The Schloz Meets His Maker?

It takes a lot for Bush's Justice Department to investigate one of its own. But that's exactly what's happening in Washington, as the politicization of the Civil Rights Division is coming to a head, with Bradley J. Schlozman, perhaps the worst of the worst, right at the front as the target.

In a report for the Huffington Post, Murray Waas reveals that a grand jury is issuing subpoenas for multiple Justice Department lawyers in the case.

The extraordinary step by the Justice Department of subpoenaing attorneys once from within its own ranks was taken because several of them refused to voluntarily give interviews to the Department Inspector General, which has been conducting its own probe of the politicization of the Civil Rights Division, the same sources said.

The grand jury has been investigating allegations that a former senior Bush administration appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, gave false or misleading testimony on a variety of topics to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sources close to the investigation say that the grand jury is also more broadly examining whether Schlozman and other Department officials violated civil service laws by screening Civil Rights attorneys for political affiliation while hiring them.

As far as lying to the Senate Judiciary, that's industry standard for these Bush hacks. And we know that Monica Goodling was found by the IG to exhibit the same prejudicial hiring practices, so it would be no surprise to see Schlozman take the same role in the Civil Rights Division. There clearly was a systematic effort to weed out Democrats and liberals from the career civil service and set landmines for future Democratic Presidents inside the DoJ. And as with Goodling, I'm sure this information will be readily available to the IG.

But this part intrigues me even more:

Investigators for the Inspector General have also asked whether Schlozman, while an interim U.S. attorney in Missouri, brought certain actions and even a voting fraud indictment for political ends, according to witnesses questioned by the investigators. But it is unclear whether the grand jury is going to hear testimony on that issue as well.

This is the infamous ACORN case, where Schlozman pushed bogus voter fraud claims and brought prosecutions right before a hotly contested election in Missouri in 2006, in all probability to cast doubt on the election and reflect poorly on the Democratic candidates. Here are but a few of the charges from that election:

•Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn’t police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud.

•The Missouri General Assembly - with the White House’s help - narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election.

•Two weeks before the election, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters threatening to disqualify 5,000 newly registered minority voters if they failed to verify their identities promptly, a move - instigated by a Republican appointee - that may have violated federal law. After an outcry, the board rescinded the threat.

•Five days before the election, Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments of four voter-registration workers for a Democratic-leaning group on charges of submitting phony applications, despite a Justice Department policy discouraging such action close to an election.

•In an interview with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt a couple of days before the election, Rove said he’d just visited Missouri and had met with Republican strategists who “are well aware of” the threat of voter fraud. He said the party had “a large number of lawyers that are standing by, trained and ready to intervene” to keep the election clean.

According to Waas, one of the lawyers subpoenaed was none other than Hans von Spakovsky, a former Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission who ought to have his own legal problems to deal with - regarding his lies to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obstructing an investigation into Republican voter suppression in Minnesota. Von Spakovsky may have aided in the effort to hire and fire Civil Rights Division attorneys based on ideological factors.

It's very important that this grand jury investigation goes forward. We all know that voter suppression and intimidation is baked into the cake of Republican electoral strategy. Those responsible for this politicization need to be prosecuted and convicted in the name of accountability, but also to discredit what is truly part of the Republican plan for electoral dominance.