Scott Bloch

Bloch Out: U.S. Special Counsel To Resign

Zachary Roth | October 21, 2008, 10:05AM

Scott Bloch, a TPMmuckraker favorite who in July had said publicly that he had no plans to resign as U.S. special counsel, will in January do exactly that, reports the Associated Press.

It adds:

In 2004, Bloch was put in charge of the [Office of Special Counsel], whose mission is to protect the rights of federal workers and ensure that government whistle-blowers are not subjected to reprisals. But almost from the start, Bloch himself was a subject of investigations, including for closing hundreds of cases allegedly without investigating them and for allegedly retaliating against employees.

Bloch did investigate General Service Chief (and another TPMmuckraker fave) Lurita Doan, a probe which led to a wider invesitgation into whether administration employees were illegally working to support Republican political candidates.

But an investigation was launched by the Office of Personnel Management into Bloch's own conduct, after OSC staffers complained that Bloch intimidated and transferred employees who opposed his policies. Bloch was also accused of not protecting gay federal employees from discrimination. In April 2007, the FBI raided Bloch's office and home, after he had been accused of destroying evidence and lying to Congress during the probe.

Bloch told congressional investigators that in December 2006, he used $1,149 in federal money to have a tech company scrub his government laptop computer. He said it was dne to protect government and personal information.