When Cummins started investigating, he said, he followed Justice Department protocol by refusing to acknowledge whether his office had opened a probe. Policy also stipulates that when an investigation ends with no charges, it should never be publicly acknowledged.
As the months wore on, Cummins said, he "had no communication with anybody in any senior level" at the Justice Department in Washington.
But, he said, the governor had hired a private attorney who called and inquired about the status of the investigation. "The attorney said it was creating a lot of media in Missouri about political pressure and other allegations that the governor was under investigation," Cummins said.
He said the attorney wanted assurances that the governor was not the target "because we'd like to be able to say that."
Cummins said he did not comment to the attorney because the investigation was confidential. He declined to identify the governor's lawyer.
In June, Cummins was notified that he was being fired. Around that time, he said, the investigation was nearly over. But he said FBI agents were tied up with other priorities and could not get to the remaining interviews right away.
In October, Cummins announced that the investigation was over. He broke with precedent, he said, because of all the media reports in Missouri.
"The matter has been closed with no indictments sought or returned," he said on Oct. 4. He added that "at no time was Gov. Blunt a target, subject or witness in the investigation, nor was he implicated in any allegations being investigated. Any allegations to the contrary are uninformed and erroneous."
In the Thursday interview, Cummins denied that he took that extra step as a favor to Blunt. "I didn't know what the politics were up there in Missouri," he said. "I couldn't pick Matt Blunt out in a lineup."
The announcement came just four weeks before the Missouri Senate vote in which Democrat Claire McCaskill very narrowly upset GOP incumbent Sen. Jim Talent. McCaskill's office declined to comment about whether the closed investigation helped her campaign.
richard.serrano@latimes.com
