Did Orrin Hatch and Byron York Get Their Oppo Research from Monica?

Remember back in April when Orrin Hatch started talking out of his pasty white arse about Carol Lam’s background? He claimed it was alright for her to have gotten fired because she had been Clinton’s campaign manger. As it turned out, Hatch had completely botched his talking points and confused Carol Lam with Alan Berson, her predecessor in SDCA appointed by Clinton. One of Josh Marshall’s readers noted that the talking point–botched as it was–appeared to come from an NRO article that Byron York wrote.

But yesterday’s document dump includes a document (pages 5 to 15) that might be the source for both of their comments. The quality of this document is really crappy, but if you look closely you’ll see that it’s a matrix of all the Clinton USAs, similar to the matrix that the clique at DOJ came up with for their own USAs. Only there’s no column for Federalist Society membership, if you can believe it. It’s basically their oppo research on Clinton’s USAs.

It’s worth squinting at, if only to see how rarely a Clinton appointee had any more than County-level political experience with the Dems, certainly nothing like the folks that the clique recycled form Orrin Hatch’s Senate staff. One of the very very few USAs with political experience but without the expected legal experience was indeed Alan Berson. And Monica (if she’s the one who compiled this document) noted the same thing that Byron and Orrin noticed: that Berson was Clinton’s campaign manager for San Diego County.

Now I know it would be shocking, SHOCKING! if Byron York, after regurgitating Barbara Comstock’s press releases for two years in his Libby coverage started regurgitating the press releases of Comstock’s protege, Monica Goodling. But it is just within the realm of possibility that Byron’s story on Berson came right from Monica.

Wouldn’t that be a surprise?