More on the Argus Leader's report on Mansiongate

The Argus Leader's story today on Mansiongate headlined "Thune: D.C. tax break shows Daschle out of touch" covers many of the issues involved in the story, but it misses one key issue in light of the following passage from the story:

The Roll Call article in question quotes a Daschle campaign staff member saying Linda Daschle's status made the couple eligible for the tax break but does not say she signed the application.

Additionally, the Daschle campaign supplied records Wednesday, dated Aug. 14, 2003, showing that a box indicating "principal place of residence" was checked "yes," but it was part of an updated application signed by Linda Daschle, not the senator.

Daschle said Wednesday night that he signed "typical closing papers" on the house in April 2003, including the homestead deduction application.

"Only one signature is required for all the closing papers. This was in those papers. They provided Linda with the new form, and she signed it. They've eliminated the form I signed. Now on record is Linda's signature."

A natural follow-up to this would be to ask WHY Linda signed an "updated" form in August. I rather doubt that every homeowner in Washington signed a new form at that time. As DVT observes, the chronology of this matter raises even more questions:

"So when Talon News and Roll Call started poking around, the Daschle campaign went into crisis management mode, started saying that Linda "qualified" for the tax exemption, had the DC Mayor's office cover for them, and then quickly had her execute new documents. They never actually admitted, however, that Daschle had been the one to originally sign the form. But when Talon News sent in a Freedom of Information Act request, the DC tax office sent out the original tax exemption form signed by Tom Daschle (but they didn't send out the new Linda forms). They also started changing around his tax status on their website and having decisions reversed by lawyers and generally stonewalling the press. It seems to me that a big part of the story is what is happening/happened in the DC tax office."

Indeed.