Fighting Discrimination: It’s A Day at The Beach

You’re used to the usual humdrum charges that the Justice Department’s voting rights section has been turned to the aim of voter suppression, rather than voter protection. So count this as a new variety of alleged corruption.

As reported by Al Kamen in The Washington Post today, “the acting deputy director of the section, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, has been accused of collecting a $64 per diem, including on weekends and the Fourth of July, while spending half of June and most of July and August with her husband and kids at their beach house on Cape Cod.”

You can read the referenced complaint here, which is addressed to the Justice Department’s inspector general. The most sensational accusation, to be sure, is not that Lorenzo-Giguere managed to get paid while staying at her beach house, but that the Department “files lawsuits not because of the merits of the underlying claims but because the venue of the targeted defendant allows Ms. Lorenzo-Giguere to compel taxpayer funding of her annual summer retreat to Cape Cod.”

The author of the complaint (redacted in the version TPMmuckraker obtained) notes that certain motions by Lorenzo-Giguere raised arguments “the United States had never raised in similar circumstances in any other litigation.” Both lawsuits referenced in the complaint dealt with alleged discrimination against Spanish-speaking voters; the section has pursued a large number of such cases, while virtually abandoning the section’s traditional emphasis on protecting African-American voters.

A Department spokesman told Kamen, “The Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating the allegations, and upon conclusion of the investigation the Department will take appropriate action.”