Bzzzzzt. Try again, Bauer.

As a sitting member of Congress, Sestak was not eligible for the job the White House insinuates Clinton offered him.

Not that that’s a problem for this slippery White House, as Captain Ed explains:

This looks more like an ex post facto attempt to shoehorn the known facts into any kind of exonerating framework than the truth. And the ambiguous statements surrounding this release also sound like an attempt to leave as much wiggle room as possible. Oh, we didn’t mean the Intel Board, a rebuttal will almost certainly insist. We had a number of options in mind for Rep. Sestak. The intel board was just a brainstorming suggestion.

UPDATE:

Byron York updates his post with:

A spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, who is pursuing the Sestak matter in his role as ranking Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sends the following reaction:

Are we to believe that Rahm Emanuel, a former Member of Congress himself, dispatched President Clinton to maneuver Admiral Sestak out of the Senate Primary by dispatching him with an unpaid appointment that Congressman Sestak couldn’t even accept if he wanted to? What’s more likely, that two of the most politically sophisticated people in American political history didn’t do their due diligence or that the narrative told by the White House is a not-so-brilliant work of fiction?

See also:

The Headline of the Day: Clinton Blows Job Offer

Doug Ross: A timeline of the Sestak Bribe and White House Coverup

So what’s next. Will the MSM pursue this story? Because the Repubs are pretty much powerless to do anything about it unless the media keeps up the pressure. Yesterday, on Fox New’s Special Report, Charles Krauthammer, (after running through a whole host of additional questions that need to be answered ) predicted that after this weekend, the press will cover “Obama’s backside”, and the “story will peter out”.

An aside…I’ve been reading rumors that Admiral Sestak was not at all popular in the Navy. RealClearPolitics in a report that was mostly complimentary of Sestak, noted last June:

Sestak’s Navy career ended in a less-than-ideal fashion. In July 2005 – within a week of Adm. Michael Mullen’s swearing-in as chief of naval operations – Sestak was dismissed as deputy chief of naval operations due to a “poor command climate,” according to the Navy Times. (Mullen was later named chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, meaning that the two men now periodically face off in Congressional hearing rooms.)The ouster represented a stunning (albeit temporary) reversal of fortune for Sestak. But for the most part, Washington players today don’t hold the ouster against him – if they even know about it in the first place.

“Once your title is ‘the Honorable,’ it’s left at the water’s edge,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a national security specialist at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former Congressional aide. The ouster “really only comes up in defense circles.”

A much more pointed appraisal of Vice-Admiral Sestak can be found at Military Corruption.com, a site run by Editor and Chief, Glenn MacDonald Maj USAR (Ret):

It took the new Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Mike Mullen, less than 24 hours to dump one of the most disliked officers among the Navy’s top brass. Vice-Admiral Joe Sestak, an arrogant and obnoxious “bully-boy,” who delighted in being rude and unreasonable and getting away with it, found he was expendable the minute his mentor went out the door.

Rumsfeld “yes-man” and weaselly politician Vern Clark will not be missed by many Navy personnel. In fact, hopeful messages are flooding the office of MilitaryCorruption.com that “maybe, somehow,” the Navy has finally gotten a CNO who will “put sailors first” and correct the many mistakes of his predecessor.

It was Clark, a leftover from the Clinton Administration, who promoted Sestak to his third-star and made him deputy chief of naval operations for Warfare Requirements and Programs. Those who dared to complain about Sestak’s abusive “management style” were ignored or punished.

By sacking a previously untouchable top-ranking admiral, Mullen has fired a shot across the bow to others like Sestak that their days are numbered too.

Here’s Military Corruption.com on the Sestak bribe, (written some time before yesterday’s news dump):

we have learned that a high-ranking emissary from the White House, either Rahm Emmanuel, or one of his top staffers, offered Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) the job of Navy Secretary if the abrasive former flag officer would give up his campaign to be elected U.S. Senator from the Keystone State.

At work here, is Sestak’s huge egomania. One of the most despised Navy admirals in modern history, Sestak’s temper tantrums are legend, and the staff turnover in his congressional office, the frequent subject of water-cooler gossip on Capitol Hill. Apparently the highly-conceited congressman thinks he can still brutalize human beings, much as he did in the Navy. His primary claim to fame in those days was “sucking up” to both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

This might explain why the White House would have used Clinton to talk to Sestak.

UPDATE:

Jack Cashill has the entire nasty, dirty, low-down scoop on the Clinton/Sestak connection in this must read piece at the American Thinker: