A bipartisan group of senators led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) unveiled legislation today that would prohibit the Justice Department from using funds to prosecute 9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four of his alleged coconspirators in a federal court.
And Graham, flanked by his bill co-sponsors, told reporters on Capitol Hill that he that he isn’t playing politics over closing the Guantánamo Bay military prison. That was in response to President Obama’s complaint Monday on You Tube that “pretty rank politics” were slowing down his plan to relocate or prosecute about 200 terrorism suspects at the U.S. military base in Cuba.
Graham was flanked by seven co-sponsors of his measure, Jim Webb (D-Va.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) John McCain (R-Ariz.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).
Lindsey Graham (Gov)
Last year, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that KSM and his alleged accomplices would be tried in civilian court in New York, instead of a military tribunal. Now, the DOJ is “scrambling” to find other locations for the civilian trial after sharp criticism about security and cost from key politicians, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“This whole process makes no sense,” Graham said. “It’s not about ‘rank politics’.”
One after another the bill co-sponsors came up to the microphone to denounce civilian trials for terrorism suspects, including Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his underpants on a Dec. 25 Detroit-bound airplane flight.
Webb said holding non-military trials for terrorism suspects could “benefit the international terrorist movement.” Lieberman, who chairs the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, called the trials “justice according to ‘Alice in Wonderland’.” Sessions, who is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said they are “a big mistake.”
“I think the president would do himself a great favor if he would overrule and say we’re not going to try these people here [in this country],” said Hatch, who also serves on the Judiciary Committee.
Graham told reporters that he doesn’t expect his bill to have a problem passing the Senate after the recent discussions concerning KSM and Abdulmutallab. The Senate defeated a similar proposal from Graham last November, tabling it on a 54-45 vote. Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) introduced a bill in the House last month that would prevent terrorism suspects from receiving civilian trials.
The fiscal 2011 Justice Department budget unveiled on Monday requests that Congress allocate $73 million for transferring, prosecuting and incarcerating Guantánamo Bay detainees.
“Yesterday, the president introduced his budget and he said that anybody who had a good idea on how to get some savings in the budget let us know,” Barrasso said. “Well we all want to let the president know that there is a lot of savings to be had by not having these trials anywhere in the United States and keeping them in a military court. I think basically the Attorney General got it wrong.”
Videos of a Fox News interview with Chambliss, comments from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) at the press conference and a Fox News interview with Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) about the House legislation are embedded below.
This post has been corrected from an earlier version.
Posted in News | Comments Off
Key Senate Republicans today called on Attorney General Eric Holder to testify before Congress about the decisions that the Justice Department made about a man who allegedly tried to ignite explosives in his underpants on a Dec. 25 Detroit-bound airplane flight.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and four top Republican committee members wrote in a letter to Holder that the decision to have FBI agents interrogate Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and read the Nigerian his Miranda rights was “hasty.” They added that it appears that there was “little, if any, coordination” between the DOJ and national security officials.
“It is critical that the American people have a full and timely understanding of the policy and legal rationale upon which this ill-advised decision was made,” Sens. McConnell, Jeff Sessions, (R-Ala.), Christopher “Kit” Bond (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) wrote. Sessions is the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee; Bond is the top Republican on the Intelligence panel; Collins is the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security panel; and McCain is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee.
DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller defended the decision, saying in a statement last week that the DOJ consulted national security officials before Abdulmutallab was charged in federal court and not taken into military custody. It is not clear exactly when in the decision-making process the DOJ consulted the national security officials on Abdulmutallab.
FBI Director Robert Mueller testified last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the events surrounding the alleged attempted bombing were “fast-moving” and authorities had “no time” to get other investigators in place. But Mueller said decisions were made “appropriately,” including the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights.
The letter is the latest in a series of efforts by members of Congress to address the Abdulmutallab case.
Sessions previously wrote a letter to Holder last week demanding to know who made the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a civilian. Earlier this week, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and ranking member Collins asked Holder to remove Abdulmutallab from federal custody and treat him as a military prisoner.
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation yesterday that would compel the DOJ to confer with the Director of National Intelligence and the secretary of Defense before deciding if a suspected terrorist should be tried treated as a civilian.
Posted in News | Comments Off
When the George W. Bush Justice Department filed a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party in January, it invoked a rarely used provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to allege voter intimidation.
Bush-era Civil Rights Division official Brad Schlozman improperly politicized the hiring process for career attorneys, a DOJ investigation found. (Getty Images)
It was the second time the Bush DOJ filed suit under Section 11 (b) of the landmark civil rights legislation – both times targeting black defendants.
The common denominator in these unusual applications of Section 11 (b) is J. Christian Adams, a line attorney at the Justice Department who compiled the Black Panthers case and also worked on a 2005 federal lawsuit against black officials in Mississippi accused of discriminating against whites.
Adams is a career Voting Section lawyer. He is also a foot soldier in the conservative movement, hired into the Justice Department during the Bush administration under a process the department’s Inspector General concluded was improperly politicized.
Adams’s background helps explain how a relatively minor incident in Philadelphia during the 2008 presidential election involving two members of an anti-white fringe group blossomed into a political controversy for the Obama administration.
J. Christian Adams, one of the attorneys who brought the Black Panthers case, at a Federalist Society panel last month (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
Adams previously had volunteered for the Republican National Lawyers Association, an off-shoot of the Republican National Committee that trains lawyers to fight on the often racially tinged frontlines of voting rights, and had been a Republican poll watcher in Florida for the 2004 presidential campaign.
As a Virginia lawyer, he once filed an ethics complaint in Florida against the brother of Hillary Clinton, and reviewed a manuscript of a book that questions the contemporary need for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that he is tasked with enforcing.
More recently, Adams asked a question at a meeting of the conservative Federalist Society in Washington that appeared skeptical of affirmative action, wrote a piece for the American Spectator that likened President Barack Obama’s world view to that of Nazi appeasers and argued on a conservative blogging network that health care reform is a threat to liberty.
Hired in 2005 by Bradley Schlozman, a Bush-era political appointee who drove out veteran Civil Rights Division attorneys perceived to be liberal, Adams appears to be one of the “right-thinking Americans” with conservative affiliations that Schlozman improperly seeded throughout the bureaucracy.
Civil service protections make his removal difficult, and Adams now is emblematic of the challenges facing Attorney General Eric Holder and Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez, who have vowed to “restore” the division to its historic mission of enforcing anti-discrimination laws protecting minorities, while adapting to new challenges.
Republican members of the House asked for an investigation into whether politics played a role in the dismissal of the case and asked GOP senators over the summer to delay Perez’s confirmation over the matter.
Grace Chung Becker (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
When asked about Adams’s role in the Black Panther case, Perez said in a briefing with reporters last week: ”I don’t want to get in the business of speculating as to why somebody brought something at what point.”
The complaint Adams drafted was also signed by Christopher Coates, chief of the Voting Section, and then-acting Assistant Attorney General Grace Chung Becker, a Bush political appointee who failed to win Senate confirmation over Democrats’ concerns she wasn’t committed to enforcing anti-discrimination laws to protect minorities.
“We clearly communicate our expectations [to Civil Rights Division attorneys]. If you meet those expectations that are transparent, then we want you to continue as long as you want to be there,” Perez added, in another session with reporters after a speech at the National Press Club last Friday. “And if you don’t, we hold you accountable.”
Adams compiled the lawsuit against the Black Panthers, two of whom stood outside a majority-black Philadelphia polling place in November 2008 in military-style fatigues, one of them carrying a nightstick. After the Obama DOJ dismissed of the most of the complaint in May, outraged conservatives called for investigations into whether politics played an improper role in the decision.
“That looks more like some sort of street fight than it does a polling place,” David Norcross, chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association, said of a widely viewed video showing the incident.
Adams referred questions about his casework to the DOJ’s Office of Public Affairs. A spokesman said the public affairs office doesn’t normally provide a log of cases on which a particular attorney has worked.
A review of documents on the Civil Rights Division Web site indicates that more recently, Adams worked on complaint filed in March under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, under the Obama administration, alleging the town of Lake Park, Florida, denied black voters an equal opportunity to elect representatives of their choice. In October, the Southern District of Florida federal court entered a consent decree and judgment changing the way the town elected its commissioners.
Turning the Voting Rights Act on its head
The Section 11 (b) civil authority under which the Black Panthers lawsuit was filed is rarely used, since criminal acts of voter intimidation are usually referred for prosecution.
The first known 11 (b) case since the early days of the Voting Rights Act came in 1992, when the government filed suit against North Carolina Republicans and the campaign of then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) for sending threatening postcards to 100,000 mostly black voters with misleading information about election laws.*
There were no more 11 (b) cases until 2005. Then, the Bush administration filed a voter intimidation lawsuit against black officials in Noxubee County, Miss., alleging systematic discrimination against white voters. It marked the first time the DOJ had used authority of the Voting Rights Act to allege voting discrimination by blacks against whites.
While the government won the Noxubee case and even Bush administration critics agree it had merit, they argue that pursing the case was a misuse of limited department resources. Critics also say the manner in which the Bush DOJ used section 11 (b) turned the spirit of the Voting Rights Act on its head. The 1965 act was passed amid incidents of beatings and harassment in the South by white mobs and Ku Klux Klan members against people demonstrating for black voting rights.
“Sadly, the only two [section 11 (b)] cases that have been brought by the [Bush] department have been on behalf of whites,” J. Gerald Hebert, a former acting chief of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division, told Main Justice.
The Government Accountability Office, meantime, recently highlighted a Section 11 (b) voter intimidation case that the Bush DOJ chose not to pursue. The case involved allegations that officials in an unidentified state had intimidated black voters.
The GAO didn’t give further details, but Perez said in recent congressional testimony the division had opened an investigation into the incident cited in the report. He declined to elaborate, citing the ongoing probe.
Hebert said in order to pursue a voter intimidation case, there should be depositions from voters who felt intimidated and the actions should be shown to be part of a larger campaign.
The Black Panther complaint provided little evidence to support the government’s allegation that the group conducted a coordinated campaign to intimidate voters, Obama Department of Justice officials have told Republican lawmakers.
“Frankly, the Philadelphia case [against the New Black Panthers] was on shaky ground from the beginning and was largely, I think, filed by the previous administration for the new administration to have to clean up, putting them in a difficult position,” said Hebert, a critic of the Bush administration’s management of the Justice Department who has written extensively about Section 11(b) for his current employer, the Campaign Legal Center.
Spakovsky: ‘political hacks” at DOJ
So far, no voters registered in the majority-black precinct in Philadelphia where the incident occurred have come forward publicly to say they were intimidated. The complaints have come instead from white Republican poll watchers.
The conservative-dominated U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating the DOJ’s handling of the Black Panther case, and Adams has fought to obtain permission to assist its investigation, over objections from his superiors at the Justice Department.
Yet conservatives have raised no questions about the background or possible motivations of Adams, who compiled the case. Instead they have attacked the career DOJ lawyers who recommended dismissing it.
Hans A. von Spakovsky at a Republican forum on ACORN (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
“Those two lawyers, Steve Rosenbaum and Loretta King, are two of the worst political hacks to be found in the career ranks of the Civil Rights Division,” wrote former Bush Civil Rights Division official Hans A. von Spakovsky in an opinion piece for National Review Online.
House Judiciary Committee members Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Frank Wolf (R-Va.) have written letters to the DOJ asking whether it “improperly considered partisan politics” in dismissing the Black Panther case.
Spakovsky worked closely with Schlozman. He helped oversee the Noxubee case in Mississippi and assisted in the controversial purge of veteran lawyers in the division perceived to be liberal. The Democratic-controlled Senate in 2007 refused to confirm Spakovsky as a Federal Election Commission member.
Spakovsky has also worked at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for commissioner Todd Gaziano, an official at the conservative Heritage Foundation who’s been the driving force behind the push to investigate the Black Panthers matter.
Von Spakovsky told Main Justice said he hadn’t spoken with Adams about the case. “I know Christian just like I know all the lawyers, but I have not talked to him about the case,” he said.
The Obama DOJ, he added, has “not offered any reason to justify its dismissal, which leads you to the obvious conclusion that there were political and other reasons for doing it.”
In fact, Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Ron Weich has outlined the reasons for the dismissal in letters to Republican members of Congress. Read his response here (scroll down).
I’m Just a Media Guy
On election day in November 2008, a call came into the Philadelphia office of the John McCain for President campaign. Two black men in military-style fatigues and berets were standing outside a polling station. One of them was carrying a nightstick.
Stephen Robert Morse, a young freelance journalist who’d been hired by the local Republican Party to document potential irregularities at the polls, jumped in a car and sped to the apartment building at 1221 Fairmount Street, in a majority black neighborhood of Philadelphia.
“Dude, you got my back?” Morse said to a companion. He walked toward the two members of the New Black Panthers and began speaking for his video.
“Hi, I’m here at 1221 Fairmount in Philadelphia and there’s a guy with a billy club right here,” Morse said. “So, do we have any problems here? What’s going on? Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” said Minister King Samir Shabazz, the Black Panther holding the night stick.
“Okay, I’m just, I’m just making sure,” Morse said.
Shabazz asked Morse to identify himself.
“I’m just a media guy,” Morse said. “I’m with the University of Pennsylvania. Who are you with? Sorry?”
“Ah … security,” Shabazz said. “Just wondering why everybody’s taking pictures, that’s all.”
“I think it may be a little intimidating that you have a stick in your hand, that’s all. I mean, that’s a weapon. I mean, I’m a concerned citizen,” Morse said.
“So are we. That’s why we’re here.”
“Okay, but you have a nightstick.”
“So what? You have a camera phone.”
“I have a camera phone, which is not a weapon,” Morse said.
Only 34 whites live in Precinct 4 in Philadelphia out of a total population of 970, according to census data. But there was a sea of white faces there that day, mainly Republican lawyers who’d come to monitor the polling station in what, since the disputed 2000 presidential election, has become an election-day ritual for both parties.
Jerry Jackson, accused in a lawsuit by the Bush DOJ of intimidating voters, was also a certified Democratic poll watcher. (National Geographic)
One of the white Republican poll watchers called police, and the nightstick-wielding Shabazz was shooed away without apparent incident. The other Black Panther, Jerry Jackson, who’d been issued a poll watching certificate by the Philadelphia County Board of Elections, remained.
Although both Shabazz and Jackson had been recorded in an earlier National Geographic documentary calling whites “cracker” and other derogatory terms, no racial epithets were recorded on Morse’s video in Philadelphia.
Then Fox News arrived.
Fox reporter Rick Leventhal interviewed an unidentified Republican poll watcher who told of a more racially charged scene.
The Black Panthers “told us not to come outside, because a black man is going to win this election no matter what,” the unidentified Republican poll watcher said on the Fox camera. “So, as I came back outside to see, the nightstick turns around and says, you know, ‘We’re tired of white supremacy,’ and starts tapping the nightstick in his hand.”
Fox reporter Rick Leventhal said: “The Black Panthers were there to intimidate white voters from coming to this polling location?”
“Or anyone who’s in their way. You know, I don’t know. A guy standing in front of a polling place with a night stick is a factor for all voters. Maybe little old ladies don’t want to walk through that,” the Republican poll watcher said.
The video that Morse made was uploaded to YouTube through a Web site called electionjournal.org, run by a Republican operative named Mike Roman.
Later that evening, Barack Obama won the election, becoming the nation’s first African-American president.
On YouTube, viewers started clicking Morse’s video. It eventually logged more than a 1.2 million views.
Republican poll watchers complain
In January, 13 days before Obama’s inauguration, the Civil Rights Division filed a civil complaint alleging that Shabazz and Jackson hurled “racial insults” and threats at both black and white individuals in Philadelphia, and “made menacing and intimidating gestures” directed at “individuals who were present to aid voters.”
Those “individuals who were present to aid voters” appear to be a reference to the white Republican poll watchers who reported the incident and gave interviews to Fox News. So far, no voters of any race who were registered in that precinct have come forward publicly to say they were intimidated.
King Samir Shabazz and Jerry Jackson (National Geographic).
The New Black Panther Party made an easy target for Republicans. Characterized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Shabazz and Jackson had been videotaped by National Geographic for a documentary calling whites “cracker” and other denigrating terms.
The black separatist group takes its inspiration from, but is not related to, the 1960s Black Panthers, the original “black power” movement.
Republicans have suggested the Justice Department dismissed the case because the New Black Panther Party helped get Obama elected. “It just smacks of some kind of a deal or a thank-you payback,” said Norcross of the Republican National Lawyers Association.
But a review of Shabazz’s comments before the election indicate he wasn’t an Obama fan.
“[Obama] is a puppet on a string. I don’t support no black man running for white politics. I will not vote for who will be the next slavemaster,” he told the Philadelphia Daily News days before the election, according to Politico.
The New Black Panther Party could not be reached for comment.
Washington Times “Exclusive”
After the Black Panthers failed to contest the lawsuit earlier this year, a default judgment was entered. The case then went to then-acting Civil Rights Division chief Loretta King for review.
A career DOJ lawyer, King decided one incident didn’t constitute an orchestrated campaign or pattern to deny voting rights, the usual criteria for deploying federal resources in litigation.
Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
She also had concerns about seeking legal action in part based on how the men were dressed, and noted that one of them – Jackson – held an official poll watching certificate, giving him a reason to be on the premises. She recommended dismissal, a decision approved by her supervisor, Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, an Obama political appointee.
The DOJ sought and won an injunction against Shabazz prohibiting him from carrying a weapon at polling stations through Nov. 15, 2012.
On May 29, the Washington Times published an “exclusive” that said Justice Department “political appointees overruled career lawyers” in dismissing the case.
“Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as ‘the most blatant form of voter intimidation’ that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago,” the Times added.
The affidavit came from Bartle Bull, who worked for Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign in New York 40 years ago but has since been better known as a novelist. Bull supported John McCain for president – a fact not noted by the Washington Times.
After the Washington Times piece, Bull popped up in an interview with Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly. “The senior lawyer working on this case, Christian Adams, said to me, ‘if this is not a case of intimidation, nothing is,’” Bull told O’Reilly.
Bull also said he’d heard the Black Panthers in Philadelphia say: “Now you’ll see what it is like to be ruled by a black man, cracker.”
And Rep. Wolf gave a speech on the House floor in July excoriating Holder.
“Martin Luther King did not die to have people in jack boots block polling places,” Wolf said. “I question Eric Holder’s commitment to voting rights.”
Standoff over subpoenas
Now the matter lies in a standoff between the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which has subpoenaed the DOJ for internal communications about the New Black Panther Party case.
Todd Gaziano is leading the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights inquiry into the New Black Panther Party case (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
The DOJ has resisted complying with the subpoenas, citing a Supreme Court precedent that protects the department’s internal work products from disclosure. But Adams has argued he is obligated to comply with the commission’s inquiry.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ general counsel, David Blackwood – who like Adams and other staff members on the commission is a Republican National Lawyers Association member – wrote the DOJ on Dec. 18 to say the commission had agreed for now to postpone depositions of DOJ officials.
The commission will set new deposition dates for the department employees in the next few weeks, and may consider subpoenaing other department personnel during the same time.
According to a plan circulated among members of the commission by Todd Gaziano, possible deponents in January and February 2010 include Thomas Perrelli, Loretta King, and civil appellate section chief Diana Flynn. The plan also calls for a hearing in Washington in early 2010.
The commission’s final report is scheduled to be released next summer, in advance of the midterm elections.
Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.
*Experts consulted by Main Justice indicated that the 1992 case was the first Section 11 (b) case they knew about. A reader has pointed out there was a case in 1966, and the language has been updated. While a previous version of this story called the Campaign Legal Center “liberal-leaning,” it is a non-partisan organization whose president served as general counsel for John McCain’s campaign in 2000 and 2008. Adams read the manuscript of, but did not edit, the book on the Voting Rights Act.
Posted in News | 25 Comments »
The Senate passed legislation tonight that would allocate $27.4 billion to the Justice Department.
The body approved the fiscal year 2010 Commerce, Justice, science appropriations bill by a 71-28 vote.
The bill includes language adopted by voice vote tonight that prohibits the distribution of funds to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and requires the comptroller general to investigate whether federal funds were misused by the activist group.
ACORN came under fire after its staffers were caught on hidden camera allegedly instructing a couple who posed as a pimp and a prostitute on how to obtain housing aid for a purported brothel. The DOJ Office of Inspector General is already probing whether ACORN applied for or obtained any DOJ grant money
But the Senate tabled an amendment from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that would have kept the suspected planners of the Sept. 11 attacks out of U.S. civilian courts. The vote on the motion was 54-45.
This afternoon, the Senate voted 60-39 along party lines to invoke cloture on the legislation. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was the only senator who did not vote on the procedural motion.
The Senate had tried to cut off debate on the bill last month, but was four votes short.
The House has already passed a version of the legislation.
Here’s the roll call vote on final passage of the Senate bill:
Grouped By Vote Position
| YEAs —71 | ||
| Akaka (D-HI) Alexander (R-TN) Baucus (D-MT) Begich (D-AK) Bennet (D-CO) Bennett (R-UT) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Brownback (R-KS) Burris (D-IL) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Cochran (R-MS) Collins (R-ME) Conrad (D-ND) Dodd (D-CT) Dorgan (D-ND) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) |
Franken (D-MN) Gillibrand (D-NY) Gregg (R-NH) Hagan (D-NC) Harkin (D-IA) Hutchison (R-TX) Inouye (D-HI) Johnson (D-SD) Kaufman (D-DE) Kerry (D-MA) Kirk (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Landrieu (D-LA) Lautenberg (D-NJ) LeMieux (R-FL) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR) Mikulski (D-MD) Murkowski (R-AK) |
Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Schumer (D-NY) Shaheen (D-NH) Shelby (R-AL) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (D-PA) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Udall (D-CO) Udall (D-NM) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (D-VA) Webb (D-VA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR) |
| NAYs —28 | ||
| Barrasso (R-WY) Bayh (D-IN) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) |
Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Johanns (R-NE) Kyl (R-AZ) Lugar (R-IN) |
McCain (R-AZ) McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Sessions (R-AL) Thune (R-SD) Wicker (R-MS) |
| Not Voting – 1 | ||
| Byrd (D-WV) | ||
This post was updated from an earlier version.
Democrats and American Indian leaders are pushing the Senate to move on the nomination of Mary L. Smith to head the Justice Department’s Tax Division, despite lingering questions about her qualifications.
Mary L. Smith (Schoeman, Updike & Kaufman)
Smith, a member of the Cherokee Nation, was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee June 11 without the support of the panel’s Republican members. The Republicans complained that the partner at the Schoeman, Updike & Kaufman law firm in Chicago had virtually no tax experience.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has blamed Republicans for blocking her nomination. If confirmed, Smith would be the first American Indian to serve as an Assistant Attorney General.
“It is widely known among tribal leaders that her nomination has been pending for an overly long period and the frustration is growing,” Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indian, wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) last Thursday.
Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe chairman and CEO W. Ron Allen and National Native American Bar Association president Lael Echohawk also recently wrote letters here and here in support of Smith. ”[The National Native American Bar Association is] very concerned with the lack of progress on Mary’s nomination,” Echohawk wrote last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Lael Echohawk
Leahy spoke on the Senate floor last week about the need to move on Smith and three other DOJ nominees who have been stalled for months. Bush Tax Division chief Eileen O’Connor and her successor, Nathan Hochman, were confirmed within a day of being reported out of committee, Leahy said.
“The Republican minority has irresponsibly stalled nominations to critical posts in the Department of Justice, depriving the president, the Attorney General and the country of the leaders needed to head important divisions at the Justice Department,” Leahy said Oct. 27. “These are important leaders of our federal law enforcement efforts. Presidents of both parties, especially newly elected ones, are normally accorded greater deference to put in place appointees for their administrations.”
Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), said the Senate is confirming nominees at a “smooth, responsible pace.”
“The Democrats have 60 votes and could bring [Smith's] nomination to the floor if they want to,” Miller said, referring to the number of votes needed to end debate on a nominee and move to final consideration. Miller declined to comment on whether a Republican senator has a hold on the Tax Division nominee.
Smith has also struggled to win support in the tax law community.
We reported in June that tax bloggers, including attorney Peter Pappas, said Smith did not have the right background to lead the Tax Division.
Nathan Hochman (Bingham)
Smith said during her May nomination hearing that she had experience with tax work when she was in-house counsel to Tyco International Ltd., the international security products and services conglomerate. Smith managed complex financial litigation against the company stemming from the 2005 convictions of Tyco executives Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Schwatz for stealing $134 million.
“That case involved many different allegations of security fraud, there were many complex accounting issues,” Smith said in May. “I have to say … that I delved in deeply to that and often times knew the facts of the accounting issues better than most of the people involved in the case.”
But Tyco was also a pioneer in tax-avoidance strategies on which the government is now cracking down, including moving its corporate headquarters off shore.
M. Carr Ferguson, who was President Jimmy Carter’s Tax Division chief, said he was
“troubled” by Smith’s nomination. He said Tax Division chiefs appointed by Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had at least some tax law experience. ”This isn’t a position where you come to learn a new field of law,” Ferguson said. “It is a position where you are dealing with a bunch of lawyers who need direction.”
The Justice Department has defended Smith, who served on the Obama DOJ transition team overseeing the Tax Division. “It is true that she is not a traditional tax lawyer or a tax specialist. However, Smith has extensive experience in financial litigation, both for and against the government,” a DOJ statement said, adding that Smith would be a “significant asset to the Tax Division.”
Hochman, one of the Bush Tax Division chiefs, and several other former DOJ officials have also said she is qualified for the position because of her experience with complex litigation and her time in the Clinton administration as a Civil Division trial attorney and White House associate counsel. ”I am confident that Mary will provide strong leadership for the Division and is a good choice for the position,” Hochman wrote in a recommendation letter.
It is unclear, however, why Smith ended up as the Tax Division nominee in the first place, given her lack of experience. Smith headed the Obama and was not tapped for another Justice Department position that may have better catered to her areas of expertise.
Ferguson said her nomination was likely the result of a political game of musical chairs that left Smith with the Tax Division and not another position. ”I don’t think she was chosen because she fits the job,” he said.
Smith, a former Obama presidential campaign staffer in Chicago, would bring an Indian American voice to a high ranking position in the Obama administration. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder are elevating American Indian affairs with a DOJ listening tour through Indian country that wrapped up last month and a White House tribal nations conference Thursday.
“We think quick movement on her nomination is particularly urgent considering that President Obama is hosting a historic meeting with tribal leaders,” Echohawk wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.
American Indians are an important voting bloc for Democrats. University of New Mexico professor Gabriel Sanchez, who studies racial and ethnic politics, said it is a “definite possibility” that Obama nominated Smith for political reasons as much as policy ones. American Indian voters are potentially crucial in swing states like New Mexico, where they make up 10 percent of the population, according to census data.
“On the margins, 5 or 10 percent here or there could have an impact,” Sanchez said.
Although Obama won New Mexico by 15 percent, 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain edged out Obama by less than 10 percent in his home state of Arizona, which has an American Indian population. McCain also won in Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota — other states with concentrations of American Indians.
American Indians have a high voter turnout and typically vote for Democrats, except in Oklahoma, according to Laura Harris, executive director of Americans for Indian Opportunity, a non-profit American Indian advocacy group.
“Even though we make up a small amount of the population, our vote can be very important,” Harris said. But she said the Smith nomination didn’t seem to be an attempt to win over American Indian votes because of Obama’s other efforts to court tribal members.
But Ferguson warned that Obama’s decision to nominate Smith for the Tax Division could have significant consequences for the Justice Department. “I think just bringing in a nice, bright person unaware of the recurrent issues and role of the division is jeopardizing what the Tax Division is about,” he said.
Stephanie Woodrow contributed to this report.
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
Diane Humetewa
Senior Bush administration officials balked at nominating Diane Humetewa as U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona two years ago, even though she had the support of both home state senators, according to emails released by the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
Scott Jennings, then the special assistant to President Bush, was unsparing in a Feb. 16, 2007 e-mail to Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, calling Humetewa “simply unacceptable.”
The e-mail, which was also sent to Rove’s executive assistant Taylor Hughes, said, “DOJ believes (and we concur) that Humetewa is not a viable candidate to be the U.S. Attorney for the following reasons.” (Oooh! What? Damn. The next page of the email giving the explanation is blacked out, we presume because it was a gratuitous trashing of Humetewa.)
Rove’s response?
“Replace Blanquita.” (Apparently intended as a racial epithet for the Hispanic-looking Humetewa.)
But Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for whom Humetewa once worked on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and who had been unable to mask his contempt for Bush after losing to him in the 2000 Republican presidential primary, refused to submit other names for the post, according to the e-mail. Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R) joined his home state colleague in his recommendation.
Jennings wrote in an email that the White House counsel’s office and the Justice Department were asking Rove to “personally engage to move this process along.” Rove failed, apparently.
Humetewa, the first female Native American U.S. Attorney, was sworn in Dec. 17, 2007. She replaced Paul Charlton, who was among the U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006. Daniel Knauss served as interim U.S. Attorney for one year between Charlton and Humetewa.
The emails were released as part of the House panel’s investigation of the Bush administration’s politicized firings of six U.S. Attorneys in late 2006.
In June, Humetewa received the “Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation President’s Award” — the highest award given by the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation. McCain and Kyl had said they hoped President Obama would keep her on. They also said they would work with the Obama administration to select a new U.S. Attorney.
Humetewa resigned earlier this month. Dennis K. Burke, a senior advisor to former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who is now the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, has been nominated to replace her.
Posted in News | Comments Off
Solicitor General Elena Kagan will make her debut before the Supreme Court on Sept. 9, reports The BLT. She plans to argue Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, known as the “Hillary: The Movie” case.
Elena Kagan (usdoj)
Kagan will argue opposite former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, now a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. He is representing Citizens United, the sponsors of the movie, which is harshly critical of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The BLT notes that, as SG under President George W. Bush, Olson once defended the law he now challenges: The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or “McCain-Feingold.”
The Supreme Court ordered oral arguments as it recessed for summer, sending shivers down the spines of supporters of campaign finance reform. They fear the Court has designs to overturn the ban on the use of corporate money for independent campaign expenditures.
While the movie was shown in theaters and on DVD, a mixed panel of federal district and appellate judges here in Washington dashed the group’s plans to advertise it on TV and release it via video-on-demand during Clinton’s presidential run. The judges ruled that the movie constituted an “electioneering communication” regulated under McCain-Feingold because it was funded by corporate money.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in March, betraying little until Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart acknowledged that the law could also be used to ban campaign-related books in some situations. Several justices appeared to disagree.
The briefs for the September arguments are due this week. This time around, the Court will consider whether to overturn Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and part of McConnell v. FEC.
Posted in News | Comments Off
The Senate passed legislation late last night that would protect people who are attacked because of their sexual orientation, gender or disability.
The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act provides the most significant changes to federal hate crimes law since the approval of a 1968 bill that covered crimes carried out on the basis of religion, race, color or national origin. The legislation last night was added to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Bill. The hate crimes amendment passed by a voice vote after a 63-28 vote on cloture.
Harry Reid (Gov)
“The Senate made a strong statement this evening that hate crimes have no place in America,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a statement. “I am pleased to see the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act added as an amendment to the Department of Defense Authorization bill.”
Most Republicans were against the hate crimes legislation, saying state laws already cover hate crimes and it could criminalize religious opposition to homosexuality. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on the Senate floor Wednesday that he was “deeply, deeply disappointed” by Reid for introducing the legislation as an amendment to the defense bill.
Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Richard Lugar (Ind.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and George Voinovich (Ohio) were the only Republicans to vote in favor of cloture. There were no Democrats that voted against cloture.
Backers of the hate crimes legislation have tried to attach it to the annual defense authorization bill since 1999, but it was always taken out before a final vote on the defense legislation. Attorney General Eric Holder called on Congress last month to pass hate crimes legislation.
Posted in News | Comments Off
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) came out swinging today against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for offering the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Bill.
John McCain (Gov)
The Arizona senator said on the floor today that he was “deeply, deeply disappointed” by Reid for introducing the legislation to the defense bill and questioned the majority leader’s motives.
“(Americans) don’t deserve to have a hate crimes bill put on this legislation that has no relation to hate crimes,” McCain said on the floor.
But trying to attach the hate crimes bill to the defense bill is nothing new. Backers of the hate crimes legislation have tried to attach it to the annual defense authorization bill since 1999, but it was always taken out before a final vote on the defense legislation. The National Defense Authorization Bill must pass Congress each year to fund the Defense Department programs.
Most Republicans are against the hate crimes legislation, saying state laws already cover hate crimes and it could criminalize religious opposition to homosexuality.
The legislation — named after murdered gay college student Matthew Shepard — would expand federal hate crimes law to include crimes based on sexual orientation, disability, gender and gender identity. Attorney General Eric Holder called on Congress last month to pass hate crimes legislation.
Reid filed for cloture on the amendment this morning, but it is unclear whether a vote will happen on the legislation tomorrow.
“For the last decade, Matthew Shepard’s name associated with hate crimes,” Reid said at a news conference yesterday. “Once this bill passes, it will be associated with justice.”
Read our previous post here.
Posted in News | Comments Off
Chris Christie, Republican nominee for New Jersey governor, will testify before the House Judiciary commercial and administrative law subcommittee tomorrow about deferred prosecution agreements he made while he was New Jersey U.S. Attorney.
An Associated Press rundown of the deals is here.
Posted in News | Comments Off
