Ideological considerations permeated the hiring process at the Bush Justice Department’s civil rights division, where a politically appointed official sought to hire “real Americans” and Republicans for career posts and assignments to prominent cases, according to a long awaited report released Tuesday by the inspector general.
The extensive study of hiring practices between 2001 and 2007 concluded that a former department official improperly eliminated candidates from consideration based on their perceived ties to liberal organizations, and that two senior managers failed to oversee the process.
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bradley Schlozman is reported to have favored employees who shared his political views while deriding others as “libs” and “pinkos.”
The report’s release was delayed by more than six months after DOJ agents referred the case for possible prosecution. But prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office declined to pursue the matter last week, lawyers involved in the case told The Washington Post.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett said in a statement they would refer their findings to legal disciplinary authorities.
“The Department must be vigilant to ensure that such egregious misconduct does not occur in the future,” Fine said.
The report marks the last in a series of inquiries by internal watchdogs into hiring lapses at the Justice Department during the Bush administration, a scandal that prompted the resignations of more than a dozen senior officials.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said the findings “confirmed some of our worst fears about the Bush Administration’s corruption of the Justice Department.”
“Lying to Congress undermines the very core of our constitutional principles and blunts the American people’s right to open and transparent government,” Leahy said.
The decision by U.S. attorneys not to prosecute means that Schlozman, who went on to serve as an acting U.S. attorney in Missouri, will not face criminal sanctions for testimony he provided to Congress two years ago. Internal Justice Department investigators determined that Schlozman had made “false statements” to lawmakers about his role in the affair.
In June 2007, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Schlozman about his use of political factors in hiring decisions and the basis for bringing a voter registration case against a liberal group days before a local election. Schlozman denied using political or ideological ties as a hiring criteria in response to questions from Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Schlozman later amended his testimony in September 2007 after his account was challenged by a career official. Schlozman resigned from the department in 2007 and he is no longer subject to discipline there.
Investigators interviewed more than 120 employees and reviewed 200,000 e-mails, according to the report. They also performed a statistical analysis of hiring practices during Schlozman’s tenure, finding that “political and ideological affiliations did not appear to have been a factor when attorneys were hired without Schlozman’s involvement.”
Key actors including Schlozman and four others declined to be questioned by the inspector general and the office of professional responsibility.
Uproar over changing priorities at the civil rights unit emerged more than four years ago, as longtime career officials departed or were reassigned into other spots.
But during the past several months, current Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey moved to “calm the waters,” according to the Post. “He engineered the return of several career lawyers into management roles and reached out to junior lawyers who had improperly been denied jobs on the basis of their political affiliation.”
Peter Carr, a Justice Department spokesman, said that Schlozman had deviated from the strict standard to apply the Constitution.
“Today’s report describes troubling conduct by a former supervisor in the Civil Rights Division prior to his departure from the Division nearly three years ago. The mission of the Justice Department is the evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it, and that mission has to start with the evenhanded application of the laws within our own Department. As today’s report makes clear, Mr. Schlozman deviated from that strict standard,” Carr said.
“The Department agrees with the recommendations outlined in the report and has already taken steps to implement them. In addition, the Civil Rights Division has taken additional steps to update its own hiring policies and to increase the role of career employees in its hiring process. As a result of these reforms, and the procedures already in place for evaluating the work and conduct of lawyers throughout the Department, we are confident that the institutional problems identified in today’s report no longer exist and will not recur.”
Well, let’s hope not.
Now, activists need to make sure the Obama Justice Department holds former White House officials accountable for their role in totally politicizing justice in the U.S., including former Bush political aide Karl Rove, who is still in defiance of a Congressional subpoena to testify under oath about his role in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.
