Change we can believe in?

Last week, the Obama transition team announced that it had tapped veteran Beltway Democrat Thomas Donilon to help lead its review of operations at the State Department. As multiple news outlets quickly pointed out, until 2005 Donilon helped oversee the aggressive lobbying operation of troubled mortgage giant Fannie Mae.

Now, ABCNews.com has fleshed out the picture a bit, reporting that Donilon oversaw what it describes as a "backdoor lobbying campaign ... to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm's accounting irregularities."

The details, which center on a campaign to discredit an agency charged with overseeing the company:

The effort -- which reportedly included attacks on the funding for the oversight agency, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, and an attempt to launch a separate investigation into OFHEO itself -- was ultimately unsuccessful, and regulators eventually discovered top Fannie Mae executives had been manipulating the company's financial reporting to maximize their bonuses.

Donilon was not found to be involved in the financial manipulations, but he did help give Fannie's board the misimpression that the company was in good financial health, according to the OFHEO investigation.

Donilon did not comment to ABCNews.com.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement won't say whether findings from its investigation into the source of an election-eve leak about the immigration status of Barack Obama's aunt will be made public.

Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for ICE, told TPMMuckraker in an email: "I ... don't know if the results [of the probe] are made public."

Just days before the election, the Associated Press reported, sourced to a federal law enforcement official, that Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, had ignored a deportation order issued four years ago by a U.S. immigration judge. The leak appeared to be a politically motivated effort to damage Obama's candidacy at the eleventh hour.

ICE, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, quickly announced that it had launched an investigation into the source of the leak, which, according to our reporting, clearly violated government regulations, and could even make it more likely that Onyango could be persecuted for having sought asylum in the U.S. if she is ultimately deported to Kenya.

But now it appears that we may never know the identity of the leaker.

David Ogden, who during the Clinton administration led DOJ's civil division and also served as chief of staff to Janet Reno, is leading the transition team for the department, reports the Washington Post. Ogden is currently a partner at the WilmerHale law firm.

And the paper adds that "Democrats and interest groups have been developing "to do" lists for Justice, which had deemphasized antitrust, civil rights and environmental enforcement work under President Bush."

Ogden's deputy on the transition will be Thomas Perelli, who, according to the Post, "supervised the government team suing cigarette makers and oversaw the Justice unit that defends federal agencies in complex legal disputes."

We'll be watching closely to see what direction the department moves in under the new administration. But initial signs suggest the grownups may be back in charge.

NOTE: This post has been significantly edited since posting.

A TPM reader in Northern Virginia reports getting three different calls directing her to the same incorrect polling location, with the callers claiming to be volunteers from the Obama campaign.

Rebecca Kingery of Arlington, Virginia, a heavily Democratic area, told TPMmuckraker that all three calls directed her to a housing complex in Arlington which is not close to where she votes.

Kingery, a graphic designer who was recently laid off, answered two of the calls. The caller ID for one said "Master Replica," and listed a 925 area code, which is in the Bay Area. For the other, the caller ID said "Olude Novosiore" and had a 408 area code, which is in central California and San Jose.

Kingery said she wasn't confused about her voting location. She added that when she responded to one of the callers that she was being given incorrect information, the caller insisted that the information was correct.

Calls by TPMuckraker to the numbers that Kingery provided were not immediately returned.

After speaking to TPMmuckraker, Kingery went to cast her ballot -- at the correct location.

Late Update: TPMmuckraker has heard back from people at both of the numbers that Kingery reported seeing on her caller I.D. Both people said they were volunteers for the Obama campaign -- one in Oakland, and another in Walnut Creek, Calif. -- and that they were calling as part of a phone-bank to give legitimate voting information. One woman, Dina Bohacek, said that she gave Kingery a phone number at which she could verify her polling location.

So this appears not to have been an effort to mislead voters about their polling place.

It looks like last week's leak of information about the immigration status of Barack Obama's aunt might be even more despicable than we'd thought.

The Associated Press reported Saturday morning that an application for asylum made by Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, was rejected four years ago by an immigration judge. It sourced the information to a federal law enforcement official, and another source in a position to know.

We added later that day that the leak -- which is now being probed by government investigators -- appears to clearly violate government regulations, as laid out in a memo written by a US Customs and Immigration Services official.

But the memo also contains one important reason why there's such a strong prohibition against disclosing asylum applications. It reads:

These regulations safeguard information that, if disclosed publicly, could subject the claimant to retaliatory measures by government authorities or non-state actors in the event that the claimant is repatriated, or endanger the security of the claimant's family members who may still be residing in the country of origin. Moreover, public disclosure might, albeit in rare circumstances, give rise to a plausible protection claim where one would not otherwise exist by bringing an otherwise ineligible claimant to the attention of the government authority or non-state actor against which the claimant has made allegations of mistreatment.

In other words, the leak could well increase the chances that Onyango could be persecuted -- maybe even tortured -- for seeking asylum in the U.S. if she is ultimately deported to Kenya. Or that her family members could be similarly mistreated, whether or not she's deported. And thanks to that very danger, the leak could even bolster Onyango's asylum claim.

Immigration experts confirmed to TPMmuckraker that this reading was accurate.

Matthew Hoppock, an immigration lawyer in Kansas City who focuses on asylum cases, noted the regulations in an email to TPMmuckraker, and argued that the leak has "made it more likely that if Ms. Onyango is removed to her home country, she will face persecution for having sought asylum in the United States."

Dan Kowalski, an immigration law expert and the editor of the the online newsletter, Bender's Immigration Bulletin, agreed. In an email to TPMmuckraker, he added that the leak is sufficiently serious that, because of it, Onyango now "has a good shot at reopening her case."

We'll keep you posted on the progress of the investigation into the source of the leak.

A member of John McCain's "Honest and Open Election Committee" has admitted that he can't give a single example of voter registration fraud leading to actual voter fraud.

In an interview with Pro Publica, which was also published on Politico.com, Ronald Michaelson, a veteran elections administrator, acknowledged:

"Do we have a documented instance of voting fraud that resulted from a phony registration form? No, I can't cite one, chapter and verse."

The Honest and Open Election Committee was set up by the McCain camp to provide a veneer of expertise and non-partisanship to the campaign's efforts to stoke fears about voter fraud. In a September conference call, one of the committee chair's, ex-Missouri senator John Danforth, highlighted reports of faulty registration forms in Michigan, Colorado, and other states, and tried to link ACORN to Barack Obama.

Michaelson also admitted, in Pro Publica's words, that "an election-rigging scheme starting with phony application forms would not make much sense." But he argued that the mere perception of fraud can do damage to the integrity of the election.

Of course, the McCain campaign and other Republicans have been the foremost creators of that perception. Earlier this month in a presidential debate, McCain warned darkly that ACORN -- the community organizing group that Republicans have tried to turn into a voter-fraud boogeyman -- "is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy."

Pro Publica adds that a McCain campaign spokesman couldn't do much better than Michaelson:

Asked for specifics about the dangers of fake registration, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, provided links to 13 news clips and a 2003 Missouri state auditor's report. Eleven of the cases did not involve registration fraud. Two recounted how felons appeared to have cast illegal votes under their own names. The lone example of a forged registration leading to an illegitimate vote comes from The Wall Street Journal's John Fund, who in April 2006 wrote that a community organizer had improperly registered a noncitizen, and then "someone eventually voted in [the noncitizen's] name."

The leaking of information about the immigration status of Barack Obama's aunt appears to directly violate regulations for confidentiality laid out in a US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) memo obtained by TPMmuckraker.

As we reported earlier, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (which is the law enforcement arm of USCIS) has begun an internal probe into the leak to the Associated Press, which revealed early this morning that Obama's aunt "is in the United States illegally after an immigration judge rejected her request for asylum four years ago."

The memo, written in 2005 by Joseph Langlois, director of the Asylum Division in the Office of Refugee, Asylum, and International Operations, reads in part:

The federal regulations at 8 CFR 208.6 generally prohibit the disclosure to third parties of information contained in or pertaining to asylum applications, credible fear determinations, and reasonable fear determinations--including information contained in RAPS or APSS1--except under certain limited circumstances. These regulations safeguard information that, if disclosed publicly, could subject the claimant to retaliatory measures by government authorities or non-state actors in the event that the claimant is repatriated, or endanger the security of the claimant's family members who may still be residing in the country of origin.

...

According to established guidance, confidentiality is breached when information contained in or pertaining to an asylum application (including information contained in RAPS or APSS) is disclosed to a third party in violation of the regulations, and the unauthorized disclosure is of a nature that allows the third party to link the identity of the applicant to: (1) the fact that the applicant has applied for asylum; (2) specific facts or allegations pertaining to the individual asylum claim contained in an asylum application; or (3) facts or allegations that are sufficient to give rise to a reasonable inference that the applicant has applied for asylum.

It's worth noting again that we don't know for certain the leak came from ICE, since people at other government agenicies could have had access to the information.

Still, from the available evidence, it appears ICE is the most likely source. And Dan Kowalski, a leading immigration law expert, told TPMmuckraker that there's "no question" the leak violated ICE's guidelines as laid out in the memo.

And he identified for TPMmuckraker some additional, pertinent questions, asking:

1. Did the leaker know it was a violation? 2. Was the leak politically motivated? 3. A solo action, or conspiracy of 2 or more? If the latter, who is the boss?

We'll be working to bring you answers...

Via Ben Smith, a statement from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, on the leak to the Associated Press of immigration information about Obama's aunt.

Early this morning, the matter was refered (sic) to Inspector General and ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility for action. They are looking into whether there was a violation of policy in publicly disclosing individual case information.

We also learned earlier today that internal Justice Department investigators are looking into the leaking of information, earlier this month, about a nationwide FBI probe of ACORN.

To be clear, though ICE appears to be the most likely source of the leak about Obama's aunt, we don't know with 100 percent certainty that that's where it came from. The Associated Press attributed its report to two sources, "one of them a federal law enforcment official." According to Dan Kowalski, an immigration law expert and the editor of the the online newsletter, Benders Immigration Bulletin,, the information would have been available to people at several government agencies, both at the Department of Homeland Security (of which ICE is a part) and the Department of Justice, which would have an enforcement role in immigration proceedings.

Rep. John Conyers, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has responded to the Bush administration's leak of information on the immigration status of Obama's aunt.

In a hastily written letter, Conyers makes the same connection that we did with the administration's leaking of information on the FBI's nationwide investigation of ACORN. Both leaks went to the Associated Press, and appear to have been done for political purposes.

There's some other news in the letter in regard to that leak about ACORN. Conyers writes:

[I]n recent weeks law enforcement sources leaked information about an alleged investigation of a community services organization, a leak that the Department of Justice informs me is now under investigation by the Department's Office of the Inspector General and Professional Responsibility.

So, two internal DOJ offices are looking into the ACORN leak. That's certainly worth keeping an eye on.

The full text of the letter follows after the jump...

Read more »

Here's how the right's big eleventh-hour smear on Obama was carried out.

First the Murdoch-owned Times of London reported Thursday that Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, is living in a Boston public-housing complex. It's unclear how the paper learned of the woman's presence in the U.S.

From there, the story quickly got taken up by the right-wing echo chamber. Fox News (also Murdoch-owned, of course), Drudge, the Boston Herald, and various conservative blogs -- as well as some mainstream outlets -- began breathlessly hyping the story.

But the Times had been unable to tie up one key detail. It reported:

The Times could not determine their immigration status and an official at Boston City Hall said that Ms Onyango was a resident of Flaherty Way but not registered to vote on the electoral roll. However, that Ms Onyango made a contribution to the Obama campaign would indicate that she is a US citizen.

But that was easily taken care of. The Associated Press was the first to confirm, in a story posted this morning, that Onyango is here illegally after her request for asylum was rejected by an immigration judge four years ago.

But note the way in which AP seems to have obtained the information. High up in the story, it reports:

Information about the deportation case was disclosed and confirmed by two separate sources, one a federal law enforcement official. The information they made available is known to officials in the federal government, but the AP could not establish whether anyone at a political level in the Bush administration or in the McCain campaign had been involved in its release.

In other words, it looks like someone in the Bush administration leaked the information, with the goal of throwing a last-minute wrench into Obama's campaign. And someone else confirmed it, with similar motives.

On the record, of course, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, is telling reporters it can't comment on any individual person's immigration status. It would appear to be a violation of department procedures, at the least, to leak such information.

We've seen this same tactic used recently by the Bush administration. Earlier this month, law enforcement sources leaked the news, also to the AP, that the FBI has begun a nationwide investigation into ACORN. Again, the obvious purpose of the leak was political -- to bolster a Republican campaign to stoke fears about voter fraud, in an effort to de-legitimize an Obama win. The Justice Department still has not confirmed the existence of the investigation.