A grand jury referral specifically focused on possible perjury by Bradley Schlozman. Schlozman left the Justice Department last year after he was challenged over his hiring of conservative lawyers in the civil-rights division and his decision later as U.S. attorney to bring voter-fraud charges against members of a voter-registration group registering poor and minority voters days before the 2006 election. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Schlozman conceded boasting to associates about the number of Republicans he managed to hire in the department. Also, his promotion to the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City came after the department asked his predecessor, Todd P. Graves, to resign. Graves was among several U.S. attorneys who had shown reluctance to bring vote-fraud-related cases to court. The allegations against Schlozman helped feed months of scandal that eventually forced the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The Justice Department Inspector General released a report in June 2008 which states: “The evidence in our investigation… supports the conclusion that political or ideological affiliations were used to deselect candidates from the Honors Program…. As a result, many qualified candidates were deselected by the Screening Committee because of their perceived political or ideological affiliations.” The Voting Rights Section, which Joe Rich had headed from 1999 to 2005, also received attention as an office the Bush administration saw as a valuable tool for partisan gain. In his testimony before Congress, Rich charged that "the priority, indeed obsession, of this administration was not to protect the rights of American voters but with ... politically charged pursuit[s]." One example of the political pursuits at DOJ was a Georgia law which required a government-issued picture ID in order to vote at the polls on Election Day. Justice Department staff prepared a detailed analysis of the information provided by the state and concluded that the new law would have a discriminatory effect on minority voters and recommended that the law not be pre-cleared. The next day, political appointees at DOJ reversed that decision and barred the Voting Rights Section's staff attorneys from offering any recommendations on any future cases. The Supreme Court later found the law unconstitutional. In early March, 2009, the Obama Justice Department asked a federal judge to drop a lawsuit against the Missouri Secretary of State for failing to purge ineligible voters from the rolls. Refusal to file this suit led to the firing of Todd Graves as US Attorney for the western district of Missouri. He was succeeded in that post by Schlozman, who filed the suit that is now being withdrawn. |
