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Justice Dept. Issues a Callback
Illegally Rejected Applicants Urged to Try for Open Jobs

By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 13, 2008; A02



Job applicants who were rejected by the Justice Department because of improper political considerations will be urged to apply for open positions, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey told an audience yesterday.

Mukasey said that the hiring system at Justice had broken down and that department leaders had failed to supervise the behavior "of those who did wrong." But the attorney general stopped short of agreeing to weed out lawyers and immigration judges who won their jobs based on faulty criteria.

"Two wrongs do not make a right," Mukasey told the American Bar Association yesterday in New York. "The people hired in an improper way did not, themselves, do anything wrong. It therefore would be unfair -- and quite possibly illegal given their civil service protections -- to fire or reassign them without individual cause."

Mukasey explicitly ruled out criminal prosecution of former Justice Department employees who investigators say ran afoul of civil service laws, echoing congressional testimony last month by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. "Where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute," the attorney general said. "But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime."

The speech came two weeks after the Justice Department inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility reported that former officials had committed misconduct and flouted civil service laws by using ideological factors to screen candidates for permanent jobs. Applicants for the elite honors program and for slots as prosecutors and immigration judges routinely were asked for information about their political contributions and for their positions on abortion and same-sex marriage, investigators found.

Since then, Democratic lawmakers and the American Immigration Lawyers Association have called on the department's leaders to root out people who were hired under the illegal process.

The attorney general has been criticized for signing paperwork to promote immigration judge Garry D. Malphrus to a seat on the prestigious Board of Immigration Appeals even as investigators completed their blistering report. Malphrus is a former GOP aide on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He also had been associate director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and had taken part in the "Brooks Brothers Riot" -- chanting at Miami's polling headquarters -- to support George W. Bush during the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida.

"It would have ill served the public interest not to appoint him merely because those who first hired him had violated the civil service laws," Mukasey said yesterday, adding that all Justice employees undergo routine performance evaluations.

Separately, an official in the Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility said the unit has notified bar associations of its findings against five lawyers singled out in reports thus far. The bar groups could initiate their own disciplinary proceedings against the lawyers, who include former Justice Department White House liaison Monica M. Goodling; former attorney general chief of staff D. Kyle Sampson; and former deputy attorney general chief of staff Michael D. Elston. Two lower-ranking officials, Esther Slater McDonald and John Nowacki, also were cited in the previous reports and their bar associations were notified, the official said.

The issue is unlikely to fade, as investigators are preparing more studies on politicized hiring in the civil rights division and the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

Justice Dept. Issues a Callback - washingtonpost.com




Might not be as good as the illegally hired assholes getting fired and replaced, but it's a start...

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Ptech

I didn't think there could be a worse AG than Gonzalez.

How wrong I was.

HarperLee

The Rude Pundit uses some bad words, but he speaks the truth:

8/13/2008
Michael Mukasey Doesn't Care About the Security of Americans:

Goddamn, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is such a ****. In his speech yesterday before the American Bar Association, he may as well have stood there and said, "I am such a ****. I mean, holy fuckin' shit, you have no idea how much of a **** I am, but lemme give you some clues" before launching into his prepared remarks. His seemingly benign ****ishness (it's a trick involving his spectacles and buzzcut) makes one long for the blatantly creepy ****ocity of Alberto Gonzales.

Here's what Mukasey said yesterday: not only is he not going to pursue charges against Monica Goodling et al for giving a political litmus test to candidates for ostensibly non-political jobs, but he thinks they've been punished enough: "The officials most directly implicated in the misconduct left the Department to the accompaniment of substantial negative publicity. Their misconduct has now been laid bare by the Justice Department for all to see. As a general matter in such cases, where disciplinary referrals are appropriate, they are made. To put it in concrete terms, I doubt that anyone in this room would want to trade places with any of those people." Oh, snap, motherfuckers. Looks like someone's been giving naked bottom paddlings to his employees.

See, as Mukasey explained, they didn't violate criminal laws, but civil service law, and he's right that that doesn't end up in criminal prosecution. But you know what is actionable in criminal law? Ordering people to violate civil service law. Conspiracy and all that shit. And Mukasey certainly hinted at such crimes: "the failure was systemic in that the system – the institution – failed to check the behavior of those who did wrong. There was a failure of supervision by senior officials in the Department. And there was a failure on the part of some employees to cry foul when they were aware, or should have been aware, of problems."

Yep, a systemic failure, one where others might be implicated, would seem to warrant action. But, see, that might require further investigation. And that might lead directly to Alberto Gonzales. And if people start to roll over, well, that way madness lies.

Even more ****ish was what was left out of Mukasey's remarks. He did say that those who were hired won't be fired because "it would be harmful to the Department and to the country." You remember back in the day when everything was related to security? When to support the extension of civil service benefits to workers at the Department of Homeland Security meant that you wanted Osama bin Laden to force America's sons to fellate his goats? When if a Democrat happened to mention that some action of the administration was a violation of civil rights, it meant that the Democrats were ready to hand the keys to the White House to Islamonazis or whatever the word was? Wait, wasn't that like last week or so? Anyway...

In that bullshit, overwrought context, what Mukasey left out was that the actions of Monica Goodling et al in Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department placed all of us in greater danger. If you're more concerned with whether or not Johnny or Jenny Civil Servant would take a bullet for aborted fetuses than if they have the skills to do the goddamn jobs at the goddamn Department of goddamn Justice, then you are saying that you don't give a happy monkey fuck about the security of the country. The nation or the man/party. One is not the same as the other. Sure, Mukasey can spin and spittle that just because politics was taken into consideration, it "does not mean that the people they hired are unqualified for their jobs." No, but it does mean they may not be the most qualified for the their jobs, which include positions like "judge."

Mukasey's right that to fire people because the interview process was fucked is unfair, especially since the Rude Pundit would like to think that more than one of them stared for a moment when, in an interview for a job dealing with immigration, Goodling might ask them what they think about the homosexuals and their desire for marriage before answering in a lie that'd get them the job. (If the Rude Pundit had been asked, as Goodling did, "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" he'd have answered, "He smells like lime and coca leaves.")

And, hey, the people who were passed over because they thought being gay was okay have been invited back to apply for more jobs. It's like the end of a fight at a kid's birthday party, where you force the fat boy who took most of the candy from the pinata to give a piece or two to the ones he batted out of the way.

No, Mr. Former Judge Attorney General Mukasey, as you say, "Two wrongs don't make a right." But you lead the fuckin' Justice Department. You know that to right a wrong means you might have to actually pursue justice. Or don't you give a damn about the safety of the United States?

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Oliver Stone on George W. Bush: "the banality of evil"

http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home