FAIRFAX, Va. (CN) - In a federal RICO complaint, President George W. Bush's U.S. Office of Special Counsel head Scott Bloch claims Karl Rove, Congressman Tom Davis and more than a dozen other federal officials conspired to boot him out of office with a bogus criminal investigation, to cover up their own corruption and misuse of power at the highest levels of government.
Bloch, who pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of Congress in 2010 after he hired Geeks on Call to erase data from federal computers, sued Rove, Davis and 27 others in Fairfax County Court.
Bloch and his wife demand $102 million in compensatory damages and $100 million in punitive damages, claiming the defendants raided their home, invaded their privacy and conspired to keep Bloch from carrying out his duties as special counsel.
Bloch was appointed as special counsel for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) in 2004 and immediately became controversial, removing sexual orientation from the Office's list of protected classes from workplace discrimination.
He claims his predecessor had erroneously misinterpreted the Civil Service Reform Act as providing protection against workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
"Importantly, plaintiff did not determine that persons seeking to remedy discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation had no legal remedy at OSC," Bloch says in his 64-page complaint. "Indeed, plaintiff concluded at the end of the legal review that such discrimination claims could be processed by OSC to the extent they alleged discrimination based on conduct not adversely affecting job performance."
Bloch claims White House officials, specifically the Deputy White House Counsel, "threatened plaintiff with termination if he did not reverse his decision."
Bloch says he maintained that the OSC was an independent agency and immune to such threats.
He says he also caught heat for reassigning 12 employees, including two openly gay employees, to "different field offices," a move that "generated substantial media interest ... and complaints from disgruntled employees" who saw the move as a political purge.
"Based upon malicious and wrongful motives ... Office of Personal Management, Office of Inspector General (OPM-OIG) initiated a wrongful and malicious investigation of plaintiff," Bloch says.
Despite the public controversy, Bloch says the conclusion of Congressional and Executive branch investigations into the matter showed he "had fulfilled his responsibilities efficiently and within the boundaries of the law."
Bloch claims Bush confidant Clay Johnson forced him to recuse himself from investigating claims of wrongdoing within his own office, and set the FBI on an illegal criminal investigation to cover up the government's own "wrongdoing, illegality" and misuse of power.
Bloch claims Johnson's investigation violated the Economy Act, which does not authorize an agency to hire out the authority of another agency.
"From the outset until this day, OPM-IG and OPM has acted lawlessly, has attempted to destroy plaintiff's ability to do his job, interfered with his duties, attempted to sway his employees against him, attempted to stray from the complaint it was attempting to investigate, violated OSC's laws, required employees to violate OSC's laws, and worked consistently with outside interest groups, complainants, and Congress to illegally publish and willfully violate plaintiff's privacy rights in leaking materials from the investigation, to imply that objections to the investigation lodged by deputy special counsel were actually manifest evidence of plaintiff obstructing the investigation," Bloch says in his complaint.
