If you’re a regular reader, 
you know that for the last three weeks TPMmuckraker’s Paul Kiel has been telling you the story of Bradley Schlozman. He was the senior official at the DOJ’s Civil Rights Divisions, who worked on making the country safe for the return of Voter IDs, de facto poll taxes, vote roll purges and other gimmicks to crack down on minority voting.
Then Schlozman became a Patriot Act-appointed US Attorney in Kansas City where he rushed a series of vote fraud indictments in time for the 2006 mid-term election. Only a couple weeks ago he returned to Main Justice to help run the Executive Office of United States Attorneys.
Most interesting though was Paul’s April 24th report on charges that Schlozman screened DOJ Civil Rights division job applicants to make sure they were loyal Republicans. Paul was the first to report these charges based on an interview with former Civil Rights Division line attorney Ty Clevenger, who recounted how Schlozman had denied an interview to a job applicant because his GOP ideological credentials weren’t strong enough.
Those, you’ll remember, are the same charges Monica Goodling is now supposedly being investigated on by an internal DOJ investigation.
Now, it seems, McClatchy and congressional investigators are starting to take note. Just out on the McClatchy wire tonight …
Congressional investigators are beginning to focus on accusations that a top civil rights official at the Justice Department illegally hired lawyers based on their political affiliations, especially for sensitive voting rights jobs.
Two former department lawyers told McClatchy Newspapers that Bradley Schlozman, a senior civil rights official, told them in early 2005, after spotting mention of their Republican affiliations on their job applications, to delete those references and resubmit their resumes. Both attorneys were hired.
One of them, Ty Clevenger, said: “He wanted to make it look like it was apolitical.”
Schlozman did not respond to phone calls to his home Sunday. But he denied the allegations in an earlier phone interview with McClatchy Newspapers and through a department spokesman. In the interview he said he “tried to de-politicize the hiring process” and filled jobs with applicants from “across the political spectrum.”
Attention is turning to Schlozman after the announcement last week that the Justice Department opened an internal investigation to determine whether Monica Goodling, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ White House liaison, illegally took party affiliation into account in hiring entry-level prosecutors. The department’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility are conducting that inquiry jointly.
For TPMmuckraker regulars, we have a new full-time reporter-blogger starting Monday. So much more on the US Attorney Purge and other stories in the days to come.
