UPDATE: We promised more on the Office of Special Counsel.  It can be found here. 

Today's Los Angeles Times reports that the Office of Special Counsel will be investigating scandals surrounding the White House political operation. We'll have more on the Office of Special Counsel shortly.

CREW is very familiar with several of these on-going controversies. Last month, our counsel, Ann Weismann, explained why political briefings by White House staff to General Services Administration (GSA) employees violated the Hatch Act. CREW also broke the story that the White House lost five million e-mails -- and we've outlined the fact that there are now two distinct e-mails scandals involving the White House. There is obviously plenty to investigate:

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."