What D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee might have thought were relatively innocuous comments to a friendly media outlet about fired teachers have turned into a political storm that threatens her already controversial tenure.

To recap: last week news broke of a brief interview Rhee did with Fast Company (a magazine that in 2008 published a glowing piece on Rhee titled “The Iron Chancellor“) where she spoke of the 266 teachers who were fired last October. But instead of presenting the firings as a budgetary measure as she had in a hearing before the D.C. Council, she made mention of possible criminal acts. “I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school,” she was quoted as saying.

Obviously, no one would have argued with Rhee had she made this point last October. But she didn’t. And now everyone wants to know why not. The Washington Teachers Union is up in arms, claiming that Rhee is slandering otherwise good teachers. And now D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray is demanding names.

“If these accusations are true, then we must act swiftly to ensure children are safe and perpetrators are investigated and brought to justice,” Chairman Gray said in a statement today. “If they are found to be untrue, then these accusations may devastate the lives of many of the teachers who were laid-off in the middle of a school year and who are struggling to rebuild their careers in the midst of a recession.”

Of course, both the union and Gray have political axes to grind with Rhee, the union as part of its longstanding fight with Rhee over teacher contracts and Gray as part of his maybe, maybe not challenge of Mayor Adrian Fenty in this September’s primary.

But politics aside, it baffles the mind why Rhee mentioned this when she did. Had she said anything of the sort in last year’s hearings on the firings, she might have gotten significantly less flak from members of the council. But she didn’t. And that she mentioned it almost in passing in an interview with a friendly media outlet — while refusing to say much of anything to local education reporters — is similarly confounding. As the City Paper’s Mike DeBonis points out, it’s not a matter of whether or not she wants to talk about this — it’s that she might be legally forced to.