Controversial U.S. Attorney Heads Back to D.C.After his controversial tenure at the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman was rewarded by being installed as the U.S. attorney for Kansas City. His time as U.S.A. there, which ended only a week ago, is notable mostly for his decision to bring four “voter fraud” indictments shortly before the election last year. (We’ll have more on that later.)
But Schlozman isn’t done at the Justice Department. In fact, he’s headed back to Washington to work at the office that supervises U.S. attorneys all over the country. A Justice Department spokesman told CBS Investigative Producer Laura Strickler that Schlozman will be “an attorney in the Counsel to the Director staff at the Executive Office for United States Attorneys.” It’s not clear exactly what that means, and the spokesman did not indicate precisely what Schlozman’s duties would be. The EOUSA serves as the liaison beween U.S. attorneys all over the country and DoJ leadership in Washington.
Schlozman certainly has friends in high places. Salon has quoted a former senior Justice Department official as saying that Schlozman was “one of Gonzales’ guys,” and that “several of us were scratching our heads when we heard about [his appointment as U.S. attorney in Kansas City] because he was not a very well-regarded trial attorney.”
The official also told Salon that Schlozman likely would have remained as U.S. attorney there indefinitely if the administration’s firing of eight U.S.A.s had not become controversial: “They weren’t going to replace him.”
Schlozman, it’s fair to say, would have stood little chance at being confirmed by the Senate. Instead, the president nominated John Wood to replace Schlozman in the middle of January, just as the controversy of the fired U.S. attorneys was beginning to simmer. Wood was confirmed by the Senate and took office last week.