A federal judge has decided that Virginia Democrats can go ahead with their lawsuit against the Republican Party of Virginia in the still-developing two-year-old eavesdropping scandal, the AP reports. It was last September that the already-convicted Ed Matricardi fingered four other Republicans, including the office of Attorney General / 2005 Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Kilgore (R). Now, Kilgore has claimed repeatedly that his hands are clean on this, but his answers have been conspicuously defensive and qualified, such as in this exchange:
Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine: Unless these [press] reports are completely wrong, your office did something that was wrong. […] When you are the lead attorney on a case of very significant importance, and you become aware that somebody on your side of the case has eavesdropped on the opposing party, and the eavesdropping is illegal, and you come to the conclusion that your oath requires you to turn that over to law enforcement, you cannot at the same time have members of your staff sit down and meet with and strategize and brainstorm with the eavesdropper.
[…]
Attorney General Jerry Kilgore: How absolutely misleading you are being this morning, absolutely misleading. It is reckless for a Lt. Governor, a statewide elected official, to sit up here and believe everything he has read in the various accounts of newspapers and lecture me on ethics.
Kaine: Tell me where I’m wrong.
Kilgore: I have no duty to you Mister Lieutenant Governor.
Kaine: Tell me where I am wrong.
Kilgore: I have no duty to you Mister Lieutenant Governor.
[…]
Kaine: Did your staffers meet with Ed Matricardi on Monday after the first phone call?
Kilgore: No one met with, in that room, with Ed Matricardi…
(Emphasis mine.)
The best part about all of this is that the Republican Party of Virginia is so beaten, so thoroughly downtrodden by the victories of Governor Mark Warner (D), that they don’t have the presence of mind to pull Kilgore and find a new candidate for governor. Instead, they’ll back him 100%, right up until the day when he’s taken down in this eavesdropping case, and they’ll be left holding the bag, far too late to run a new candidate.
Jack Ryan, anyone?