Congress Considers Broadening Justice Department Inquiry
By Greg Gordon and Margaret Talev
McClatchy Newspapers
Sunday 06 May 2007
Washington - Congressional investigators are beginning to focus on
accusations that a top
civil rights official at the Justice Department illegally hired lawyers
based on their political
affiliations, especially for sensitive voting rights jobs.
Two former department lawyers told McClatchy Newspapers that Bradley
Schlozman, a
senior civil rights official, told them in early 2005, after spotting
mention of their
Republican affiliations on their job applications, to delete those
references and resubmit
their resumes. Both attorneys were hired.
One of them, Ty Clevenger, said: "He wanted to make it look like it was
apolitical."
Schlozman did not respond to phone calls to his home Sunday. But he
denied the
allegations in an earlier phone interview with McClatchy Newspapers and
through a
department spokesman. In the interview he said he "tried to
de-politicize the hiring
process" and filled jobs with applicants from "across the political
spectrum."
Attention is turning to Schlozman after the announcement last week that
the Justice
Department opened an internal investigation to determine whether Monica
Goodling,
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' White House liaison, illegally took
party affiliation into
account in hiring entry-level prosecutors. The department's inspector
general and its
Office of Professional Responsibility are conducting that inquiry jointly.
Federal law and Justice Department policies bar the consideration of
political affiliation in
hiring of personnel for non-political, career jobs.
A congressional aide, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity
of the matter,
said that the House and Senate Judiciary Committees want to look beyond
Goodling to see
whether other department officials may have skewed recruiting and hiring
to favor
Republican applicants. Investigators have heard allegations that
Schlozman showed a
political bias in hiring and hope the department will permit him to be
interviewed
voluntarily, the aide said.
Sen. Claire McCaskell, D-Mo., told National Public Radio last week that
she wants to hear
testimony from Schlozman because "more answers under oath need to be given."
One of the former Justice Department employees, Clevenger, is pursuing a
whistleblower
suit alleging he was wrongly fired for exposing mistreatment of
employees by his Special
Litigation Section chief.
Clevenger and the other lawyer recounted Schlozman's odd handling of
their job
applications in the spring of 2005. Clevenger said his resume stated
that he was a
member of the conservative Federalist Society and the Texas chapter of
the Republican
National Lawyers Association. The other applicant's resume cited work on
President
Bush's 2000 campaign, said the attorney, who insisted upon anonymity for
fear of
retaliation.
They said Schlozman directed them to drop the political references and
resubmit the
resumes in what they believed were an effort to hide those conservative
affiliations.
Clevenger also recalled once passing on to Schlozman the name of a
friend from Stanford
as a possible hire.
"Schlozman called me up and asked me something to the effect of, `Is he
one of us?'"
Clevenger said. "He wanted to know what the guy's partisan credentials
were."
Schlozman, who recently completed more than a year's service as interim
U.S. attorney in
Kansas City that was marked with controversy, has drawn harsh criticism
over his
conduct as the top deputy in the Civil Rights Division starting in 2003
and a term of
roughly seven months as its acting chief beginning in the spring of 2005.
Several former department lawyers assailed his treatment of senior
employees and his
rollback of longstanding policies aimed at protecting African-American
voting rights. They
blame him for driving veteran attorneys, including section chief Joseph
Rich, to resign
from their posts.
Rich recently told Congress that 15 of the 35 attorneys in the voting
rights section have
resigned since 2005. Former employees of the Voting Rights Section told
McClatchy of at
least eight hires since then of employees with conservative political
connections.
The Boston Globe, which obtained resumes of civil rights hires under the
Freedom of
Information Act, reported Sunday that seven of 14 career lawyers hired
under Schlozman
were members of either the Federalist Society or the Republican National
Lawyers
Association.
Rich, who left the agency on April 30, 2005, and now works for the
Lawyers Committee
for Civil Rights, told McClatchy Newspapers that Schlozman was "central
to
implementation of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division" and
said he treated career
lawyers with "disdain" and "vindictiveness."
His former deputy, Robert Kengle, told McClatchy that "Schlozman was
never wrong and
to even raise that possibility was asking for retribution."
Schlozman's hiring favored lawyers "with one primary characteristic -
links to the
Republican Party and right-wing groups," said David Becker, who left the
section the same
day as Rich.
"The lawyers hired by Schlozman, in virtually every case, had very
little litigation
experience, lesser academic credentials and, if they had any civil
rights experience, it was
in opposing the enforcement of civil rights laws," Becker told McClatchy.
One of those hired, Joshua Rogers, had been a law clerk for Mississippi
federal Judge
Charles Pickering, whom President Bush nominated for an appeals court
judgeship over
objections from civil rights groups.
Shortly after assuming his new job, Rogers was the lone dissenter in a staff
recommendation that the department oppose a new Georgia law requiring
every voter to
produce a photo identification card - a law later found unconstitutional
by a federal judge.
Schlozman said in the interview that staff "were only treated
professionally" while he was
in the Civil Rights Division and that in hiring, "I didn't care what
your ideological
perspective was."
He pointed to the recruitment of Mark Kappelhoff, a former counsel for
the liberal
American Civil Liberties Union, to head the division's Criminal Section,
and to the
promotion of Chris Coates, a former ACLU voting counsel, to serve as the
top deputy
chief of the voting section.
Rich and other lawyers said politics had little or no bearing on
Kappelhoff's job -
overseeing prosecution of human trafficking and police misconduct. They
said Coates
seemed to grow more conservative after his superiors passed him over for
a promotion in
favor of an African-American woman, and he filed a
reverse-discrimination suit.
Congress Widens Justice Department Probe
By Matt Apuzzo
The Associated Press
Monday 07 May 2007
Congress sought cooperation from one Justice Department official and prepared
to put the agency's former White House liaison under oath in a widening investigation
into the politics of Justice Department decision-making.
The Senate Judiciary Committee asked Bradley Schlozman, a former senior civil
rights attorney and U.S. attorney, to speak with investigators. The Justice
Department, meanwhile, said it wouldn't try to prevent Congress from granting
immunity to White House liaison Monica Goodling if she testifies before a committee.
Lawmakers want to talk to Schlozman and Goodling as part of an inquiry into
whether the department played politics with the hiring and firing of department
officials. The inquiry began as a question about whether U.S. attorneys -
presidential appointees who serve as the top federal law enforcement officials
in their state districts - were fired for political reasons.
It has grown, however, into an investigation of whether the agency let politics
affect criminal investigations and whether officials made employment decisions
for political reasons.
Lawmakers want to question Schlozman, who now works for the Executive Office
for United States Attorneys, about a voter fraud lawsuit he filed against Missouri
in November 2005.
Committee members said they wanted to know whether U.S. Attorney Todd Graves
of Kansas City, Mo., was forced out for not endorsing that lawsuit, which was
ultimately dismissed. Graves resigned from his post in March 2006 and Schlozman
replaced him as interim U.S. attorney.
Five days before the November 2006 election, Schlozman filed another lawsuit,
this time accusing members of a liberal activist group of voter registration
fraud. Justice Department policy discourages such lawsuits so close to the election.
"The committee would benefit from hearing directly from you in order to
gain a better understanding of the role voter fraud may have played in the administration's
decisions to retain or remove certain U.S. attorneys," Chairman Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., wrote in a letter co-signed by the committee's top Republican,
Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.
The letter asked Schlozman to voluntarily submit to interviews and testimony
and provide documents to the committee.
Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said politics do not influence decisions
about whether to bring a case.
"The Justice Department brings its civil actions and criminal prosecutions
based on evidence, not on politics," Boyd said. "We expect U.S. Attorneys
to bring election and voter fraud cases where evidence of such fraud exists."
The Justice Department is conducting an internal review of the firings of U.S.
attorneys and other decisions. As part of that investigation, the agency is
reviewing whether Goodling sought to place Republicans as front-line prosecutors
in state U.S. attorney districts.
Lawmakers want to question Goodling but, without a promise of immunity, she
has refused. In a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers,
D-Mich., the department said it would prefer not to see an immunity deal.
"However, we understand the committee's interest in obtaining Ms. Goodling's
testimony," the letter said. "Therefore, after balancing the significant
public interest against the impact of the committee's actions on our ongoing
investigation, we will not raise an objection or seek a deferral."
The letter was signed by Inspector General Glenn Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett,
counsel to the Office of Professional Responsibility.
Committee lawyers must now send an immunity request to a federal judge for
approval. Once that deal is approved, Goodling would face a contempt order if
she refused to testify. Her lawyer, John M. Dowd, said Monday she would testify
under such a deal.
"She'll be honest and clear and she'll work very hard to answer all questions,"
Dowd said.
Conyers said he would move quickly to ask a judge to approve the immunity deal
and schedule a hearing.
A congressional aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no agreement
on testimony had been reached, said lawmakers were planning to hold a hearing
as early as next week and hoped to secure testimony from Schlozman.
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Associated Press writer Sam Hananel contributed to this report.
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