Illegal hiring practices at Justice Department
WASHINGTON – Senior Justice Department officials broke civil service laws by rejecting scores of young applicants who had links to Democrats or liberal organizations, according to a biting report issued Tuesday.
The report by the Justice Department inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that a pair of high-ranking political appointees who are no longer with the department had violated department policy and the Civil Service Reform Act by using ideological reasons to scuttle the candidacy of lawyers who applied to the elite honors and summer intern programs.
In one instance, steering committee member Esther Slater McDonald deemed “unacceptable” an applicant who professed admiration for the environmental group Greenaction and passed over another with ties to the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the report said.
McDonald, who left the Justice Department last year and now works for a law firm in Washington, sent colleagues a Nov. 29, 2006, e-mail in which she complained about “leftist commentary and buzzwords” in applications.
Many of the underlying documents, on which McDonald and others wrote comments, were destroyed before the probe began, according to the report.
Auditors also criticized Michael Elston, former chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, for failing to supervise McDonald and for weeding out candidates on his own based on “impermissible considerations.” Elston may have denied one Stanford Law School applicant because she had written a law review article about gender discrimination in the military, the report said. Elston left the Justice Department last year amid questions about his role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. He now works at a private law firm.
McDonald and Elston did not return calls for comment Tuesday. Experts said they are unlikely to face sanctions for what investigators called deliberate “misconduct” because they have left government employment.
The findings are contained in the first of several official reports expected on the tenure of Alberto R. Gonzales as attorney general, and allegations that the long-time friend and confidant of President Bush allowed political considerations to influence the hiring of career employees and other functions at the Justice Department.
Investigators said they were unable to conclude who gave the orders to start employing a political litmus test, although the report said some of the people interviewed pointed the finger at former Gonzales aide Monica Goodling, who resigned last year after acknowledging in sworn testimony that she might have violated the law in evaluating applicants for career Justice positions. Many of the records associated with the interviews were destroyed, the report said.
“Today’s report confirms that the Bush administration was engaged in a deliberate effort to inject partisan politics into the administration of justice,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The honors and summer intern programs, he said, “were made into a recruitment firm for conservatives, rewarding ideology with career advancement.”
Traditionally, the highly coveted intern and honors jobs had been awarded based on merit. But in 2002, top Justice Department officials moved to give political appointees more control, prompting complaints from the career ranks. The problem flared up again in 2006, when hundreds of applications were rejected for questionable reasons, according to the report.
Candidates for the Honors Program that year whose resumes indicated liberal affiliations were weeded out at three times the rate of conservative-leaning applicants, investigators said.
San Diego U.S. Attorney Carol Lam, who was later fired for reasons that remain under investigation, reached out to no avail to Elston over the decision to reject a candidate who had won a prestigious appellate clerkship with a Democratic judge.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who replaced Gonzales last year, said he has taken steps to overhaul the hiring process. Considering politics in hires for career slots is “unacceptable,” Mukasey said in a statement.
Former Justice Department officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations said the study underscores the challenge for the next president.
“The Honors Program at DOJ has always been the ‘A-List,’ ” said Nicholas Gess, a Justice official under President Clinton. “The next attorney general will be stuck with many from the ‘B-List.’ ”