Yesterday, the Associated Press reported that a former Justice Department lawyer is being investigated as the leaker of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program to the New York Times:

FBI agents searched the home of former Justice Department lawyer Thomas Tamm last week in an effort to determine who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media, Newsweek magazine reported Sunday, citing two anonymous legal sources. The agents, who had obtained a classified search warrant, took Tamm's desktop computer, two laptops belonging to his children and some of Tamm's personal files, said Newsweek, which granted anonymity to the two sources because they did not want to be identified talking about an open case. Tamm left the department last year. He had worked in the department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, a secretive unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets, according to Newsweek.

Doing a very quick search at Opensecrets.org, we find the following information about political donations that Mr. Tamm made:

Contributor: TAMM, THOMAS MARK POTOMAC,MD 20854
Occupation: US ATTORNEYS OFFICE/ATTORNEY
Date: 9/14/2004
Amount: $300
Recipient: DNC Sevices Corp.

In addition to that, if you go to the Huffington Post's Fundrace page and you'll find what looks like another $500 donation to the DNC here.

The irony in this is overwhelming and delicious. Not only have the Democrats finally given their stamp of approval to the warrantless wiretapping program, and even expanded it -- now it looks like a Democratic supporter, serving in a top secret Justice Department unit, may have been the one to illegally expose the legal program to the New York Times -- and is about to get busted. I don't think that this is the last we have heard about this case -- I anticipate finding solid ties to the Democrat party as parties to the New York Times story and the leak soon. After all, somebody had to verify the program to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau before the NYT went to the Bush administration and told them they were going to publish their story.