Does anyone understand why it was decided that Schlozman and others in the Justice Department who hired on ideological bases are not being prosecuted for doing that? As a much lower level Federal employee I can assure you that everyone in government employ understands that this would be totally illegal. It is impossible that anyone at for god sakes the upper levels of the JUSTICE Department did not know they were seriously breaking the law when they engaged in this practice. Of course if they were completely moronic totally ideologically driven hacks, then....oh wait, they were. Which doesn't mean they shouldn't be prosecuted. What about that young woman graduate of Regent law school or wherever that testified? Did she get off too?

Can Alberto be far behind? Let's hope not.

The Supreme Court about three weeks ago denied cert. in an honest services prosecution in Chicago [Sorich et al. v. US, No. 08-410] where the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals [US v. Sorich et al., 523 F.3d 702 (7th Cir. 2008)] had upheld a conviction of a najor City of Chicago official who had hired "civil service" employees on the basis of politcal allegance. The 7th Circuit said that violating the Chicago civil service statute meant that a fiduciary duty had been violated which established the predicate event for conviction of depriving one's employer of honest services. Scalia filed a dissent, highly unusual, from the denial of cert. but no one else on the Court joined him. Ordinarily a denial of cert. means nothing (and has no precedential value but lower courts do look at them) but in about 0.001% of the denials, the Court is sending a message. [Had the Court granted cert, there would not be a decision for a year or more.] The message to Holder was to go get them--honest services prosecutions are used also in white collar crime such as that in the financial meltdown. The Court does read newspapers-or in the words of Mr. Dooley some 70 years ago, they follow the election returns.

If you carefully read the IG report, he clearly established a violation of the "civil service" statutes (and so stated) which establishs the predicate breach of fiduciary duty in Sorich to support an honest servicies prosecution. Once the breach of fiduciary duty is established (and in this case it appears quite easy), conviction is a virtual certainty. When I was arguing cases (I was Assistant Att'y Gen.) before the KY Supreme Court many years ago, Justice John Palmore would describe such cases as only the Constitution preventing a directed verdict for the government. This is that clear of a case.

The white collar criminal defense bar has had its collective knickers in a twist, I have heard, ever since the Sorich denial of cert.

Schlozman if he gets charged will grab a plea as quickly as he can if he has any brains. Actually given Holder's public expressions of dismay over the stories of what happened at Justice, Bradley should go in immediately with a pre-emptive plea and roll over on everyone. He might get away with pleaing to a misdemeaner or a single felony count with no jail if he can deliver Karl and Alberto. Don't get upset over a plea to a misdemeaner or a no jail felony because that makes him all but absolutely liable for paying massive damages in civil rights suits filed by all the unsuccessful applicants. If he pleas to a felony with no jail, he will not be able to discharge any of the damage awards in bankruptcy--i.e., he will be paying for the rest of his life. Plus he will get disbarred.

Now might be a good time to remind those GOP apologist for AIG's bonuses, that yes we are a nation of laws.

The sad thing is that W may have FUBARed the nation so bad that we Demo's may have trouble holding the prior administration accountable.

What the old cliche: "Hard to drain the swamp, when your up to your, . . .

Where to start? First, emjay says "everyone in government" understands it would be "totally illegal" to hire on "ideological bases." Ok, that's just totally wrong. The Hatch Act policies on non-discrimination are found at 28 CFR 42.1(a). They forbid discrimination on the basis of "political affiliation" and not necessarily ideology. Schlozman admits, freely, that he considered ideology in making hiring decisions. That is the big problem here, it is proving that Schlozman both (1) believed that he hired based on political *affiliation*, as opposed to ideology and (2) lied about his own beliefs.

Next, even if Schlozman violated the Hatch Act, there is nothing you can do about that anymore. We are talking about civil service regulations here, not criminal statutes. The penalty for improper hiring based on political affiliation is termination from your cushy government job. Read: "you're fired." That's it. You get fired. We're not talking about a major felony here. Since the Schloz doesn't work for Uncle Sam anymore, there's nothing the government can do. Oh, I suppose they can extra-double fire him from the job he already quit.

Now, perjury is a major crime, and the DOJ is going to look into that a second time. But keep in mind that it was career prosecutors who declined to proceed and there is probably good reason. Perjury convictions are notoriously hard to make. Look, if you watched his testimony before Congress, it is pretty clear from his righteous indignation that Schloz did not believe he was doing anything wrong. In fact, Schloz's lawyer indicates that he has since taken a polygraph test to prove he didn't lie. And again, Schloz admits that he used political ideology, which is not illegal, to make hiring decisions. The point here is that Schlozman,himself, does not think he did anything wrong. Now if it is *reasonable* to believe that Schlozman himself thought he wasn't doing anything illegal, then perjury is a tough sell. Again, that is because you have to *prove* that when Schloz told Congress he never violated the Hatch Act, he knew that was a lie. That is, you have to prove (1) Schlozman himself believed he was violating the Hatch Act and (2) lied about it. Proving this, beyond a reasonable doubt, without smoking gun type evidence is hard. The Inspector General's report makes it pretty clear that Schlozman violated the Hatch Act for sure. But they don't make any suggestion that Schlozman *KNEW* he was violating it all along.

Since it would be extremely hard to make a case for perjury against Schlozman on this point, and since there is not crime in violating the Hatch Act, prosecutors' got nothing. They dropped it. I suspect Eric Holder's DOJ will find the same.

Frankly, of all the things out there, this whole case is a bunch of hot air. A political appointee wanted to get rid of all the staff that disagreed with his thinking and hire a bunch of staff that saw things his way. What a shocker! Sheesh. There won't be anyone left in in DC if we start on this path.

David46's comment is so absurd that I have debated even addressing it. The idea that Schlozman could be prosecuted for a general breach of fiduciary duty (under mail fraud statutes, I might add) is about a trillion-to-one shot. Imagine what the world would look like if every time a government employee got canned for violating a civil service rule (read: workplace policy) they were also subject to a mail-fraud felony prosecution. That's just a nonsense. Besides the Sorich case David46 cites as precedent is nothing like the Schlozman case. In Sorich, the defendant handed out civil service jobs to political campaign workers in exchange for their work on the campaign. Nobody is accusing Schlozman of any quid-pro-quo corruption of this kind. Schlozman may be a political hack, but nobody has accused him of being corrupt by hiring specific candidates he (or anyone else) "owed" a favor. At the absolute worst, he hired people who shared his own political affiliation. Sorich doesn't apply and we won't see any felony prosecutions under this provision.

Arggh:

Mail fraud is the most commonly prosecuted federal statute because its elements are by far the easiest to prove. It is routinely used to prosecute white collar crime because the underlying crime may be too tangled to prove. It is also very easy to trace communications across state lines.

Let's back up.

Someone works really hard in college to get the A's that they need to go to law school, and they go through all that and then the wrenching rite-of-passage that is the bar exam, and they take other steps in their young life that put them in the unusually qualified position of being able to apply for one of these jobs in the first place. They send in the application and it is impressive enough to get them an interview. Wow! Good work! And they go in the door, and sit down, and they hear this:

"What I want to know is what has got you so totally excited about our President George W. Bush that you want to come and work for him?!"

That's what happened here, on a routine basis. And it's a big ugly gash in the rule of law. It belongs in Chavez's Venezuela, not USA. If there is some way to prosecute the doers on any theory, that needs to be vigorously followed up on. Period.

And if the current laws have loopholes, they probably need to be changed.

david46: Your bracketed parenthetical to Overreach, "[You should also remember..." is worthy of a stand-alone paragraph and would make the points new and relevant. That is:

There are many viable, civil suits fermenting. A single ruling in court, a new revelation in the press, someone healing over to testify to a Grand Jury, could open criminal proceedings. Prior immunity in one area might not save someone like Gonzales, Slotzman, Rove, Goodling, Addington, Libby, et alia ad infinitum from new charges in another.

You are quite right to point out the reason so many of these folks cannot get hired: they're toxic. For those who have a job, consider how deep are the roots of The Federalist Society in many of our academic and public institutions.