WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 (UPI) -- A Republican staffer who resigned over the leak of memos written for Senate Judiciary Democrats says the documents reveal an abuse of the public trust.
Manny Miranda, a former aide to Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said in a statement his resignation Friday provided him with an opportunity to speak out more forcefully about "the substance of the Democrats' documents themselves and the abuse of the public trust that they spell out."
Democrats have charged the documents were obtained through computer hacking while Republicans claim they were in fact easily accessible through the Judiciary Committee's shared computer network. Some of the memos, detailing how Senate Democrats worked with liberal special interest groups to derail Bush administration nominees to the federal bench, became a political embarrassment after they were given to a select group of media outlets including the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal.
According to Miranda's statement, the number of memos the Republicans uncovered far exceeds the what has been given to the media thus far. "Some documents," he says, "recorded collusive, partisan considerations in the confirmation process, and much worse."
"The ones made public," Miranda says, "are the least indicting of the documents I came to see." An investigation led by the Senate Sergeant-at-Arms into how Republicans obtained the documents and how they were released to the media continues. Miranda, for his part, is asking that it be expanded to include the content of the memos as well.
