A controversial Bush Justice Department official got a break from Attorney General Eric Holder.
Brad Schlozman (Getty Images)
Bradley Schlozman, former Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, will not be prosecuted by the Justice Department, according to a letter from Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich to Senate Judiciary Committee member Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.).
Holder affirmed an earlier decision by the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney’s office not to pursue charges against Schlozman related to sworn testimony the Bush official gave before Congress in 2007.
A DOJ Office of Inspector General report concluded last year that Schlozman wasn’t truthful when he told Congress he hadn’t taken politics or ideology into account when hiring career DOJ lawyers. The 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.”
The IG said Schlozman’s partisan hiring standards violated civil service laws intended to keep politics out of career government hiring decisions. The IG referred its findings to the U.S. Attorney office, which decided not to pursue charges. The office was headed by former Bush DOJ official Jeffrey Taylor, but he recused himself from the case. First Assistant Channing Phillips and six career prosecutors made the final call on the case.
“To be clear, nothing in the Attorney General’s determination to sustain the United States Attorney’s decision should be construed as an endorsement of Mr. Schlozman’s improper hiring and personnel-related practices as described in the Final (IG) Report,” Weich wrote in the letter to Schumer.
Holder began a “extensive” review of the U.S. Attorney’s office decision shortly after taking office, Weich said. The Attorney General said at his confirmation hearing that he was alarmed by the behavior of Schlozman described in the IG report.
“The Attorney General firmly believes that providing false statements to Congress cannot and should not be tolerated and should, where provable beyond a reasonable doubt, be prosecuted,” Weich wrote in the letter.
Schlozman lawyer Bill Jordan said in a statement to Main Justice that Holder “made the right decision.”
“Brad is extremely pleased that he has been fully exonerated by this review,” Jordan said.
Schumer, who urged Holder to review the case, told The Associated Press that the attorney general’s decision was “very disappointing.”
“Perjury is often a close call, but in this case it wasn’t. Mr. Schlozman was way over the line,” Schumer told The AP.
Schlozman served in various capacities in the Bush Justice Department before he resigned in 2007. He was an interim U.S. Attorney for Western District of Missouri, Civil Rights Division Deputy Assistant Attorney General and a counsel to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
He is now working for Witchita, Kan. law firm Hinkle Elkouri.
