Boy, was it time for an update.

Late last year we decided to take stock of all the Bush Administration officials who'd been accused of corruption and/or resigned in the face of scandal. Although we had fun doing it, we altruistically started the project in order to help our friends at Powerline, who professed an inability to think of any Bush officials beset by scandal.

This year´s result, which built on Justin Rood´s original gem, is, like our catalog of the administration´s efforts to disappear information, a staggering monument to the Bush Administration. And it wouldn't have been possible without TPM's research hounds, Adrianne Jeffries, Andrew Berger, and Peter Sheehy.

A quick note on methodology. Since a complete catalog of administration officials who've been accused of some form of corruption or abuse of power would be endless, we tried to maintain a high standard for inclusion. Most of those below were the subjects of criminal probes, but we also included officials who were credibly accused of acts that, if not criminal, were a corruption of office (like the U.S. attorney scandal). And even then, such officials were only included if their accusers had them dead to rights (which is why Karl Rove didn't make the cut). We also limited ourselves to officials who were either political appointees or whose actions were so political that they were effectively political appointees (like John Tanner).

Enjoy:

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A number of readers have sent in tips to help the folks at Powerline, who recently admitted to having trouble remembering administration officials (beyond Scooter Libby) who had been accused of corruption or resigned in the face of scandal.

How could you foresake us! cry our old pals Claude Allen, David Safavian, Brian Doyle. Who could forget former FDA commissioner, Lester Crawford? After the jump, you'll find our partial (but fast-growing) list. If we're missing a name, please send it along!

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A dispatch from the McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau:

Former White House adviser Claude Allen tearfully pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge Friday, telling a Montgomery County judge that he lost his bearings after working 14-hour days and getting little sleep in the "tumultuous time" after Hurricane Katrina.

"Something did go very wrong," said Allen, who began crying during his remarks to the court. "I failed to restrain myself ... I did not appreciate what was going on."

That's right, folks: Katrina made him shoplift. On twenty-five separate occasions.

The judge gave Allen two years' criminal probation, 40 hours of community service, and $1350 in fines. If he stays out of trouble for the length of his probation, the conviction will be removed from his criminal record.

Say it ain't so, Claude! Who put him up to it? The evil twin?

Claude Allen, the former Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, is set to plead guilty, McClatchy reports. He'll admit to a single misdemeanor: for "fraudulently stealing items worth less than $500 from a Target store." He'll get no jail time - just $850 in restitution to Target Corp. and one month's probation. That's a pretty sweet deal considering police alleged that he stole over $5,000 from Target and Hecht stores. He faced up to 18 months in jail.

So what's next for Allen? Oh, he'll bounce right back:

Friends of Allen, a well-known conservative who rose from a senator's press aide to one of the top jobs in the White House, said Wednesday that the criminal conviction shouldn't keep him from a future in politics.

"You know, people are more forgiving than you generally expect," said Carter Wrenn of Raleigh, N.C., a friend who was a political strategist for Helms and has known Allen since the early 1980s, when the recent college graduate was a spokesman for Helms' re-election campaign.

For those of you who have forgotten the details of Allen's forgivable crimes, he shoplifted from a Target store, and also repeatedly returned items he'd never bought.

Claude Allen, who was Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy until February when he abruptly resigned in February, faces charges stemming from his alleged scheme to bilk Target stores by returning merchandise he'd just stolen (here's the whole sordid tale as told by police).

His trial was set to begin today, but it's been postponed -- apparently, Allen and his lawyers are in negotiations to make a guilty plea. He may even avoid jail time.

What? Following his arrest, Allen's team swore the charges were mistaken, floating a theory that Allen's evil twin did it. They didn't give details; Allen himself told acquaintances "only one side of the story had been heard."

Well, now it looks like we may never hear the other side of that fantastical story. Our patience and forbearance shall not be rewarded. This is an outrage.

Somebody got to Allen. Who, I wonder, could have convinced him to strike a plea deal instead of telling his "side" of the story?

Wait. . . I bet it was that evil twin.

The trial of the White House advisor who confessed to shoplifting charges has been postponed indefinitely. Claude Allen had been slated to appear in court tomorrow; the Maryland Attorney General's office said the judge agreed to a motion to delay the trial. A new date hasn't been set, but conventional wisdom puts it in June sometime.

The Washington Post is as excited as we are about the upcoming trial of Claude Allen, the former White House adviser who confessed to shoplifting thousands of dollars in merchandise from stores in the D.C. area.

"The Enigmatic Man" headlines the paper's mega-takeout on Allen this morning. Already it's bad: don't expect much insight from a profile that uses "enigma" in its headline. But it's got a couple choice nuggets.

Allen, of course, didn't talk for the article, nor did his lawyers. A lot of old friends and co-workers talked, mostly about how he was a decent guy but there seemed to be part of him they couldn't know. So the article is really several thousand words on how little we know about the guy.

There's a great anecdote from the executive director of the Virginia NAACP, King Salim Khalfani. In 2000, his group threatened the state of Virginia with a boycott if then-Gov. James Gilmore didn't end the state's recognition of "Confederate History Month." Claude Allen -- then the state's secretary of health and human resources -- was tapped to help smooth things out.

What was his ploy? He gave Khalfani a poster portrait of Confederate leader Gen. Robert E. Lee.

One other bit of information stood out: as we recall, he has an identical twin brother, Floyd. What I didn't know, but the Post reported, was this: Floyd works in retail security. That's an interesting twist, no?

Lost in all of the reporting about former domestic policy advisor Claude Allen's trouble with the law is his remarkable political career, which got going with his work as spokesman for Sen. Jesse Helms' re-election campaign in 1984 and reached its height with his position as the abstinence czar in the Department of Health and Human Services during Bush's first term. Much more on that later in the day.

But back in 1984, when Allen was still a freshfaced GOPer, he hadn't quite mastered the art of understatement, code-speak and spin that a right-wing operative needs to do his work. During the campaign in '84, a reporter from the Greensboro News-Record called to ask him about Helms' strategy; he replied that Helms' opponent was vulnerable because of his links "with the queers." He went on:

We could expound on and undertake a campaign against Jim Hunt's [Helms' opponent] connections with the homosexuals, the labor union connection, the radical feminist connection, the socialist connection.... We could go back and do the same thing with the queers.

Now, Allen went up for a judgeship in 2003, and during the hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Feingold (D-WI) used the opportunity to ask him about this little indiscretion. Allen's defense? This may sound familiar - it was all a big misunderstanding. He'd been misquoted:

"I said, 'I'd been on the campaign for two years and I have seen a lot of very strange, abnormal, out-of-the-ordinary individuals and groups working across the campaign, sir.'

And, in fact, I did use the word queer. I used the word queer, in my mind, I think at the time, in the dictionary, it was described as odd, out of the ordinary, unusual. I did not use the word as a pejorative; I did not use the word to denigrate any individual or any group.

More later on Allen's political career.

The "Evil Twin" defense? One big misunderstanding? Claude Allen's lawyers are going to have to work harder than that.

The Washington Post reported today that Claude Allen admitted that he was committing fraudulent returns when he was initially caught by a store manager. They cited a "charging document."

Well, we have the charging document here. Read it for yourself. It makes for a pretty devastating case against Allen, since he was caught on video making the returns - and this can be matched up with his credit card records.

On Claude's admission, the document reads "Allen had receipts from previous purchases at Target stores and admitted to Agent Schomburg [a "Target loss prevention manager," according to the Post] that he was committing fraudulent returns."

Seems pretty clear to me.

Over on Talkingpointsmemo.com, Josh observes a bizarre twist to the case of sticky-fingered White House aide Claude Allen: he may have an evil twin, who used his identity in his scam:

As you know, we've been following the bizarre case of Claude Allen, former top advisor to President Bush who was arrested a few days ago and booked and charges stemming from a lengthy shoplifting spree.

Now, here late this evening I got an email from TPM Reader WH who directed my attention to today's All Things Considered on NPR in which Michele Norris interviews Michael Fletcher, a reporter with the Post who's been covering the story.

Now, right at about 1:40 into the interview comes this exchange ...

Norris: We should note something, Michael. Apparently Claude Allen has a twin brother?

Fletcher: Yes, he does. He has an identical twin brother who even close friends can’t tell them apart when they see them. And people have seen him and close friends say that Mr. Allen has indicated to them that maybe his brother holds the key to this entire puzzling affair.

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