The Blunt Rules: Privilege is for the Privileged

One particularly telling contrast is apparent in two great offerings from the Springfield News-Leader editorial page today.  The pieces illustrate Matt Blunt's belief that protection of laws and rules should extend to him, but not to others.  

The News-Leader editorial today rightly points out that the Governor has relied upon attorney-client privilege to prevent the release of documents that would prove Scott Eckersley's claims:

But Eckersley can't fully talk about what happened or produce the
records that would prove him right because at the time he was the
governor's attorney. The ethical bounds of attorney-client privilege
keep him from giving a full accounting.

Those same bounds don't
apply to Blunt. He is the client, and as such, he can waive the
privilege so taxpayers can determine the truth. So far, he hasn't done
that. But Blunt's staff says they have nothing to hide. So why not
waive the privilege, at least as it relates to one specific issue: the
Sunshine Law?

Given Blunt's refusal to waive the privilege and clear the air on the issue of whether Eckersley objected to the Governor's email retention policy, one might think that Blunt just believes so strongly in the attorney-client privilege that it must be held always inviolate.  But the other News-Leader ed page scoop proves conclusively that this isn't the case.

­In fact, that story paints a picture of a governor who cares almost not at all about the attorney-client privilege when the client is someone not named Matt Blunt.  Tony Messenger, in his column, lays out facts which show that someone from Blunt's team actively accessed the private email account of Scott Eckersley to --among other things-- read confidential correspondence between Eckersley and his attorney.  Correspondence that, yes, would be subject to the attorney-client privilege which Matt Blunt reportedly respects so highly.

Messenger writes:

Three of the e-mails in question provided by AuBuchon to reporters were
correspondence between Eckersley and Garner, on Oct. 13, Oct. 16 and
Oct. 18, about the firing and a pending lawsuit. ...

Herschel, in a letter to Garner dated Oct. 29, has admitted to
reading Eckersley's private correspondence to his attorney, Garner. I

So while the Governor's crack legal team was telling any reporter who would listen that they wouldn't provide exculpatory documents because they were subject to attorney-client privilege they were simultaneously snooping in Eckersley's email and reading privileged correspondence between Eckersley and his attorney.  Typically we'd call this hypocritical, but that term doesn't fully describe the degree of moral decay required to do such things.

It is over for Matt Blunt.  Here is a governor who believes the laws apply to everyone else but not to him, yet who also believes he is entitled to every privilege and protection, while others are subject to having those protections violated on his whim. 

Every element of the Eckersley scandal, and there seems to be a new one every day, illustrates again just what a ethically bankrupt and wholly corrupt man Matt Blunt is.