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Report: Politics, Ideology Drove Hiring Decisions in Justice Department's Civil Rights Division
Last of four reports on DOJ hiring includes complaints that lawyers were pulled off cases for being 'treacherous' to agenda
Legal Times
January 14, 2009
A report released Monday by the Justice Department's two watchdogs says the former head of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division routinely violated federal law and department policy by using political and ideological affiliations in hiring several career attorneys.
Bradley Schlozman, the 67-page report says, actively recruited those he deemed "real Americans" -- members of the Federalist Society and others with conservative bona fides -- and in the process routinely overruled the judgments of his deputies on hiring issues.
The report's authors -- Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett -- also suggest that Schlozman may have perjured himself before a congressional committee investigating the U.S. Attorney firings. They referred their findings to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia in March 2008. On Jan. 9, the office formally declined to prosecute.
The report, which highlights Schlozman's time as a deputy, principal deputy and acting head of the division, is the last of four to confront allegations of politicized hiring at Justice.
Owing to new division policy and his own initiative, Schlozman played a key role in hiring 99 attorneys, 64 percent of which were Republican or conservative, according to the report. The report was completed in July and draws from thousands of pages of documents related to department hiring, more than 200,000 e-mails and interviews with more than 120 current and former employees.
Section chiefs told investigators that Schlozman pulled lawyers off cases or transferred them to other sections for being "disloyal" or "treacherous" to his agenda.
Throughout the report, Schlozman is portrayed as having a remarkable aversion to job applicants with deep civil rights backgrounds or division attorneys whose politics conflicted with his own, some of whom in the Voting Rights Section he referred to as "mold spores."
"Schlozman favored applicants with conservative political or ideological affiliations and disfavored applicants with civil rights or human rights experience whom he considered to be overly liberal," the report says.
In one particularly revealing instance, Schlozman told a subordinate that "relevant experience" was not necessarily a resume-booster: "When we start asking about, 'What is your commitment to civil rights?' ... How do you prove that?' Usually by membership in some crazy liberal organization or by some participation in some crazy cause," according to one e-mail.
Schlozman, a former lawyer at what was then Howrey Simon Arnold & White, joined the department in 2001 as counsel to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson. In the e-mail, he pointed to his own background, by way of example.
"Look, look at my resume -- I didn't have any demonstrated commitment, but I care about the issues. So, I mean, I just want to make sure we don't start confining ourselves to, you know, politburo members because they happen to be a member of some, you know, psychopathic left-wing organization designed to overthrow the government."
While serving as interim U.S. Attorney in the Missouri's Western District in 2006 -- a position he had for a year -- Schlozman compared the assignment to his job in the Civil Rights Division, holding nothing back in a June 2006 e-mail to a friend.
"It has been months since I felt the need to scream with a blood-curdling cry at some commie, partisan subordinate," he wrote. "And I feel like the people I now work with are complete professionals. What a weird change."
He went on, "Granted, these changes are nice in many respects, but bitch-slapping a bunch of [Civil Rights Division] attorneys really did get the blood pumping."
The report notes that Schlozman, who is now of counsel at Hinkle Elkouri in Wichita, Kan., declined to be interviewed by investigators. Four other former top officials in Civil Rights Division also refused to cooperate with the probe.
Since the summer, Schlozman had been the subject of a grand jury investigation into possible perjury related to his testimony before a congressional committee investigating the U.S. Attorney firings. The grand jury referral marked the first time that the internal probe into political meddling in the department eclipsed the investigative phase.
When asked during a June 2007 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing whether he considered political affiliation or ideology in department hiring, Schlozman answered pointedly that he did not. At the hearing, he also denied transferring three lawyers from the department's appellate section based on their politics, a claim investigators also believe to be false.
Schlozman did not return calls or e-mail for comment. His attorney, William Jordan of Alston & Bird's Atlanta office, said in a statement that the decision by the U.S. Attorney's Office to drop the investigation was evidence of the report's bias and inaccuracy.
Jordan also revealed that Schlozman took and passed an independent polygraph examination to determine whether he lied before Congress. The results were given to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
"[Schlozman] hired individuals from across the political and ideological spectrum based upon their academic records, respect for the rule of law, and their ability to separate their personal views from the enforcement activities of the Civil Rights Division," Jordan said. "This review is now complete, and Mr. Schlozman is pleased that it has exonerated him."
In a statement, Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr called Schlozman's conduct "troubling" and said that Attorney General Michael Mukasey agreed with the report's recommendations, which include regular training on merit system principles and prohibited personnel practices.
Since taking office, Mukasey has restored the role of career lawyers in making hiring decisions and reinforced a merit-based system for hiring and recruitment.
"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," Carr said. "As today's report makes clear, Mr. Schlozman deviated from that strict standard."
