Blunt's Eckersley Scandal, Day Seven

It hardly seems possible, but things have gotten even worse for Governor Matt Blunt regarding the Eckersley scandal.  We learn today from Tony Messenger that it's almost certain someone in the Governor's office committed a criminal offense by illegally and surreptitiously accessing Scott Eckersley's private email account.

The nut graf in Tony's column comes right out of a letter from Eckersley's attorney to the Governor's office:

"When I checked with the email provider, they have indicated that
Scott's private e-mails have not been forwarded to the State" after he
was fired, Garner wrote. "The email provider is in the process of
giving us the information concerning where, when and how Scott's email
account was accessed. Once known, we will provide this. We will provide
it because we know that you will want to perform an investigation into
what is, quite possibly, a criminal offense. It takes little
imagination to know that it would be wrong to go take mail out of
Scott's home mailbox, and there is no difference under the law when it
involves email."

Read the whole column for full context, but the upshot is simple to discern.  Someone in the Governor's office, after Eckersley ceased having his emails forwarded to his state account,  continued accessing his personal email account, reading his correspondence and printing out copies of some messages.  This is positively (Dick) Nixonian. 

At this point, it is not an overstatement to assert that Matt Blunt is the ringleader of a criminal enterprise which runs out of the Governor's mansion.  Think about what has gone on:­

- The governor and key staff decide that they will refuse to follow the law and fail to make public records available.

- The governor and his staff fire an attorney in their office for pointing out that they haven't followed the law.

- As the Governor's strategy at that point turns to smearing the good name of the whistleblower attorney, his staff begin secretly and illegally accessing Eckersley's personal email account, reading correspondence between Eckersley and his attorney and using what they find to slime the young man in the media.

This is loathsome behavior.  There is not any excuse, any mitigating circumstance that could explain away any one of these actions, never mind all of them.

Think about it.  Close advisors of the highest ranking elected official in the state of Missouri are engaging in criminal activity in an effort to minimize the political impact of other violations of the civil law.  Certainly seems possible that any day now key players from high in the Governor's control room will start resigning and lawyering up.

And then it won't be long before people start to ask the inevitable question, "What did Matt Blunt know and when did he know it?"