FBI Looking At Speaker Hastert Too?

I think we have the answer now for Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert's sudden concern for the Constitution and separation of powers after a congressman's home was raided by the FBI this past week...

From ABC News:

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government...

Ohh Dennis, it appears our talk last night was too late. I am sorry.

This story is getting criticized though because the Justice Department is apparently denying that Hastert is being investigated by them. A Department spokeswoman said "Speaker Hastert is not under investigation by the Justice Department" and Hastert's office is asking ABC to retract the story.

ABC News updates after this, insisting that they "accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is 'in the mix' in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress". They added that their "law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal 'target' or 'subject' of the investigation." A senior official also told them "You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully."

It does indeed appear, at this point anyway, to be a case where the story was misinterpreted and/or where people didn't read the full story before summarizing it elsewhere. The original ABC story (see link above) does not state that Hastert is the subject of a Justice Department investigation (it doesn't mention the Justice Department at all), only that Hastert is, as they stated, "in the mix" of the ongoing FBI investigation of corruption in Congress. Bottom line, the controversy here appears to be solely on the wording of an accurate ABC item and how it was then interpreted by other outlets.

The usual suspects are crying liberal media conspiracy, of course. Standard protocol.

Bottom line... If it's a question of who do I trust more- ABC News or Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department? ABC by a mile.