Oh, hi.
I have been watching with interest and trying to stitch together the disparate pieces of the USA Scandal Quilt, and it appears that the scandal is lurching into Missouri - a true swing state.
I noticed Josh Marshall posted this little blurb late last night:
As we move forward in the US Attorney scandal this week, remember this name: Bradley J. Schlozman.
Stay tuned.
Hinnus_Asinus at Fired Up! Missouri noticed this last week:
I just sort of noticed this...isn't this interesting...follow my timeline here. March: Todd Graves suddenly resigns as U.S. Attorney in the WESTERN District. March and April: Suddenly EASTERN district attorney Catharine Hanaway makes the news left right and center, appears in print and TV in a whole boatload of busts ranging from porn to gun sales to online betting sites. (just go to news.google.com and type her name in and take a peek.) I have been pretty entertained by these busts when they show up on TV b/c she is getting a LOT of face time. It sort of reminds me of all those FBI busts in the 30's and 40's when other agents did the work and J. Edgar Hoover would make the newsreels and appear he made the collar personally!
I just have two questions:
- Is there a concerted effort to put the EASTERN district in the news to take the attention off the WESTERN district, and the events surrounding Todd Graves' departure?
- What is ol' Catherine planning to run for in the future? Looks to me like she's trying to build face on "tough on crime." Is she snooping for the state AG spot? Or something bigger?
So, who is Brad Schlozman? According to the Department of Justice website:
Prior to assuming his current post, Mr. Schlozman served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mr. Schlozman supervised all activities of the Civil Rights Division, which is comprised of over 700 employees, including 356 attorneys. The Civil Rights Division is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights statutes, including those statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin in education, employment, credit, housing, public accommodations and facilities, voting, and certain federally funded and conducted programs.
Mr. Schlozman served for five months as the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. Before that, he had served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General since May 2003, directly supervising the Criminal, Voting, Employment, and Special Litigation Sections of the Civil Rights Division. Mr. Schlozman began his service in the Bush Administration as Counsel to then-Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
{all emphasis mine)
Fired Up!Missouri has also been examining the Family Blunt's involvement with the Lathrop and Gage law firm in the firing of USA Bud Cummins.
Now some are speculating that relationships between a key Lathrop & Gage attorney and the Bush White House may have led to the firing of U.S. Attorney whose investigation might have implicated Lathrop & Gage in a government corruption scheme.
Observers are focusing on Mark "Thor" Hearne, who is not only a Lathrop & Gage partner, but has also been one of the most (if not the most) important cogs in the legal machine created by the Republican Party to gain advantage by advancing specious claims of widespread voter fraud --a machine whose creation has led to the US Attorney purge scandal and the current state of disgrace within the Bush Justice Department.
I have to be deliberately vague here, but someone in a position to know told me this appears to go "straight to the White House". Coincidentally (or not) Brad Blog uses that same phrase in a post about Cummins:
As BRAD BLOG readers know, Hearne is a top-level White House operative, a very close friend of Karl Rove's, and the co-founder of the currently-back-underground "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), the mysteriously-funded group behind all of the GOP's phony "voter fraud" claims and the accompanying push for disenfranchising "Voter ID" restrictions at the polling place. (See our Special Coverage page on ACVR scam here...)
The first reports of Cummins's investigation into the Blunt/Lathrop & Gage scandal were apparently released in May of 2006. Cummins was removed from his position just afterwards, in June of 2006 --- prior to all the other firings which took place later that year on the same day in December.
He was replaced at that point by Karl Rove's personal aide Timothy Griffin.
Howard Beale at Fired Up! has more:
With the Bush DOJ being as politically driven as it obviously was, it is foolish to believe that a federal investigation of a GOP Governor in a battleground state would not have "triggered alarm bells in the White House" even if the investigation hadn't been simultaneously focused on a law firm with connections to the President. It's an investigation into political corruption involving a Republican governor, after all. The White House would certainly be aware.
On the other hand, it is reasonable to suggest as Brad does that Hearne, given his long service to GOP politics and commitment to running the bogus national "voter fraud" scare program, would have access to key decision makers high inside the Bush Administration. And given also that Thor Hearne would have personal interests greater than mere partisan allegiance implicated in the investigation by virtue of his firm's involvement in the Blunt fee office scheme, Hearne would have tremendous motive for making a move to muck around with an ongoing probe into the fee office operation.
So Thor Hearne, who through his work with the Bush DOJ on hyping voter fraud claims developed strong connections with Main Justice bigwigs, also had quite a bit at stake when the DOJ began investigating his friend Governor Blunt for a scheme his firm helped implement. The U.S. Attorney investigating Blunt, Bud Cummins, then had his legs cut out before the investigation was finished. Few people would have been as well-positioned as Hearne to intervene with the Department of Justice and help scuttle the investigation into Governor Matt Blunt.
[For background on the fee office scandal, see here or follow the links on the Fired Up! Missouri site]
According to the LA Times:
Cummins expressed disgust that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. "You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: 'What about the Blunt deal?' "
Right. What ABOUT the Blunt deal? It appears the various pieces of patchwork will coalesce this week.
Update [2007-4-23 12:50:28 by Glic]: TPM Muckraker has more:
If there's one good thing that's come out of the U.S. attorneys scandal, it's that it's shining a bright light on the Justice Department. And as a result, it's become clear that the most grossly politicized section of the department is the Civil Rights Division.
The reason is plain. As we've seen, many Republicans, and Karl Rove in particular, are obsessed with "voter fraud" -- the idea that minorities in Democratic strongholds are taking advantage of lax record systems to stuff the ballot. There's evidence that at least two of the fired U.S. attorneys were let go because they did not pursue such prosecutions. But the obsession is nothing new; it's one of the defining preoccupations of the Bush administration. The hysterical claims have led Republicans to push voter I.D. laws in several swing states -- efforts that have been backed by the White House.
It is the job of the Civil Rights Division to watchdog the voting rights of minorities. And due to the Voting Rights Act, several states cannot even enact such laws without first getting clearance from the division. So to make sure that no career staffers get in the way -- with evidence, for instance, that a voter I.D. law would disproportianately impact African Americans -- the Civil Rights Division has been gutted.
It's worth taking the time to read the whole thing.