Bradley Schlozman

In 2005, Georgia passed a controversial voter I.D. law which required that all voters to show photo identification at the polls, and eliminated previously accepted forms of voter identification, including social security cards, birth certificates or utility bills. As required by the Voting Rights Act, "Georgia and other states with a history of voter discrimination" (mostly southern states) are required to show that law changes will not have a discriminatory impact on minority voters, and to get approval by the Department of Justice under 1965 Voting Rights Act[15] According to rumors reported in the press, all of the staff of the Civil Rights division of DOJ, save one,[16] recommended against the new law's approval, but Schlozman and other political appointees overruled the staff and approved it.[17] The law was initially held unconstitutional as against the Georgia state constitution, but that ruling was reversed by a unanimous decision of the Georgia Supreme Court.[18][19] In federal court, U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy issued an injunction against the law, holding that it was constitutionally suspect but declining to consider whether it offended the Voting Rights Act.[18] Subsequent to the federal court decision, Schlozman wrote an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution defending the Department of Justice's decision to pre-clear the Voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act.[20] Although the Justice Department's actions were heavily criticized by liberal groups, no court has ever held that the Georgia ID law runs afoul of the Voting Rights Act, the only statutory provision considered by the DOJ in issuing its approval of the law. In fact, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the law against all constitutional challenges.[21]

In 2003, Tom DeLay spearheaded a major redistricting plan for the state of Texas. Justice Department lawyers wrote a memo opposing the plan, concluding that it violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The memo was endorsed unanimously by lawyers and analysts from the Department's Voting section.[22] Nevertheless, Schlozman and several other political appointees overruled the lawyers' objections and approved DeLay's plan. In League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, the Supreme Court issued a complex 100-plus page concluding that all but one of the thirty-two district in the Texas redistricting plan satisfied the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.[23]

In 2005, while Schlozman was serving in the Civil Rights Division, the DOJ filed a lawsuit against Missouri accusing the state of failing to make a "reasonable effort" to eliminate ineligible people from voter rolls and improperly removing certain voters from the voter rolls prematurely. Although the then-US Attorney for Missouri, Todd Graves, whom Schlozman later succeeded after Graves' forced resignation, claims to have refused to sign off on the lawsuit,[24][25] the Complaint filed in the case was signed by both Graves and an Assistant U.S. Attorney from his office, in addition to Schlozman and Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim.[26] On April 13, 2007, a federal district judge dismissed the lawsuit, asserting that the Secretary of State couldn't police local registration rolls. The Justice Department appealed that ruling, however, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit later reversed the district court's decision.[27] In March 2009, after a new political leadership had been installed at the Justice Department in the wake of the presidential election, the Justice Department asked a judge to dismiss the lawsuit, essentially ending the case and dropping all charges.[28]

The forced resignation of U.S. Attorney Todd Graves and subsequent appointment of Schlozman is part of the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, which concerns the replacement of a number of U.S. Attorneys by the George W. Bush administration in its second term.[24]

In addition to the complaints regarding the lawsuit against the State of Missouri, described above, attention has focused on his lawsuit against several former employees of the activist group ACORN.

In the summer of 2006, ACORN "paid workers $8 an hour to sign up new voters in poor neighborhoods around the country. Later, ACORN's Kansas City chapter discovered that several workers filled out registration forms fraudulently instead of finding real people to sign up. ACORN fired the workers and alerted law enforcement."[29]

Just five days before the 2006 election, Schlozman announced the indictments of four of the former ACORN workers, who all ultimately pleaded guilty to the voter registration charges. The election featured an extremely close Senate race between the incumbent Jim Talent and eventual winner Claire McCaskill. Former U.S. Attorneys Todd Graves[30] and David Iglesias,[31] expressed surprise at the indictments, claiming that they appeared to violate longstanding Department of Justice policy to avoid overtly politically related prosecutions during an election. Joseph D. Rich, a 35-year veteran of the Department of Justice and chief of its voting section from 1999 to 2005, wrote a Los Angeles Times op-ed criticizing the prosecutions as politically motivated.[32]

Schlozman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 5, 2007. Responding to concerns about a possible political motivation for pushing forward with prosecution immediately before the 2006 election, Schlozman stated that the department's public integrity officials had approved the prosecution and that he "did not think it was going to affect the election at all."[33] However, he later amended his testimony, indicating that he had not been "directed" to indict for voter fraud, days before the November 2006 election in question, but that Schlozman himself made the decision to indict, after his First Assistant U.S. Attorney had consulted with the Washington DOJ Election Crimes Branch.[34] According to Schlozman, Department of Justice policy—as explicitly underscored by the director of the Department's Elections Crimes Branch—was that the prosecution of ACORN employees for criminal voting offenses was not improper because the prosecutions pertained to "... voter registration fraud (which examined conduct during voter registration), not fraud during an ongoing or contested election."

In January 2007, Schlozman's office indicted Democratic Jackson County Executive Katheryn Shields, who had just left office, on charges of wire fraud in connection with a scheme for an appraiser to fraudulently inflate the price of her home that she was selling. Shields asked the court to dismiss the charges on the basis that they were politically motivated, but the court refused to order disclosure of internal Justice Department documentation and rejected her argument.[35] The day after the indictment, Shields filed for an ultimately unsuccessful run for Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri. She was subsequently acquitted in the criminal case although her co-defendants—the appraiser and the appraiser's associates—were convicted.[36] Shields then sued the government to recover $202,000 in legal fees. However the court concluded that "[t]here is no evidence that the prosecutors in this matter acted with maliciousness or with an intent to harass, annoy, or embarrass [Shields] nor that the evidence was objectively deficient.".[37][38]

• "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring and Other Improper Personnel Actions in the Civil Rights Division" (PDF). United States Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility. January 13, 2009.

• Bradley Schlozman's supplemental answers to Congressional interrogatories, September 2007, courtesy of Talking Points Memo. Retrieved September 8, 2007.
• Justice Official Made Politically Biased Hires NPR, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• Report Raps Bradley Schlozman, Former Justice Department Official, for Political Bias ABC News, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• Report Cites Political and Racial Bias At Justice - Watchdogs Say Ex-Official Broke Civil Service Laws Washington Post, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• Criticism of Ex-Official in Hiring at Justice Dept. New York Times, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• Bush appointee saw Justice lawyers as 'commies,' 'crazy libs,' report says Los Angeles Times, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• New report slams former head of Justice Department's civil rights division USA TODAY, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• I.G. report says former civil rights chief broke the law CNN, Retrieved January 13, 2009.
• IG: Justice Official Hired Partisans, Lied CBS News, Retrieved January 13, 2009.