Is the Department of Justice going back on its word about a report on its investigation into whether crimes were committed in the U.S. Attorney firings scandal?

When prosecutor Nora Dannehy was appointed to run the probe, in the wake of another investigation by the department's Inspector General, it was reported that Dannehy was expected to provide Attorney General Michael Mukasey with a status report on her findings within around 60 days.

That timeline was confirmed by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine in testimony before Congress at the time:

REP. NADLER: Mr. Fine, it's been reported that Ms. Dannehy was appointed to special counsel, will make a preliminary report to the attorney general within the next two months. Do you know when this report will be made public?

MR. FINE: I think what it is is the status of the investigation at that point to the deputy attorney general or the attorney general to see where she is in the process.

...

I don't think it's sort of a formal report; I think it's more of a status report.

And it was reiterated a few weeks later in a letter from Mukasey to House Judiciary Chair John Conyers. Mukasey wrote:

As the Inspector General testified, Ms. Dannehy is expected to report on the status of the investigation to the Attorney General approximately 60 days after her appointment.

Now that 60-day deadline has come and gone. And DOJ won't confirm that any such report has been provided, instead referring us to a spokesman for Dannehy who wouldn't comment on the issue.

In other words, at first DOJ had been clear that it wanted a report submitted within 60 days. But now it won't even confirm that such a report has been submitted, or give any further information.

So is the department now going back on its requirement that Dannehy submit a report within 60 days? Is it exerting pressure to reduce the likelihood that details about Dannehy's progress -- like the fact that she's contacted Gonzales -- will slip out? What's going on?

A staffer for the House judiciary committee told TPMmuckraker that they haven't been able to get anythign out of DOJ either on whether Dannehy has submitted a report. A call to the Senate judiciary committee was not immediately returned.

We'll keep you posted as we learn more...

Democrats are already expressing concern about the independence of the prosecutor appointed by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to look into whether DOJ or White House officials broke the law in firing a group of U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA) said that the fact that the prosecutor -- Nora Dannehy, the acting U.S. attorney in Connecticut -- is a DOJ employee, could allow the department to interfere with her probe.

Sanchez was speaking at a hearing where DOJ's Inspector General, Glenn Fine testified. It was Fine's report into the firings, released Monday, that prompted Mukasey to appoint Dannehy.

Fine did not offer a ringing endorsement of Dannehy's independence. When Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) asked Fine whether the attorney general could over-rule her, Fine replied: "I will have to leave that for another day."

Sanchez also expressed the fear that Dannehy's findings could remain secret, since she is not formally required to issue a public report.

In addition, lawyers for the House Judiciary Committee, which has been conducting its own investigation into the matter, yesterday wrote to Mukasey and White House counsel Fred Fielding, asking whether they would cooperate with Dannehy's investigation. The Inspector General's report made clear that it was prevented from drawing firmer conclusions by a lack of cooperation from the White House, and, to a lesser extent, the Justice Department.

Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general who oversaw the Justice Department during the firings of nine U.S. attorneys, won't be presently referred to a grand jury for his role in the affair, but a prosecuter will be appointed to continue investigating the involvement of the Bush administration and other law makers in the firings, according to Washington Post sources familiar with a report expect to be released today.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is preparing to name a prosecutor from within the DOJ to continue the work of the Offices of Professional Responsibly and the Inspector General, the same sources told the Post.

The report, the product of more than a years worth of investigations into the attorneys' firings is expected out this morning. It is co-written by the DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and the OPR Director H. Marshall Jarrett.

We'll be bringing you more from the OIG report as soon as it's released today so check back for updates

From the AP:

The report says Gonzales failed to store the documents in proper secure facilities and at one point took them home. The report released Tuesday also says he stored them in his briefcase because he did not know the combination to the safe at his house.

Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine referred the security breach to the department's National Security Division. But the reports says prosecutors there declined to bring charges against Gonzales.

. . . Additionally, Gonzales kept some of the documents in a safe in his office that was accessed by several employees who "lacked the necessary security clearances for this information," the report concludes.

On the heels of the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning on Wednesday of Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, and the two recently released OIG reports, seven Democratic members of the committee have requested that Attorney General Michael Mukasey review the damage done to the DOJ by the illegal hiring practices.

Signed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Russ Feingold (D-WI), Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), and Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), the letter requests an assessment on the "long-term damage" done to the Department:

We are concerned that the people hired into important career positions throughout the Department using the unlawful, politicized process described in the reports remain in place. This raises the troubling possibility that those positions are held by unqualified, partisan individuals. With this possibility extant, we believe it is inadequate for the Department simply to commit to discontinue the bad practices. There may be continuing consequences of the widespread illegal hiring process. We urge you to ensure that the people put in place via this illegal process meet the Department's high standard of qualifications, and do not undermine the Department's independence and ability to enforce the law without fear or favor.

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 already clear that a culture of partisanship prevailed inside the department, and many DOJ officials were playing along, some more actively than others.

"It had a significant effect throughout the department. I think one of the most significant things is people not objecting, people not standing up," Inspector General Glenn Fine told lawmakers today on Capitol Hill.

To be sure, Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson and others appear to have been serious party hacks who violated department policy and federal law by screening out prospective lawyers and judges for partisan reasons. But many others went along, if only more passively.

Take for example what Michael Elston told the IG's investigators. Elston clearly understood how Goodling and others operated and admitted to adopting a go-along, get-along attitude.

For example, Michael Elston, former Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, stated that when he sought attorneys for details to the [Office of the Deputy Attorney General], he would generally look for candidates with the type of experience required by the position, but he also looked for candidates with Republican or conservative credentials in order to get them approved by the [Office of Attorney General].

Elston said that Goodling made it clear to him that she did not want Democrats detailed to the ODAG because she had a "farm system" approach to filling vacancies in the Department, and she wanted to "credential" Republicans so that they could move on to higher political positions.

We saw an example of this in an email sent by Bradley Schlozman, the U.S. Attorney for Missouri's western district. He was sending resumes for three prospective hires to DOJ headquarters. Apparently without any prompting, Schlozman began touting their political credentials.

In his e-mail, Schlozman described the three candidates as "rock-solid Americans" who would be a "hugely positive legacy for this Administration." Schlozman described each candidate in terms of their conservative political credentials. He wrote that the first applicant's "involvement with the Bush/Cheney campaign speaks for itself."

Yes, in some cases, Goodling and others actively screened out prospective lawyers and judges for partisan reasons. But in many situations, they didn't have to. Others did it for them.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales knew essentially nothing about the partisan culture and violations of federal law that were routine at the agency under his watch.

That's what we heard today from Glenn Fine, the Department of Justice Inspector General.

Fine told lawmakers on Capitol Hill today that his investigators interviewed Gonzales for their report, which found numerous senior officials were illegally using partisan considerations when hiring some prosecutors and judges.

The IG was emphatic. Take a look:

According to Press Secretary Dana Perino, the president and White House have "overall disappointment" in former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' politicized Justice Department.

Transcript from White House Press Briefing with Perino today:

QUESTION: Dana, what's your reaction to the Justice Department report where they -- the report essentially says, yes, that there was inappropriate influence on politics and ideology that was part of our hiring and firing practices?

PERINO: Well as I have read the coverage of it -- I haven't read the report, but as I read the coverage of it, there's obviously information in there that would cause concern to anybody. And we agree with Michael Mukasey that -- the Attorney General -- that there was concern. There should be concern any time anyone is improperly using politics to influence career decisions. We believe that is improper. We could absolutely not defend that. And we are pleased that the Attorney General has taken steps to change it there at the Justice Department.

QUESTION: Can I infer from that that President Bush is disappointed in Alberto Gonzales?

PERINO: I think that if you look at the report, and it is in line with what the Attorney General said at the time, which was that he was not aware of that going on. And so I don't think there's anything -- disappointment doesn't necessarily go to the Attorney General.

QUESTION: You don't think it would change -- it doesn't change the President's . . .

PERINO: No, I don't. The whole situation -- the whole situation in terms of the politicization -- or accusations of politicization -- if you look at career hires that should not have had any sort of questions put towards them as to what sort of party they represent, or what affiliation they might belong to, or who they might vote for -- those are inappropriate for career positions. And the President is glad that the -- Attorney General Mukasey made sure that that is no longer ongoing at the Justice Department. And it's nothing that we could defend, and we never have.

QUESTION: But you won't go so far as to say that, looking at Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department, President Bush is disappointed this was going on?

PERINO: Well, I think that we are -- overall disappointment in the situation, sure.

To see Perino express the White House's disappointment in living color, click below:

Throughout the investigation of improper political influence on the Department of Justice's hiring process, the DOJ's inspector general interviewed 85 people -- but only one from the White House.

The IG, Glenn Fine, testifying this morning before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that Karl Rove aide Scott Jennings was the only White House official he sought to interview for his report released Monday.

"Why were no others at the White House questioned?" Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) asked Fine.

"From the evidence that we had, both emails and discussions, we did not see that others were involved in this process, and we questioned the person who was involved," Fine said, referring to Jennings.

The process Fine was referring to was the partisan screening of prospective prosecutors and judges.

Yet Fine did note at least one exception, an example his report cited of a prospective immigration judge who was appointed after Rove expressed support for the candidate.

Fine was said he did not believe any of the misconduct described in his 140-page report called for criminal prosecution for false statements.

"We looked at that and clearly in our judgment and in the judgement of prosecutors who have been working on this case, we do not think there was a sufficient basis for a criminal prosecution for false statements."

Late Update:
Here's the exchange between Specter and Fine.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will get a chance to grill Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine today about the report he released Monday.

Fine's 140-page report detailed incidents of DOJ officials violating federal law by using political considerations in the hiring of some federal prosecutors and judges.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has harshly criticized the DOJ for the misconduct outlined in the report.

For an example of the stellar candidates that Monica Goodling's predecessor, Jan Williams was tapping for Immigration Judge positions, one needs to look no further than the bottom of page 94 of today's OIG report.

According to the report, the White House reached out to a Republican Congressman for a recommendation on an open IJ position in New York. The Congressman's office responded with a "great Republican" and added that "the candidate was a 'long time donor to the local GOP.' His name was forwarded to the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) by Jan Williams.

But apparently EOIR wasn't so happy with the Office of the Attorney General's pick.

In an e-mail dated December 7, 2005, [EOIR Deputy Director Kevin] Ohlson advised Williams that the candidate's conduct during his EOIR interview "causes us to question whether he possesses the appropriate judicial temperament and demeanor to serve as an immigration judge." Ohlson related that the candidate used profanity during the interview, acted abrasively, and when asked what his greatest weakness was, responded "Blondes." [emphasis ours]

The highest-ranking official flagged for breaking federal law in today's Department of Justice Inspector General's report was Kyle Sampson, a former chief of staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Sampson routinely violated DOJ policy and federal law by using overt political and ideological considerations when filling key DOJ jobs such as immigration judges, according to the report today from the DOJ's Inspector General. Federal law and Justice Department policy require career officials to be hired on merit and prohibit discrimination based on political affiliations.

Federal immigration judgeships were especially targeted for politicization. In October 2003, shortly after Sampson started working at DOJ, then as Counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft, he began to overhaul the selection process for immigration judges. "[We] were only considering essentially Republican lawyers for appointment," Sampson said, according to the IG's report. (It was not clear from the report whether Sampson said that to IG investigators or in another setting)

Prior to 2004, immigration judges were appointed in an essentially non-political bureaucratic process handled by the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge. Vacancies were posted, resumes sorted, interviews conducted and decisions made by lower-level DOJ officials, according to the report.

Sampson's new process involved "coordination" with White House and an extra effort to get friends of the Bush administration into the judgeships when possible. Sampson circulated a document outlining the new process.

"Many lawyers seeking positions within the Administration, including judgeships, become known to the White House offices of Political Affairs, Presidential Personnel, and Counsel to the President." The document stated that some lawyers might qualify to be IJs, and that "coordination" was needed to ensure that such lawyers were "informed of the opportunity" to become IJs.

Also, Sampson often called over to the White House personnel office seeking "ideas for immigration judge postings." Sampson told a staffer to "contact the White House to get any candidate ideas that they had for immigration judges".

In one case, Sampson pushed a prospective judicial candidate who was supported by White House political director Karl Rove.

Regarding that candidate, whose name was not disclosed, Kevin Ohlson, then deputy director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, told the IG's investigators that he was "fully aware of the fact" that Sampson was pushing Rove's pick and that was affecting the formal evaluation.

"The finger was on the scale," Ohlson said.

That candidate was ultimately appointed to be an immigration judge in October 2005, the report said.

When questioned, Sampson said he thought the Immigration judges were political appointees, not career positions, and therefore not subject to civil service rules. He said Ohlson and the Office of Legal Counsel told him that. But Ohlson said he never said anything to that effect and investigators from the IG's office found no evidence that OLC provided any guidance to Sampson on the matter.

Sampson's lawyer, Brad Berenson, said today the hiring decisions were an honest mistake and that Sampson "immediately agreed with the recommendation to put a stop to this process" when he first learned he may have been wrong.

Here's a clip of Sampson's testimony on Capitol Hill in March 2007.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the politicization in the Bush Administration's Department of Justice posed a threat to national security.

Responding to today's report from the DOJ Inspector General, Leahy said in a statement:

"The report reveals decisions to reject qualified, experienced applicants to work on counterterrorism issues in favor of a less experienced attorney on the basis of political ideology. Rather than strengthening our national security, the Department of Justice appears to have bent to the political will of the administration. Further, the report reveals that the 'principal source' for politically vetted candidates considered for important positions as immigration judges was the White House- a clear indication of the untoward political influence of the Bush administration on traditionally non-political appointments."

Leahy went on to criticize former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for not acknowledging the systemic problems in the DOJ.

"Like some in the administration who would place blame for the actions at Abu Ghraib solely onto the shoulders of a few bad apples, the Attorney General has tried to dismiss the Inspector General's first report on politicization issued last month as documenting the actions of just a few bad apples. But it was obvious from that first report, and becomes more so with this second joint IG/OPR report, that the problems of politicization at the Department are rooted deeper than that.

In this report, we once again see that the Bush administration has allowed politics to affect and infect the nation's chief law enforcement agency's priorities.

Leahy said he looks forward to the Inspector General Glenn Fine's testimony before his committee on Wednesday.

Read Leahy's entire statement here.

The Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility released another part of their investigation into the politicization of the DOJ. The full report, "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General," can be found here (pdf).

We'll be reading through and posting on this all day. But at first glance here's a quite relevant section:

In sum, we concluded that the evidence showed that Goodling violated both federal law and Department policy, and therefore committed misconduct, when she considered political or ideological affiliations in hiring decisions for candidates for career positions within the Department. In particular, the evidence showed that she considered political or ideological affiliations in deciding several waiver requests from interim U.S. Attorneys, in promoting several candidates for career positions, and in disapproving a candidate for an EOUSA career SES position.

Late update: Here are the names of other implicated in the report:
former Chief of Staff to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Kyle Sampson; Goodling's predecessor, former White House Liason Jan Williams, and EOUSA (Executive Office for United States Attorneys) Director John Nowacki-- who is still at the department. The report states that Nowacki knew of the politicization of the DOJ but drafted a press statement saying otherwise. Of Sampson, Williams and Goodling the report states:

In sum, the evidence showed that Sampson, Williams, and Goodling violated federal law and Department policy, and Sampson and Goodling committed misconduct, by considering political and ideological affiliations in soliciting and selecting IJs [immigration judges], which are career positions protected by the civil service laws.

Late late update: Attorney General Michael Mukasey released a statement saying he is "of course disturbed" by the findings of the OIG report:

I have said many times, both to members of the public and to Department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career Department employees. And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the Department.

Over the course of the last year and a half, the Justice Department has made many institutional changes to remedy the problems discussed in today's report, and the report itself commends these changes. The report includes one new recommendation for institutional change, and I have directed the prompt implementation of that recommendation. It is crucial that the American people have confidence in the propriety of what we do and how we do it, and I will continue my efforts to make certain they can have such confidence.

Late late late update: The report also investigates whether officials (namely Williams, Goodling and Nowacki) gave "inaccurate or misleading" information to investigators, attorneys in civil-suits, and higher-ups at the DOJ.

Late late late late update: We think it's important to note that the former Attorney Generals Alberto Gonzales and John Ashcroft, who presided over the DOJ through all of this, were not implicated in the report.

The report also details some of the questions Goodling used for her interviews, here's a pithy little excerpt:

Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

[W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

And our personal favorite:

Why are you a Republican?

Of the Goodling and Angela Williamson (the Deputy White House Liason) interviewees, 34 persons said they discussed abortion, and 21 said they discussed gay marriage.

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 that only Michael Elston, the chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, and Esther McDonald, former counsel to Associate Attorney General and member of Honors Program Screening Committee, were involved.

From (pdf) the report:

The evidence in our investigation - including the documentary evidence, the testimony of witnesses, and the analysis of the applications of candidates who were selected for interviews and who were deselected by the 2006 Screening Committee - supports the conclusion that political or ideological affiliations were used to deselect candidates from the Honors Program and SLIP.

As discussed below, we concluded that while Daniel Fridman did not use political or ideological affiliations in his evaluation of candidates, the evidence indicates that both McDonald and Elston did. As a result, many qualified candidates were deselected by the Screening Committee because of their perceived political or ideological affiliations.

McDonald, who worked with Fridman (an assistant U.S. Attorney from the
Southern District of Florida who was detailed to the deputy AG's office) to screen applications before they were sent to Elston, would often notate the applicants ideology (from page 73):

When Fridman asked McDonald how she obtained the additional information, she told him she conducted searches on Google and MySpace, and read law review articles written by the applicants. For example, Fridman recalled that one candidate had written a law review article about the detention of individuals at Guantánamo, and McDonald noted on the application that she perceived the applicant's viewpoint to be contrary to the position of the administration. On another application, McDonald noted that she found information on the Internet indicating that a candidate was an "anarchist."

We'll have more on this as we look over the 110-page report today.

[Late Update: Chief of Staff for the Deputy Attorney General, Michael Elston was named in the report as being in violation of federal laws for weighing "political and ideological" leanings in the hiring process. Elston and Esther McDonald, a former DOJ lawyer, were both found in violation of DOJ policy.]