At yesterday's hearings about our seemingly politicized Justice Department, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy told Bradley Schlozman, "I think you’re trying to break Attorney General Gonzales’s record use of 'I don’t recall.'" The Committee did seem to get less info than it gave.
Committee members kept citing from the "Red Book," a Justice Department policy manual for prosecuting election crimes. They were particularly interested in the policy stating that (except for large-scale cases) Justice Department prosecutors should avoid opening election-fraud cases just before an election. The policy's purpose: to avoid affecting elections.
Committee members repeatedly pointed out Schlozman's inconsistency regarding that policy, comparing his handling of two pre-Election-2006 issues. In Missouri (a Republican battleground state), a Democrat-leaning group told the DoJ that four workers had registered some ineligible voters. Under "Red Book" policy, the DoJ should have delayed the case until after the November election. As Interim US Attorney in Missouri, Schlozman aggressively pursued the case days before the election.
Missouri Republican party officials "used the voter-registration indictments last fall in campaign literature attacking Democrat Claire McCaskill in her Senate election bid" (Washington Post). At yesterday's hearing, Schlozman admitted that waiting a few weeks likely would not have affected the Missouri case.
The other case involved Minnesota's Republican Secretary of state, whose rule-interpretation prohibited some Native Americans from using tribal photo-ID's to vote. Concerned that this would stop many Native Americans from voting (they tend to vote Democrat), then-U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger tried to get Schlozman's approval to open an investigation. Schlozman opted to handle the issue quietly before the election. Heffelfinger ended up on the to-be-fired list.
At the hearing, Schlozman said that he hadn't discussed Heffelfinger's (bad) performance with Kyle Sampson, Monica Goodling or anyone else that he could recall. Last month, Goodling testified that Heffelfinger was put on the firing list because he spent too much time on Native American issues (Talking Points Memo). When Sen. Diane Feinstein asked Schlozman how Goodling could know that, he said he had no idea.
Though Schlozman's memory was largely anemic, he did repeatedly and emphatically recall one thing: that he had never discussed pursuit of the voter fraud cases or the firing of U.S. Attorneys with Attorney General Gonzales or with any Bush Administration official.
Among the other issues discussed at the hearing:
-Schlozman approved a Georgia voter-id law that multiple DoJ attorneys opposed because it would discriminate against eligible, African American voters: a court later struck down the Georgia law as discriminatory.
-Schlozman admitted to bragging about having hired a large number of conservative (or Republican) attorneys at DoJ.
-Schlozman repeatedly claimed that he had recruited DoJ attorneys from both liberal and conservative groups. He listed the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society as conservative groups he'd contacted. When Sen. Chuck Shumer pressed Schlozman to name a liberal group he'd contacted to recruit lawyers, Schlozman repeatedly failed.
The political motives may seem clear to those reading between the lines, but is the evidence solid enough to bring about legal results?
Other Sources Worth Seeing
-Jon Stewart's reaction to Justice Department Testimony (video).
-Salon's post-testimony article.
-BNP's overview of the Fired U.S. Attorney Scandal.
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