It looks like Bradley Schlozman will escape prosecution, at least for now, despite having been found in a DOJ report to have broken the law by politicizing hiring decisions at the department, and then lying about it to a Senate committee.
But a flood of readers has written in to ask whether Schloz might still be disbarred in the state of Kansas, where he’s currently practicing law.
So we called the state’s disciplinary administrator, who would handle the issue. Stanton Hazlett told TPMmuckraker that Schlozman has been registered in the state since 1994, but no complaints about him have been filed.
Indeed, Hazlett at first said he wasn’t familiar with Schlozman’s name, and asked us to send him the DOJ’s report released this morning. Eventually, he said that he did recall the allegations of politicized hiring, but wasn’t aware that Schlozman had lied to Congress about it. Unsurprisingly, Hazlett suggested that he would take such a matter very seriously.
We’ll keep you posted on any developments…
Late Update: The Washington Post reports:
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility chief H. Marshall Jarrett said they would refer their findings to legal disciplinary authorities.
According to one TPMmuckraker source: “DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility routinely refers findings of ethics violations by Justice Department lawyers to the state bar associations in states where that lawyer is licensed to practice”.
So perhaps those complaints will soon start coming in.