Who is protecting Hastert?

More on the issue of whether ABC was correct that Speaker Dennis Hastert he being invectigated for Abramoff-related bribery. The DOJ and Hastert have both denied it, and Hastert has threatened to sue ABC News. ABC stands behind their report.

But the report was based on a leak from somewhere in the Department of Justice. EmptyWheel reminds us that the same ABC reporter, Brian Ross, had an earlier scoop.

"You might remember this one. It went like this:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

I guess I've got my answer to the question, "Why ABC."

I have been wondering how long it would take to sink in why the Bush administration didn't try to get the NSA telephone network tracking under color of law and limited by the courts. This is it.

The NSA is after more than terrorists. It is after Bush's political enemies. The courts would never permit the NSA to target reporters.

The Department of Justice knows about the bribe taken by Denny Hastert. They're just shutting down the investigation, just as they did earlier (and here) when the DOJ investigators were told they could not get the clearances to look at the NSA documents. These are documents that are already in the Office of Attorney General Gonzales.