Report slams politicized hiring process at DoJ

Political decisions drove a significant portion of the
hiring process at the Justice Department’s civil rights division, contrary to
laws that prevented such considerations, a new report has found.

A lengthy and
long-awaited study by the department’s inspector general and the Office of
Professional Responsibility chronicled numerous instances between 2001 and 2007
in which a political appointed official weeded out qualified applicants who
were not Republicans or who had perceived ties to liberal organizations.

{mosads}The report focused on the actions of Deputy Assistant
Attorney General Bradley Schlozman, who was the chief culprit in hiring
candidates who shared Republican political views. Details of e-mails and
interviews with department officials revealed that Schlozman derided some
candidates as “libs” and “pinkos,” according to the report.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office
of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett plan to refer their
findings to disciplinary authorities.

The report stems from 2007 congressional investigations
into allegations about the politicization of the Justice Department during the
Bush administration. The probes led to the resignation of former Attorney
General Alberto Gonzales after bruising testimony before the House and Senate
Judiciary Committees, as well as the departure of more than a dozen senior
officials.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
said the report confirms some of Democrats’ worst fears about the Bush
administration’s “political corruption” of the Justice Department. He was
particularly disturbed about the findings in the report that he believed showed
that Schlozman had lied under oath to Congress.

“Lying to Congress undermines the very core of our
constitutional principles and blunts the American people’s right to open and
transparent government,” Leahy stated. “Not only did he lie to me and the committee,
but he then refused to cooperate with Justice Department’s internal oversight
offices’ investigation into illegal hiring practices in the department’s Civil
Rights Division.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr.
(D-Mich.) was equally troubled by the report’s finding and said the report
confirms the panel’s work.

“Indeed, the Civil Rights Division that is charged with
preventing employment discrimination instead appears to have been guilty of
it,” he said in a statement. “Partisan politics infected the Honors program and
other hiring decisions, personnel transfers, and even which cases went to which
attorneys, and division leadership failed to stop it … The new administration
must take active steps to restore the department’s mission to promote civil
rights.”

Peter Carr, the Justice Department’s acting spokesman,
acknowledged Schlozman’s troubling conduct and said the department has already
taken steps to ensure that ideological considerations in hiring career
attorneys is not occurring and will not happen again.

“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,” he said. “As today’s report makes clear, Mr. Schlozman deviated
from that strict standard.”