Has the Obama administration gone “full Watergate?” Break in at whistleblower’s law firm.

**Posted by Phineas

Somewhere, G. Gordon Liddy and James McCord are thinking “copycats!”

The offices of a Dallas law firm representing a high-profile State Department whistleblower were broken into last weekend. Burglars stole three computers and broke into the firm’s file cabinets. But silver bars, video equipment and other valuables were left untouched, according to local Fox affiliate KDFW, which aired security camera footage of the suspected burglars entering and leaving the offices around the time of the incident.

The firm Schulman & Mathias represents Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator at the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General. In recent weeks, she raised a slew of explosive allegations against the department and its contractors ranging from illicit drug use, soliciting sexual favors from minors and prostitutes and sexual harassment.

“It’s a crazy, strange and suspicious situation,” attorney Cary Schulman told The Cable. “It’s clear to me that it was somebody looking for information and not money. My most high-profile case right now is the Aurelia Fedenisn case, and I can’t think of any other case where someone would go to these great lengths to get our information.” 

According to the KDFW report, the firm was the only suite burglarized in the high-rise office building and an unlocked office adjacent was left untouched.

Among the allegations made by Fedenisn , which include accusations of a US ambassador and big Obama donor soliciting underage prostitutes, were charges that high-level officials of the State Department, then run by Hillary Clinton, interfered with eight investigations and then watered-down her report. When she complained to Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), State Department agents came to her home and intimidated her children. At that point, she retained lawyers.

And now their office has been broken into.

Did we suddenly travel back to 1972, and no one told me? If so, I’d like to take my algebra final over again, please.

The Watergate break-in was once described as a “third-rate burglary.” Well, whoever undertook this one at Schulman & Matthias would probably be happy to get promoted to third rate, this was such a hack job. Consider: not only did they pass up on silver bars (roughly $18 per ounce), but they ignored an unlocked office with over a dozen computers there for the taking. Other than the minimal disguises one sees in the video, there was no effort to hide their activities or what they were after. Fedenisn’s lawyers insist they just don’t have a case right now as big and as full of potentially explosive political implications as hers.

But, could State agents really be this stupid? I think we can mostly rule out the attorneys’ other clients; the coincidence that they’re also a national-level whistleblower’s lawyers is just too great. But if so, who? People desperate to protect Hillary’s chances for the presidency? Obama flunkies looking to preserve “The Deal?” Friends of the ambassador or other agents named in the probe, or the agents themselves? Was it all just a huge coincidence and these two just a pair of petty burglars?

I don’t know, but there are too many coincidences with this administration for me to blithely write this off as yet another.

Final thought: Regarding the break-in, itself, the initial reaction of myself and others has been one of incredulity — they couldn’t be this lame, right? Not blacking out the cameras, not disguising what they were after, etc. I mean, a good checkout-line thriller novel by James Patterson would at least give you the basics.  If they were agents of the Federal government, they’d at least be competent, right?

Maybe not. Think back a bit and consider the case of CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson and her computers, also a clumsy operation. Attkisson, among other stories, had been digging for the truth like a dog after a bone in the Benghazi scandal. Fedenisn, on her part, exposed major corruption high in the State Department. What both scandals have in common is Hillary Clinton at the top with every incentive one could think of to suppress both. I think we all can see a potential pattern here.

I’m not saying this is what it has to be, but it does kind of make one scratch the old chin and think “hmmm…,” doesn’t it? 

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)