Ex-DOJ Voting Rights Chief On Bogus Voter Fraud Probe: “There Is No Shame.”Since the news was reported last week that the FBI, less than three weeks before the election, is launching a voter-registration-fraud investigation into ACORN, we’ve seen a number of former top DOJ voting-rights officials –as well as former US attorney David Iglesias — denounce the probe as an inappropriate politicization of the department.
Add Joe Rich to the list. Rich, who from 1999 until 2005 ran the voting section in the department’s civil rights division, and is now at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, told TPMmuckraker this morning that the ACORN investigation is “much worse than what happened in 2006.”
Rich was referring to an indictment for voter fraud against four ACORN voter-registration workers, filed by Bradley Schlozman, an interim US attorney in Kansas City, just five days before a close Missouri Senate election. Schlozman later was investigated for possible perjury after testifying to Congress that he was “directed” by main DOJ to pursue the indictment, then filing a “clarification” in which he took “full responsibility” for the prosecution.
Noting that the Bush administration appears to be using the Department of Justice to pursue politically motivated voter-fraud investigations, even after getting caught red-handed doing so in the scandal over the US attorney firings, Rich added: “There is no shame.”
