Shelley staffers cleared of sabotage charges

Remember this classic story from 2006?

Just three days after being sworn in, U.S. Rep. Shelley Sekula-Gibbs wants Congress to investigate the destruction of files in her office by former staff members of her predecessor, Tom DeLay.

Seven staffers walked out of her office Tuesday, resigning en masse, reportedly because they didn't like the way she was treating them. They had served Sekula-Gibbs for about 24 hours.

Sekula-Gibbs said in a prepared statement today that seven employees in her Washington office and the district office in Stafford, "deleted records and files without my knowledge or permission" before quitting.

Spokeswoman Lisa Dimond told The Associated Press that the congresswoman had not yet gotten a response to her request for an investigation by the House's chief administrative officer.

Kevin Madden, a former DeLay spokesman who works for outgoing GOP Majority Leader John Boehner and was not among the seven, said the holdover staffers "felt like they were treated terribly." He would not elaborate.

Sekula-Gibbs, who is serving out the last seven weeks of DeLay's term, said the walkouts were "suspicious" in that the seven took the time to delete files before leaving without notice.

Dimond said other staffers discovered the work-related files were missing when they tried to access them.

See Wonkette for more. Some of us were in danger of straining our snark muscles while this was happening. But all good things must come to an end, and at long last, this terrible chapter in our nation's history is now over.

House officials now say their investigation of her charge found no wrongdoing by the six aides.

"Our computer security analysts did look into then-Rep. Sekula Gibbs' concerns around the integrity of computers in the office she briefly occupied and found no traces of purposeful erasure of data," Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the Office of the House Chief Administrative Officer, told the Houston Chronicle. "It was determined that any lost data may have been inadvertent or the result of standard methodology employed when any member of Congress transitions to another."

In response to that written statement, Sekula Gibbs, who is running for the seat again in the Republican primary, said this week that with the help of House technology experts, she was able to recover most of the material she had accused the staff of deleting on purpose.

She had no further comment about the House findings.

Well, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. How about you?

Posted by Charles Kuffner on February 22, 2008 to Scandalized!