When Bradley Schlozman testified yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee he repeatedly claimed that he’d been authorized to issue a series of ‘vote fraud’ indictments just before the November 2006 by Craig Donsanto, director of the Election Crime Branch at the Department of Justice. That surprised the committee such indictments violate DOJ rules against bringing such charges just before an election. And Donsanto himself actually wrote the manual that includes that policy.
TPMmuckraker.com researcher Will Thomas 
thought he rememebered Donsanto’s name. So he searched through the Department of Justice document dumps from this spring. And he found Donsanto’s name referenced in an October 4th 2004 email from fired New Mexico US Attorney David Iglesias. And in that email Iglesias restates the policy against such late-campaign indictments. “I am not aware,” writes Iglesias, “of any prosecution which will commence before November 2, 2004. I know Donsanto would not authorize such action because he has stated the same.”
Then this afternoon, TPMmuckraker.com’s Laura McGann spoke to Iglesias by phone to ask him about the October 2004 email and his understanding of Donsanto’s policy on such late-campaign indictments. Iglesias told McGann: “I actually saw the email that I sent on TPMMuckraker and I know exactly what youâre talking about. I had numerous conversations with [Donsanto] over the course of two years, I canât believe that heâd have gone 180 degrees on that policy. I just donât believe it.”
It’s not an idle point. Given Schlozman’s record of supporting efforts to suppress minority voter turnout, purge non-Republicans from key jobs in the Civil Rights Division and other infamies, it looks very much like he timed the indictments to drop just before the 2006 election to provide Missouri Republicans with a cudgel to use against then-candidate now-Senator Claire McCaskill.
So what’s the truth here? Schlozman said repeatedly and unequivocally under oath that Donsanto had authorized the indictments. Did Donsanto change “180 degrees”, in Iglesias’s words? By my understanding of DOJ guidelines Donsanto is not permitted to speak to the press. So I think only the investigators on Capitol Hill can find out from him what really happened.
