Published: July 16, 2008 10:56 pm      

Aide: Manchin welcomes ethics probe

Pick any gumshoe of renown, from the vaunted ranks of Scotland Yard to America’s own intelligence forces, and nothing can surface to show Gov. Joe Manchin did anything wrong in his daughter’s unearned business administration degree from West Virginia University.

“Bring ‘em on,” Manchin’s communications director, Lara Ramsburg, vowed Wednesday in a challenge to all the skeptics with suspicions burning.

“There’s absolutely nothing to hide.”

Manchin has been under a cloud of suspicion ever since a Pittsburgh newspaper disclosed Heather Bresch was awarded a master’s degree in business without actually earning it.

Of late, the state Ethics Commission has begun to dig into the matter that led to the resignation of WVU President Mike Garrison and prompted a number of demotions on the Morgantown campus.

Manchin has no need to worry about what the commission might uncover and, in fact, welcomes its investigation, or any inquiry others might want to pursue, Ramsburg said.

“Bring in Scotland Yard if you need to or want to,” she said.

Ditto for the FBI or the CIA. Even the literary super sleuth Sherlock Holmes couldn’t find any shred of wrongdoing on the governor’s part, Ramsburg said.

“Absolutely, he’s done nothing wrong,” she said.

“If people feel there are more answers that need to be found and they feel that they need to investigate further, go right ahead. We don’t fear any additional investigations. We don’t know all the answers, either. So whoever they call on to investigate, or wherever they choose to investigate, we have no objection to that.”

Garrison, a long-time friend of Bresch, is stepping down Sept. 1, allowing an interim president, C. Peter Magrath, to move into the presidency. An independent panel learned that grades and courses were added wrongly to the transcript of Bresch, an executive of Mylan Inc.

Ramsburg said the governor has been “up front” about the Bresch degree from the get-go, and if anyone unsatisfied with the formal look-sees at this stage wants to dig any deeper, the welcome mat is extended.

“All that they can do is continue to find out the truth, which is what’s been out there from the beginning,” she said.

Ramsburg said the administration exerts no control over the Ethics Commission or the Legislature, which, in a recent special session, rejected a bid by Delegate Jonathan Miller, R-Berkeley, to conduct an investigation by a proposed joint judiciary panel into the Bresch incident.

Manchin knew nothing of the controversy surrounding his daughter until the Pittsburgh newspaper published the initial story about it, she said.

“That’s a fact that’s not going to change and you can look into that all day, and it’s going to be the same,” Ramsburg said.

“Also, as a father, he would like to have more answers as to how the process came to be and how the decisions were made. That’s as important to him as it is to anybody else.”

Manchin’s re-election campaign hasn’t been affected by the controversy, since it really hasn’t been an issue, she said.

“Certainly, it has affected him as a father,” she said.

“It’s affected him as a governor in that he wasn’t in a position to do whatever he would normally do in a situation like this, which is jump in and try to help and try to bring all sides together and find answers and find resolutions,” the communications director said.

“Because of the fact that it’s his daughter that’s involved, people would automatically assume he couldn’t do that objectively. So that tied his hands from jumping in and doing what he would naturally and instinctively do.”

But even with massive media coverage, she said, the degree controversy hasn’t impeded his ability to function as governor.

Republican challenger Russ Weeks has demanded the Legislature take the lead and sponsor a separate investigation, prompting Ramsburg to brand his statements as “absolutely politically motivated.”

“And that’s why we truly welcome any additional investigation so that people can have whatever answers that they feel they haven’t received at this point,” she said.

“We know from the governor’s perspective that he really hasn’t been involved, and wasn’t involved, and didn’t know about it until December, and so that’s just the facts,” she said.

“He didn’t know any of the controversy until it came out in the paper. So if there are people out there who can look at this and bring a clearer picture to it, we’re fine with that. We welcome that.”

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com