Maya, who officially left his position as executive director with St. HOPE last week, alleged in an April resignation letter that a member of the charter schools’ board deleted Johnson’s e-mails during the federal investigation. Those claims, uncovered by a public records request by The Bee, caught the interest of Brown’s office, who asked the FBI’s Sacramento division to look into it.

“The FBI has, in fact, opened an investigation of the circumstances surrounding the alleged destruction of e-mails, and is working with criminal prosecutors in this office,” Brown said in a statement to The Bee. “Beyond confirming the existence of an investigation, we are not at liberty to discuss the details of the investigation.”

What is at issue here is why the Obama administration seemed in such a hurry to silence Walpin. The nice thing about this for inquring minds is that everything related to this case is fair game under the FOIA. Non of it could have executive privilege applied. So one way or another this story is coming out.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

“Now, it looks like the White House is the one with a cognitive problem. It seems that they rushed a conclusion to the investigation without checking on the cooperation of the accused or even determining whether they had seen all of the evidence. And when the independent Inspector General tried to make that very point, the White House attacked him instead of the person who defrauded the government and may have obstructed justice on top of it.

Democrats screeched about the politicization of the Department of Justice when Bush asked for the resignations of political appointees who worked completely at his pleasure. They assumed that Bush wanted the US Attorneys out of the way for political reasons. Here we have a White House attacking an IG, authorized by both Congress and the White House and supposedly independent, for objecting to a political payoff for a high-profile Obama supporter. When do we hear that same outrage over politicization of law enforcement?”

While not a fan of a special prosecutor, there has never been a greater case for one to look at.

Technorati Tags: Gerald Walpin, Barack Obama, DOJ, Corruption