Sen. Hatch Baselessly Suggests The White House Broke The Law In Sestak "Scandal"

Today, seven Republican senators wrote a letter to the Justice Department requesting the appointment of a federal prosecutor to investigate rumors that the White House attempted to pry Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) out of the Pennsylvania Senate race by offering him a job.  On Fox News this afternoon, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) argued that a federal prosecutor is necessary because the administration is accused of breaking the law:

HATCH:  Well, I think we've asked for a federal prosecutor.  Virtually every Republican has asked it.  Look, these are serious charges.  You can't just brush them aside when Joe Sestak, a member of Congress, said that something was done that literally was violative of our laws -- serious laws.  It ought to be looked into and it ought to be resolved.  And the Justice Department has an obligation to look at it.  They can't just brush this aside.  They should look at it, and it may be nothing in the end, but right now it looks like they're trying to cover it up. 

Watch:

Sestak was allegedly offered a chance to become Secretary of the Navy, but the timeline of events makes such an offer highly unlikely.  Moreover, even if a job was discussed, that doesn't actually mean anyone violated the law.  As the New Republic's Jonathan Chait explains:

The plain fact is that there's no credible reason to believe that any law was broken.

You don't have to rely on the "the word of White House officials." There's no such thing as offering somebody a job in return for them dropping out of a Senate race. The acceptance of a job means dropping out of a Senate race. The concept of offering somebody a job "in exchange" for them declining to seek another job is like offering to marry a woman in exchange for her not marrying some other guy. It's conceptually nonsensical.

Indeed, several legal experts have rejected the notion that a job offer would have been illegal.  According to Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer in the Bush administration, "The allegation that the job offer was somehow a 'bribe'...is difficult to support."

"There is no bribery case here," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the nonpartisan watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former federal prosecutor. "No statute has ever been used to prosecute anybody for bribery in circumstances like this."  

If Hatch really believes the administration did something "literally violative of our laws," he should specify what it was.  But there's not much to support the idea that a job offer is a crime.  Plus, this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and it's not like congressional Republicans were complaining before President Obama was in the White House.