The Demo Memo investigation

Remember that?

Josh Marshall has an update and some speculation:

This week a trio of Republican senators on the committee felt compelled to hold a closed door meeting with conservative activists to tell them to back off. To quote The Hill: "[S]enators, who received last week a closed-door briefing on the investigation from Senate Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle, warned conservatives they might come to regret their position when the results of the probe are fully known. Pickle is expected to finish his investigation by March 5."

Now here's where this gets interesting. The report from the Sergeant at Arms is coming down the pike really soon. (Let's call it the Pickle pike.) And most of the Republicans on the committee seem to agree now that this is a criminal matter, at least in the sense that there were probable illegalities committed. It's hard to see how that won't lead to a criminal referral when the report comes in.

So say a referral is made to the Justice Department. If that happens, how can they not appoint a special counsel? Not only is the issue at hand inherently political, but the political appointees at the DOJ work with the White House Counsel's office and the Judiciary Committee Republicans to plan and coordinate strategy for judicial nominations. The whole issue here is whether their colleagues on the Senate staff side were purloining Democratic staff memos to aid that planning. It seems like a classic case where the folks at Justice would need to recuse themselves.

Now we come to the White House Counsel's office.

Read the rest of the post here.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.