President Anya Bishop's staff is being investigated by the Zamastanian Intelligence Service in relation to the agency's probe into 2020 election fraud. Whether it will discover any damning evidence that creates another ethics crisis in the Presidential arena is the looming question, now that former Chief of Staff Emily Miranda has been sentenced to three months in prison.
The Congressional Hall agreed to not interfere with the federal investigation until all trials and sentences were completed, when Miranda and several others were arrested in January. While they have opened investigations into some of the alleged repeat offenders, they have not begun looking into any of the other several dozen officials who were at least mentioned during the Delavian Bribary trials.
It’s up to the Z.I.S. if and when it wants to investigate all of the programs named in an extensive wire-tapping probe from the Zian Presidential Mansion into Congressional Leadership, including Speaker Foley Sakzi. It stands to reason that if the Mansion wants to keep its version of amateurism in place, it has to at least look at some of the other programs, and if it looks at one, it would most likely have to look at all.
“These allegations, if true, point to systematic failures in our staff's conduct that must be fixed and fixed now if we want free politics in Zamastan. Simply put, people who engage in this kind of behavior have no place in our real world,” Bishop said in a statement. “They are an affront to all those who play by the rules.”
There is concern in Congressional Hall that the names of Miranda and former congressman Cormac Hammer in the court transcripts could put the greatest political scandal in Zamastanian history — the Delavian Bribary Scandal — in danger of being stricken by yet another scandal from the string of conservative party presidents.
But that’s up to the Speaker himself, like the cases of Castovia, Cairo Gough, and Tauren Delavian, among dozens of others. President Castovia was linked to the congressional probe when it was claimed that he accepted an excessive gift by Tauren Delavian, the CEO of ZSuites Inc., and former congressman Cormac Hammer was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison for wiretapping President Castovia illegally.
The Congress and Z.I.S. are already looking into four scandals involving President Bishop or her staff, and it seems that if it opens a new investigation anytime soon, it will start with her Chief of Staff, Aya Booth. Booth’s voice was caught on wiretap discussing offers and potential money to be paid to potential staff, which led to a suspension when she refused to meet with President Bishop, further adding to speculation that the two do not see eye-to-eye on most politics.
“Look, I sat down with the President and I have answered any and all questions with regards to all of the media reporting and everything that is out there,” Booth told a roomful of reporters after several questions about the wiretap during the spring meetings. “And ultimately that is what got us to where we are today.”
Booth has since been reinstated and apologized, but the Presidential Mansion has operated as if nothing egregious ever happened and publicly supported her.
There has been no word since the mansion cooperated in April. Bishop declined to speak about the matter when approached last week. Cormac pleaded guilty, will serve his time and has to repay Z$522,000 while also facing deportation after his jail sentence concludes (he is a native of United New England but has lived in Zamastan since age 2).