ABCNews stands by Hastert allegation

Wow. Yesterday ABCNews, on their "The Blotter" blog, made the allegation that Republican Speaker of the House was now under investigation in the Abramoff scandal. The DOJ and FBI almost immediately stated this was not the case, but as of 10 PM last night ABCNews stuck to their guns although they did soften their language a bit.

Despite a flat denial from the Department of Justice, federal law enforcement sources tonight said ABC News accurately reported that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert is "in the mix" in the FBI investigation of corruption in Congress.

Speaker Hastert said tonight the story was "absolutely untrue" and has demanded ABC News retract its story.

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has provided information to the FBI about Hastert and a number of other members of Congress that have broadened the scope of the investigation. Sources would not divulge details of the Abramoff’s information.

"You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said.

Don't know, don't know, but they certainly didn't retract it even when faced with "flat denials." That tells me they have something very solid that they believe.

UPDATE: I didn't read the whole damn thing before I posted.

ABC’s law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal “target” or “subject” of the investigation.....

Officials said the next logical investigative step would be for the FBI to seek a wide range of documents from the members of Congress named by Abramoff, including letters and business documents.

Kinda puts Hastert's outrage yesterday over the search of Rep Jefferson's House office in some context. Perhaps the passion behind Hastert's defense was a bit more personal than the constitutional issues he claimed.....

If you listen very closely, you can hear the shredders from here.

(Oh, and this is sweet. A Hastert aide claims the ABC story is "payback" for Hastert's defense of Jefferson. So, a Gonzales led Justice Department issues a "brushback" to the Republican Speaker of the House? Now that's good spin.)