Prompted by Noemie Maxwell's reporting at washblog today, I've tried to answer some questions about details of Luke Esser's transition from top aide to Attorney General Rob McKenna to chairman of the state Republican Party. Maxwell writes:

According to the copy of the leave request I received last Friday, Mr. Esser's application for unpaid leave from the AG office to do partisan work on 1/29 was first applied for two weeks after he took those hours, on 2/16.

This stems from a post I did on the 29th about an interview with Esser where he said he had stopped at party headquarters and met with Republican lawmakers as the newly elected party chair that day.

This brought charges that Esser was double-dipping and violating state ethics laws by doing party politics while on the AG's payroll. The short version is Esser says he should have filed a leave slip sooner.

Here's what he says happened.

Esser was elected party chair on the 27th, a Saturday. On Monday he decided to stop by party headquarters in Tukwila and meet with Republican House and Senate members in Olympia. On his way back from the meeting with lawmakers he stopped in my office to chat. In all, he said there were three and a half hours spent on party business.

By AG office policy, Esser says he should have submitted a leave slip by the end of that pay period, Jan. 31. He did submit his letter of resignation that day. But he didn't file for the leave, though he says he noted it in his electronic calendar. (Certainly questions about whether he took leave had been asked in comments here and elsewhere by then, so Esser was on notice that people were watching.)

His last day working for McKenna was Feb. 12. On that day he says he could not find a record of the leave slip, asked his assistant to check, and was told none had been submitted. He asked his assistant to prepare one that day, but he did not get into the AG's office again until four days later to actually sign the document.

Esser says that at no time while working for the AG did he take money from the state party, so there could not have been any double-dipping. His GOP salary began Feb. 13.

Esser said the one thing he did wrong is he failed to submit the leave slip. It certainly would have made it cleaner to have done it on time. And since he didn't want to walk out on his job with McKenna with no notice, he could have announced he would do no party business until the 13th.

UPDATE: I just talked to Mike Bigelow, McKenna's chief of staff. He confirms that the leave slip should have been in by the 31st, but that it was not necessary to do it in advance. Bigelow said:

"I was a little dismayed that he forgot to get his leave slip in until the 16th. But he says he forgot and I'll have to accept that."

Bigelow said that Esser was asked to make clear in his letter of resignation which day he would start to earn money from the GOP because AG officials wanted to make sure he was on only one payroll at a time.

ALSO: Esser wants to make clear that his visit to the party offices that morning were before the work day. He had done a radio interview from the office, but was on the road to Olympia before 8 a.m.