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Tim Grieve, Salon, September 4, 2007

When Larry Craig announced Saturday that he was stepping down from the Senate, he said that he was doing so because to “pursue” his “legal options” would be “an unwanted and unfair distraction of my job and for my Senate colleagues.”

Pursue his legal options? So far as we know, Craig doesn’t have a whole lot of “legal options” to pursue. With the senator having pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in the Minnesota men’s room incident, Craig’s legal case is over and done with unless he can somehow show that his plea arose out of some “manifest injustice” — i.e., that he didn’t understand that he had the right to an attorney, a trial, etc., or that he didn’t understand the charge against him. If Craig thinks it was embarrassing to be caught playing footsie under a men’s room stall, we can’t wait to hear how a sitting U.S. senator would explain that he didn’t understand that criminal defendants have constitutional rights. And as for not understanding the charge against him? Craig admitted that charge, under oath and in writing, and we’re having a hard time seeing how he argues now that he didn’t understand it then.

Memo to Craig: Not understanding that a guilty plea would come back to bite you isn’t the same as not understanding the guilty plea in the first place.

So what “legal options” is Craig really pursuing? What he really meant, surely, is that he hoped to avoid the “legal problems” he was going to face if he stayed on in the Senate. The Senate Ethics Committee was ready to launch an investigation into Craig’s conduct, and National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman John Ensign was already raising the specter of public hearings. With Craig on his way out the door — his last day on the job will be Sept. 30 — it’s unlikely that the Ethics Committee will do anything more than fade away on this matter.

Craig? Not so much. As Roll Call reports, the soon-to-be-former senator has hired a “crisis team” to help him “lift the cloud he’s been operating under.” Billy Martin will handle communications; Stanley Brand will deal with the Ethics Committee, if necessary; and Minneapolis attorney Tom Kelly wil see if there’s any way to do undo that guilty plea.

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