House Judiciary Committee lawyer Elliot Mincberg said today at a forum on prosecution misconduct that Attorney General Eric Holder is considering prosecuting former Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division Bradley Scholzman, The Blog of Legal Times reported Friday. Holder had previously said at his confirmation hearing he’d review a decision by the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s office not to prosecute Schlozman for allegedly lying in sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007 that he didn’t take political affiliation or ideology into account in DOJ personnel decisions.
Bradley Schlozman (DOJ)
We previously reported that a DOJ Inspector General report said Schlozman referred to liberal applicants for positions as “mold spores,” “commies” and “crazy pinkos.” The report concluded that he was “unsuitable for public service.”
Mincberg also said the House Judiciary Committee has obtained a “pretty good number of internal White House memos” as part of its probe into the U.S. Attorney firings of 2006, The BLT reported.
He said the memos provide more details on the firing of the nine U.S. Attorneys under the watch of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, according to The BLT. He added that the documents are confidential for now. But Mincberg said the closed-door testimonies of former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former Bush aide Karl Rove will be made public, according to The BLT. Miers met with the House Judiciary Committee this month. The panel has yet to say when it will meet with Rove.
“(The investigation) has already demonstrated, although it is not yet done, that there were clear improper political influence in the decisions being made by a Republican administration to fire Republican U.S. attorneys,” Mincberg said, according to The BLT.
