Auditors Say Justice Dept. Improperly Screened for Political Ties

[maddezmom]

Source: WaPo

Tuesday, June 24, 2008; 11:50 AM

Justice Department officials improperly used political and ideological factors to screen applicants for the agency's prestigious honors and summer intern programs, sometimes rejecting otherwise qualified candidates because of their ties to Democrats, internal auditors said in a report issued this morning.

The long awaited review faulted Bush administration officials for violating Justice Department policy and civil service rules beginning in 2002, when they tried to fill career posts with rookie lawyers whose political affiliations mirrored their own.

Investigators for the Justice Department's Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility, which oversees legal ethics, reviewed thousands of e-mail messages and conducted interviews with current and former officials, concluding that the hiring efforts "undermined confidence in the integrity of the department's hiring processes."

The report traced the problems back six years, to when Justice officials urged political appointees in the department's many divisions to take a more active role in hiring for the summer intern and honors programs. The activity flourished in 2002, dying down for a few years, before reviving in 2006, according to the investigative report.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062400819.html?hpid=topnews

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Watchdogs whack DOJ for cronyism
Posted June 24, 2008 11:44 AM

Andrew Zajac

A pair of Justice Department watchdogs this morning weighed in with a scathing report which concludes that senior department officials used political affiliation to weed out candidates for coveted appointments to a pair of prestigious entry level programs which are supposed to be non-partisan and merit based.

Screeners for the Honors Program and the Summer Legal Intern Program in 2002 and 2006 "improperly deselected candidates for interviews based on political and ideological affiliations. Both Department policy and federal law prohibit discrimination in hiring for career positions on the basis of political affiliations," states the report, which was jointly released by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsiblity Counsel H. Marshall Jarrett.

Their report puts two officials, Esther Slater McDonald, counsel to the Associate Attorney General, and Michael Elston, the then-chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General on the hook for misconduct:

"The documentary evidence and witness interviews also support the conclusion that ( McDonald and Elston) took political or ideological affiliations into account in deselecting candidates, in violation of Department policy and federal law, and thereby committed misconduct," the report states.

more:http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2008/06/watchdogs_whack_doj_for_cronyi.html

An Investigation of Allegations of
Politicized Hiring in the
Department of Justice Honors Program
and
Summer Law Intern Program

http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/oig-opr-investigation-hire-slip.pdf

[maddezmom]

1. Sen. Leahy's statement

U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

CONTACT: Office of Senator Leahy, 202-224-4242
VERMONT


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment Of Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.),

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee,

On Inspector General Report
On Department Of Justice Intern And Honors Programs

June 24, 2008



“Today’s troubling report from the Inspector General confirms what our oversight efforts in this Congress have uncovered about the politicization of hiring practices at the Department. It confirms our findings and our fears that the same senior Department officials involved with the firing of United States Attorneys were injecting improper political motives into the process of hiring young attorneys. I suspect further reports from the Inspector General will continue to shed light on the extent to which the Bush administration has allowed politics to affect – and infect – the Department’s priorities, from law enforcement to the operation of the crucial Civil Rights Division to the Department’s hiring practices.



“This report and those to follow will serve as a reminder to future presidents – and future congresses – that never again should blatant partisanship be made the crux of the Justice Department’s hiring practices. The Department of Justice is not the president’s legal defense team. It houses our nation’s top law enforcement officers, and it has been crippled in the last seven years. We began the first real oversight efforts of this administration that has led to our uncovering the truth about this administration’s efforts to infuse partisan politics into our nation’s top law enforcement agency.”


http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200806/062408b.html

[midnight]

2. If this type of improper behavior can happen in the justice dept.

we may well just be seeing the tip of this type of behavior that has spread into our schools, healthcare, police departments, etc....A pair of Justice Department watchdogs this morning weighed in with a scathing report which concludes that senior department officials used political affiliation to weed out candidates for coveted appointments to a pair of prestigious entry level programs which are supposed to be non-partisan and merit based.

[MountainLaurel]

3. No kidding

I worked at and with DOJ for 4 years as a contractor in the years just before Bush took office. A couple years ago there was a high-profile case of a high-level researcher resigning rather than than editing a report so that the info contained therein toed the party line. I thought then that if the numbers crunchers in that agency were being affected by politics and standing up (these were the driest, not-rocking-the-boat people you could meet), then other agencies must be in worse shape.

But then again, I knew that one of the Bush juntas first actions was to fire all of DOJ's environmental crimes lawyers and replace them with industry shills who promptly closed most of the cases (in which they'd been opposing counsel just a couple months before), so this doesn't surprise me in the least.