The Ohio Department of Job and Family Services is in full cover-up mode over its illegal search into records pertaining to Joe the Plumber, but the cover-up is unraveling:
Vanessa Niekamp said that when she was asked to run a child-support check on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher on Oct. 16, she thought it routine. A supervisor told her the man had contacted the state agency about his case.
Niekamp didn’t know she just had checked on “Joe the Plumber,” who was elevated the night before to presidential politics prominence as Republican John McCain’s example in a debate of an average American.
The senior manager would not learn about “Joe” for another week, when she said her boss informed her and directed her to write an e-mail stating her computer check was a legitimate inquiry.
The reason Niekamp said she was given for checking if there was a child-support case on Wurzelbacher does not match the reason given by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
Director Helen Jones-Kelley said her agency checks people who are “thrust into the public spotlight,” amid suggestions they may have come into money, to see if they owe support or are receiving undeserved public assistance.
Niekamp told The Dispatch she is unfamiliar with the practice of checking on the newly famous. “I’ve never done that before, I don’t know of anybody in my office who does that and I don’t remember anyone ever doing that,” she said today. . .
On Oct. 23, Niekamp said Doug Thompson, deputy director for child support, told her she had checked on “Joe the Plumber.” Thompson “literally demanded” that she write an e-mail to the agency’s chief privacy officer stating she checked the case for child-support purposes, she said. . .
The e-mail that Niekamp said she wrote was not among records provided today to The Dispatch in response to a public-records request. Nor did the agency, as required by state law, say it withheld any records.
There are two main developments here. First, Jones-Kelley’s story — that they always check on people who become famous — is a lie. This is no surprise, as no one believed her tale. (Indeed, it would have been far scarier if she had been telling the truth, that Ohio as a matter of policy investigates all newly famous people.)
Second, they are actively trying to cover up what they did, first by forcing Niekamp to write an email to cover for the illegal search, and then by hiding that email from the press. As they say; it’s not the crime but the cover-up.
When the story first broke, Ohio’s Democratic governor denied that the records were accessed for political purposes. Now he refuses to comment.
(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)
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