Can we put Sen.-designate Burris in charge of devising strategy against the senate Republicans?

The level of transparency is so bad with the TARP program (and most of the rest of the what the Treasury is doing), that sometimes a new big new piece of information will get pried loose and it’s something that I hadn’t even realized wasn’t available already. As a case in point, Sen. Levin (D-MI) just put out a press release announcing that the Treasury has agreed to release the contracts for the massive amounts of TARP money the Treasury gave invested in banks like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, et al.

He’d been threatening a subpoena but they’ve now agreed to cough them up.

From Levin’s press release …

“The Department of Treasury assured me today that there will be no need to serve a subpoena, because they will provide the documents I have requested, beginning tomorrow,” said Levin. “It should not have taken two months and a subpoena threat, but I — along with Senator Susan Collins who supports obtaining these documents — look forward to receiving the documents this week.”

The Treasury Department has agreed to provide copies of the TARP contracts issued to ten companies: AIG, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, State Street Corporation, and Wells Fargo.

It’s astonishing to me that there’d even be a question about releasing this stuff.

Late Update: Two further points. BailoutSleuth has information on the related issue of the contracts the Treasury has with the firms who are administering the TARP money. A big deal in itself, though obviously the amount public money in play is an order of magnitude smaller. Also, the AIG was not part of TARP proper, but a one-off deal the Treasury put together before the TARP-spawning Wall Street Gotterdammerung.

Who’s in charge of TARP and spending your $700 billion? Not a pretty picture. But we thought you might want to know.

Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing starts at 9:30 a.m. ET with her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

To close the loop on yesterday’s post, here’s how the request for the second TARP installment came down, according to Bloomberg:

The action on TARP came after Bush, during what he said would be his last news conference before leaving office, told reporters he hadn’t gotten a request from Obama concerning release of the funds. “I told him that, if he felt he needed the $350 billion, I would ask for it,” Bush said.

The news conference ended at 10:04 a.m. yesterday. White House press secretary Dana Perino said the call from Obama making the request came at 10:25 a.m. The letter from Summers was released two hours later.

The long-awaited inspector general report on the politicization of the Bush DOJ Civil Rights Division has been released, and our old friend Bradley Schlozman is firmly in the cross-hairs:

The evidence in our investigation showed that Schlozman, first as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General and subsequently as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Acting Assistant Attorney General, considered political and ideological affiliations in hiring career attorneys and in other personnel actions affecting career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division. In doing so, he violated federal law – the Civil Service Reform Act – and Department policy that prohibit discrimination
in federal employment based on political and ideological affiliations, and committed misconduct. The evidence also showed that Division managers failed to exercise sufficient oversight to ensure that Schlozman did not engage in inappropriate hiring and personnel practices. Moreover, Schlozman made false statements about whether he considered political and ideological affiliations when he gave sworn testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee and in his written responses to supplemental questions from the Committee.

Schlozman is no longer employed by the Department and, therefore, is not subject to disciplinary action by the Department. We recommend, however, that, if criminal prosecution is declined these findings be considered if Schlozman seeks federal employment in the future. We believe that his violations of the merit system principles set forth in the Civil Service Reform Act, federal regulations, and Department policy, and his subsequent false statements to Congress render him unsuitable for federal service.

Interestingly, the report is dated July 2, 2008, but was only released today. I’m speculating here, but I suspect that’s because the findings were referred to DOJ for possible prosecution of Schlozman. We’re trying to nail down now whether that explains the delay in releasing the report – and whether that means DOJ has declined to prosecute Schlozman for lying to Congress.

Late Update: Indeed, DOJ did decline to prosecute Scholzman. From the report:

We referred the findings from our investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia in March 2008. We completed this written report of investigation in July 2008.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office informed us on January 9, 2009, of its decision to decline prosecution of Schlozman. The Interim U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, was recused from the matter and the decision.

We are now releasing our July 2008 report of investigation.

From the DOJ IG report (.pdf) on Schlozman (my emphasis):

Another example is an e-mail dated January 6, 2004, from Schlozman to an attorney hired by Schlozman in the Civil Rights Division. Shortly after being hired, the attorney sent an e-mail to Schlozman expressing his happiness in the Special Litigation Section, noting that his “office is even next to a Federalist Society member.”
Schlozman replied, “Just between you and me, we hired another member of ‘the team’ yesterday. And still another ideological comrade will be starting in one month. So we are making progress.”

Of course, Schlozman subsequently testified to Congress that he did not take political affiliation into account when hiring career lawyers at DOJ.

Bradley Schlozman had an acronym for the type of conservative Republicans he wanted to slot into career positions at the Justice Department: “RTAs,” or right-thinking Americans.

Late Update: In a similar vein, Schlozman called career attorneys in the Voting Rights Section “mold spores” and in an email wrote, “My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs rights out of the section.”

We now know, thanks to the Justice Department’s inspector general, that Bradley Scholzman’s June 2007 testimony to Congress was one big lie. Here are some of the highlights of that testimony which we posted at the time.

If you just watch one clip, make it this exchange with Sen. Patrick Leahy, one of my all-time faves:

Late Update: Leahy reacts to the IG’s report: “It should come as no surprise that the result, and of course the intent, of this political makeover of the Civil Rights Division has been a dismal civil rights enforcement record.”