Former Justice official may face grand jury probe(Schlozman)

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is considering launching a grand jury investigation into whether one of its former leaders misled Congress about playing politics with civil rights issues, a government official said Monday.

The move amounts to a first step from an internal inquiry toward possible criminal charges in the scandal that helped force the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

At issue is whether Bradley Schlozman intentionally misled senators during a June 2007 hearing when he gave conflicting statements about his role in an election-eve filing of a voter fraud lawsuit in Missouri while serving, a year earlier, as a U.S. attorney based in Kansas City, Mo.

He also angered Democrats at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when he admitted to boasting about hiring conservative loyalists over better-qualified lawyers in 2005 when he served as acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division.



Read more: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jYuH3mAZbV0pXTznoxmZ2anGhojwD91BFOR00

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~snip~
The investigation led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. A lawyer for Mr. Gonzales, George J. Terwilliger III, said Monday that the grand jury referral was “unrelated to anything connected to Judge Gonzales.”

Noting that Mr. Gonzales has promised to cooperate with all Justice Department investigations into the resignations, Mr. Terwilliger said, “He continues to make good on that commitment.” He declined to discuss Mr. Gonzales’s contacts with investigators, but said, “There’s no criminal investigation involving Judge Gonzales and the United States attorneys.”

Congressional Democrats said Mr. Gonzales might have perjured himself in his testimony about wireless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, a program that the inspector general is also reviewing.

Asked whether there was any criminal investigation involving Mr. Gonzales’s testimony about the eavesdropping, Mr. Terwilliger said, “I’m not going to get into other things.”

more:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17attorneys.html?hp


from earlier yesterday:

WSJ: US Attorney Scandal Advances
Justin Rood Reports:

Federal prosecutors are reportedly pursuing their first criminal indictment in the U.S. Attorneys scandal.

The subject, according to the Wall Street Journal: Bradley Schlozman, for a time the U.S. Attorney for Kansas City, who resigned from his the Justice Department in disgrace last August after his role in politicizing the Justice Department was discovered. Schlozman, who most recently had served as the head of the department's Civil Rights Division, eventually admitted to Congress that he boasted to his Justice colleagues about his efforts to hire Republicans -- "good Americans," as he reportedly called his conservative hires.

The Journal reports that prosecutors investigating the scandal have filed a referral to a grand jury that "relates to allegations of political meddling," and focuses on "possible perjury" by Schlozman. It does not mean that criminal charges will be filed, only that prosecutors believe there may be grounds to do so.


more: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2008/06/wsj-us-attorney.html

[UpInArms]

1. background: Attorneys Scandal May Be Tied to Missouri Voting

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9981606

All Things Considered, May 3, 2007 · The Justice Department's push to remove U.S. attorneys in 2006 might have been larger than the eight cases that have been discussed in Congress. Other U.S. attorneys' names were on a list the agency compiled in January 2006 — the prosecutor who replaced one of them was the first to be named under the Patriot Act.

One of the federal prosecutors on the list was U.S. Attorney for Western Missouri Todd Graves. Graves resigned last year, before the forced dismissals took place. He left several months after refusing to sign off on a voter-registration lawsuit that was filed against the state of Missouri by an acting assistant attorney general, Bradley Schlozman.

Less than two weeks later, Schlozman was installed to replace Graves under a Patriot Act provision allowing President Bush to place Schlozman in the job without Senate confirmation.

Schlozman went on to bring voter-fraud charges against members of the liberal group ACORN, less than a week before the hotly contested Missouri Senate election.

In the ACORN case, workers there had been accused of submitting blatantly false registration forms. But by the time of Schlozman's filing, ACORN had fired the workers weeks earlier and turned them over to law enforcement officials.

...more...

[UpInArms]

2. more: Former MO US Attorney Todd Graves the Ninth Attorney Targeted by Alberto Gonzales

http://www.pressrelease365.com/pr/government/federal/graves-attorney-general-gonzales-1275.htm

KANSAS CITY, MO -- Medical Supply Chain founder Samuel Lipari unearthed a US Department of Justice memo revealing the Office of the Attorney General had targeted not eight but ten US Attorneys including the former attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Todd P. Graves. The documents were obtained during Medical Supply Chain's discovery related to the civil antitrust action Medical Supply Chain, Inc. v. Novation LLC, et al, Western District of Missouri case #05-210-CV-W-ODS filed on March 9, 2005.

The e-mail dated January 9th, 2006 from Kyle Sampson, chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, to Harriet Miers and William Kelley at the White House, shows the ten U.S. Attorneys that were first selected to voluntarily resign or face termination. Attorneys that resigned were redacted. Todd P. Graves of Missouri resigned March 24, 2006.

The Western District of Missouri US Attorney office under Todd P. Graves had been active in prosecuting Medicare fraud. Medical Supply Chain, Inc.'s civil antitrust suit against Texas based Novation LLC, Volunteer Hospital Association (VHA), University Health System Consortium (UHC) and Neoforma, Inc. alleges the companies formed a cartel and were involved in a scheme to monopolize hospital supplies to defraud Medicare through payments to administrators and kickbacks. The scheme resulted in almost all of Kansas City, Missouri St. Luke's hospital's one hundred million dollar supply budget being purchased through Novation LLC. St. Luke's merged with University of Kansas Hospital after Irene Cumming, CEO of the University of Kansas Hospital was given a job by University Health System Consortium (UHC) on March 19, 2007.

The first prosecutor identified as being fired by the Office of the Attorney General was Carol Lam, a U.S. Attorney in San Diego, California. Carol Lam was personally prosecuting Medicare fraud at the Tenet Healthcare Alvarado hospital when political pressure was brought on the Justice Department to remove her from office. Carol Lam's prosecution caused the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services threatened to cut Medicare and Medicaid funds to Alvarado Hospital Case # 03CR15870 US Dist. Court Southern California.

<snip>

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used a little known provision of the USA PATRIOT Act to replace Todd P. Graves with Bradley Schlozman. Bradley Schlozman failed to prosecute public corruption related to the Medical Supply Chain litigation and failed to enforce civil rights laws related to the Novation LLC defendants success in getting Medical Supply Chain's counsel Bret D. Landrith disbarred. Samuel Lipari raised these concerns before the US Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit. On January 16, 2007 Attorney General Gonzales tried to quell criticism of the mass US Attorney firings and the misuse of the USA PATRIOT Act by announcing John Wood would be taking Schlozman's place in Kansas City.

...more...

[Ian David]

3. The Schloz!!! n/t

[Botany]

4. Stephanie Miller is gonna be happy.

And in the bark park in Sheboygan, Wisconsin Bradley Schlozman watched Guy LaFluer .... :rofl:




The Schloz!

[asp64064]

5. Bradley Schlozman is a RICO Defendant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.medicalsupplychain.com/pdf/Lipari%20v%20GE%20et%20al%20Federal.pdf

There is enough criminal activity in the Medical Supply Chain/Lipari cases to send Schlozman, John Wood, the defending law firms and several public officials to prison for the rest of there lives. http://www.medicalsupplychain.com/news.htm

A Grand Jury should have been assembled years ago. S~