I’d like to point out something about TPMM’s story on the two complaints (and do read the complaints–they’re infuriating) submitted to DOJ’s IG on Brad Schlozman.
It’s unclear if the Department’s inspector general ever pursued theallegations from the December, 2005 letter at the time. But the officecertainly is now. In a letter to the judiciary committee chairmen lastmonth, Glenn Fine and Office of Professional Responsibility counselMarshall Jarrett announcedthat their joint probe into the U.S. attorney firings had been expandedto include hiring practices in the Civil Rights Division. Schlozman has been accused of recruiting Republicans for career spots and then asking them to scrub mentions of their GOP bona fides from their resumes.
As I pointed out yesterday, it’s unclear how enthusiastically the IG is pursuing the multiple incidents of politicization in DOJ’s midst. They are now investigating Gonzales’ apparent witness tampering. They are now investigating Schlozman’s blatant discrimination. But were they? Did they?
To the credit of the IG, it intervened when Gonzales attempted to pawn the whole self-investigation off onto the OPR. But how aggressively would it have pursued these issues without the intervention of Chuck Rosenberg? And how aggressively is it pursuing them now that Rosenberg is no longer acting Chief of Staff?
It’ll be instructive to learn what IG did in 2005 when they first received these complaints. Because it’ll either reassure us that IG can carry out such an investigation diligently, or it’ll provide the final proof (as if we needed it) that DOJ can’t investigate itself.