Leahy, Specter ask Bush to condemn DoJ politicization

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday called on President Bush and Attorney General Michael Mukasey to condemn the politicization of the Justice Department.

Panel Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), pointed to the findings of a Department of Justice (DoJ) Inspector General’s report issued earlier this week that found that former department officials broke the law by letting Bush administration politics dictate the hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and career government lawyers.

{mosads}“I’m glad to see Attorney General Mukasey asking to change these practices,” said Specter during a committee hearing on the matter. “I’d like to see, frankly, a very forceful statement out of the Department of Justice as to what they intend to do.”

Leahy said the report shows that “cronyism was valued over competence.”

“The question is what Attorney General Mukasey and the president do about it to provide accountability,” Leahy asked.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine testified that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did not exercise adequate supervision of those of his subordinates involved in political screening of career attorneys and said he told investigators that he did not know it was taking place.

“That was one of the significant problems … the lack of oversight of these people,” Fine said. “These were inexperienced, junior people and they were able to implement these [political] policies and it resulted in very serious damage to the Department of Justice.”

The Inspector General’s investigation arose from the DoJ firings of nine federal prosecutors, which prompted congressional investigations last year and led to Gonzales’s resignation.

In his testimony, Fine said his office and the DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility are continuing to investigate the prosecutor firings, but could not say when they would conclude the probe and issue a report.

When asked if it would be finished by the end of the year, Fine said only that his team would “take the evidence wherever it leads and do as expeditious of a job as we can.”

Fine said that he did not interview former White House adviser Karl Rove or ex-White House counsel Harriet Miers because he did not see any evidence to suggest they were involved. However, he noted, the team did uncover evidence that Rove “was pushing” for the selection of an immigration judge in Chicago who was eventually hired.