WASHINGTON - Claude A. Allen, a Jesse Helms protege and President Bush's former domestic policy adviser, is scheduled to plead guilty Friday to one count of misdemeanor theft.

Allen, 45, will admit stealing items worth less than $500 from a Target store in suburban Montgomery County, Md., near his Gaithersburg home, according to court documents filed Wednesday in the county's Circuit Court.

His plea will cap months of speculation by friends and observers about why a man with so much political power had been charged with theft from department stores. It also may open the door for Allen to re-enter politics, friends said.

The prosecutor and defense attorneys have asked that Allen receive no jail time but instead pay $850 in restitution to Target Corp. and serve one month's probation.

Allen could have faced a potential sentence of up to 18 months in jail for misdemeanor theft.

Charging documents filed by police said that Allen received about 25 fraudulent refunds in a total of six incidents late last year and early this year.

A well-known conservative, Allen rose from a senator's spokesman to one of the top jobs in the White House. Friends of his said Wednesday that his crime should not keep him from a future in politics.

"You know, people are more forgiving than you generally expect," said Carter Wrenn of Raleigh, a friend who was a political strategist for Helms. Wrenn has known Allen since the early 1980s, when Allen, then a young college graduate, was a spokesman for Helms' second re-election campaign.

"My guess is that if Claude has done something wrong and lays it all out and explains as best he can, people will tend to forget it, and life can move on," Wrenn said.

Wrenn said Allen's political future will depend on whether he admits his mistake. The guilty plea, Wrenn said, is a way of showing his character.

"It'll take awhile, and it won't be easy for him," Wrenn said.

Allen's rise in politics

In 2001, Allen became second-in-command at the Department of Health and Human Services in the Bush administration.

Bush nominated Allen to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003, but Democrats blocked his appointment. They cited a remark made during Helms' re-election campaign in 1984, when Allen said Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt was associating "with the queers." Allen later said he was referring to "odd" and "unusual" people.

Bush made him chief domestic policy adviser in 2005. He resigned in February, citing the need to spend more time with family.

Then on March 7, he was arrested and charged with two counts: theft under $500 and theft over $500.

At the time of Allen's arrest, Bush told reporters his first reaction "was one of disappointment, deep disappointment."

"If the allegations are true, something went wrong in Claude Allen's life, and that is really sad," Bush said in March.

The White House made no statement on Allen's case Wednesday, and neither of Allen's attorneys returned calls for comment.

The Montgomery County district attorney's office also had no comment.

'An excellent counsel'

Friends say they never doubted Allen's character.

"I think all of Claude's friends and Helms' alumni network have stood behind him, rallied behind him," said Jimmy Broughton, Helms' former chief of staff and now a Washington lobbyist.

"I don't know what happened. And I don't need to know. All I know is Claude Allen."

Broughton pointed out that Allen, a graduate of Duke University Law School, does have a career he could fall back on.

"Claude is an excellent counsel," Broughton said.

Allen is scheduled to be in court at 11 a.m. Friday.

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