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Did Christie Play Politics With Probe? U.S. Attorney Docs Add To Questions
Those newly released documents from the U.S. attorney firings raise a few questions about the Republican who may be his party's highest profile electoral contender this year. That's Chris Christie, the former U.S. attorney from New Jersey, who's also leading...
DOJ Official Caught Up In US Attorney Firings Supports Holder
We're not sure whether this counts as a positive thing ... but Eric Holder, Barack Obama's nominee for Attorney General, has won the support of a former DOJ official who was seriously tainted by the US Attorney firings scandal. In...
MO Senator and White House Played Role in Firing of U.S. Attorney
New details provided by the IG report released yesterday, gives definition to former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves' termination and paints a clear case for a politicized firing orchestrated by the office of Missouri Sen. Kit Bond (R). Graves was the...
U.S. Attorney Firings Timeline
2001-02 The White House appoints all nine U.S. Attorneys. The dates of individual swearings-in are as follows: 10/11/01: Todd Graves (Missouri) 10/18/01: David Iglesias (New Mexico) 10/24/01: John McKay (Western Washington) 11/02/01: Margaret Chiara (Western Michigan) 11/02/01: Daniel Bogden (Nevada)...
Rove and White House Helped Shape Information Release on U.S. Attorney Firings
Karl Rove's involvement in the U.S. attorney firings has always been questioned, but additional information on a March 2007 meeting mentioned in the Inspector General's report today suggests that at the very least, Rove and other White House officials played...
Class Action Suit Against DOJ Grows, Names Gonzales and Goodling as Defendants
Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and embattled former White House liaison Monica Goodling are among those newly named as defendants in a private class-action lawsuit against the DOJ. The suit, Gerlich et al. v. Department of Justice, was orginally filed...
DOJ Report Shows Partisan Culture Reigned Beyond The Few Names Named
There are still two more uncompleted inspector general reports pending -- one about the firing of eight U.S. attorneys and another about political agendas in the department's Civil Rights Division. Yet from the IG report Monday on hiring practices, it's...
In Gonzales' DOJ, Lesbian Rumors Could Cost You Your Job
It wasn't just Democrats who Monica Goodling was trying to rid the Justice Department of. If you were gay -- or even rumored to be gay -- your career was in jeopardy. Today's IG report offers new details in the...
CREW Files Bar Complaints Against Former DOJ Officials
After the news that a class action suit had been filed against former Justice Department officials Esther Slater McDonald and Michael Elston, we've been waiting for the other shoe shoe to drop: bar complaints. Sure enough, Citizens for Responsibility and...
Office of Special Counsel To Investigate DOJ Hiring
As predicted, there's been lots of fall out from the first report by the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General on the hiring practices used by the DOJ. As the New York Times reports today: The Office of Special...
Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against the DOJ
It was bound to happen when you had a big mess of lawyers disqualified from hiring for illegal reasons. One of the de-selected masses filed a lawsuit claiming $100,000 in damages on Monday. As the The Blog of Legal Times...
Who Is Esther Slater McDonald?
Only two people were tagged in the DOJ Inspector General's report (pdf) released yesterday for having violated federal law and department policy by screening applicants for career positions based on "political or ideological" factors. One, Michael Elston, the former chief...
Fired U.S. Attorney Among Those Who Appealed DOJ's Hiring Decision
We already knew that Michael Elston, chief of staff to the Deputy Attorney General and former U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, weren't best buds. Their acrimonious phone calls over her December 2006 firing as U.S. attorney for San Diego are well...
DOJ: Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Broke Federal Law
In today's report on bias in hiring practices at the Department of Justice, the Office of the Inspector General found Michael Elston "violated federal law" by deselecting candidates based on their liberal affiliations: As explained below, we concluded that Elston...
80% of So-Called Liberal Applicants were "Deselected" by DOJ
The DOJ IG report released this morning, besides providing some memorable quotes on woodland creatures, also gave some valuable statistics on the biased hiring practices of Honor Program attorneys. The nomination process for attorneys had two stages. First, individual offices...
Conyers: Mukasey Should Immediately Implement IG Recommendations
Following this morning's release of the DOJ inspector general's report on political bias in hiring and firing practices, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI), called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to implement the IG's recommendations: Yet again, the Department...
IG Report Implicates Two Former DOJ Officials
Inspector General Glenn Fine's report on the politicization of the Justice Department's Honors Program was just released, and states that the OIG did find evidence -- surprise! -- that politics and ideology were weighed in the selection of candidates, but...
Today's Must Read
The first in a series of inspector general reports investigating the politicization of the Justice Department is expected today, and the Washington Post has a sneak peek. The report to be released today by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine will,...
The Muckraker's Reference Section
Below you'll find entries to explain the involvement of the various players in the widening array of national corruption scandals. We've done our best to concisely explain, with little or no commentary, why certain names keep cropping up. It's...
TPM´s Great List of Scandalized Administration Officials
Boy, was it time for an update. Late last year we decided to take stock of all the Bush Administration officials who'd been accused of corruption and/or resigned in the face of scandal. Although we had fun doing it, we...
