Ex-Prosecutor Says He Didn't Think Charges Would Affect Election

[Demeter]

Source: Washington Post


Ex-Prosecutor Says He Didn't Think Charges Would Affect Election

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 6, 2007; A02





Bradley J. Schlozman, who temporarily replaced dismissed U.S. attorney Todd P. Graves of Kansas City, Mo., also said that career officials in the department's public integrity section approved the case, in which four former employees of a liberal-leaning group were charged with voter-registration fraud.

"I did not think it was going to influence the election at all," Schlozman said.

......


Schlozman has figured prominently in the inquiry because he replaced Graves in Missouri and because he served previously as a senior official in the Civil Rights Division, from which dozens of career attorneys have left in the wake of conflicts with political appointees over key voting-rights cases.

Schlozman, who served briefly as acting civil rights chief in 2005, testified that he may have boasted about the number of Republicans he had recruited for the division. He also acknowledged telling some applicants for career positions to remove GOP political activities from their résumés, but said that was only because politics should play no role in filling those jobs....

Under Justice Department rules, prosecutors "must refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election itself." A department handbook also says that "most, if not all, investigation of an alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates."



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/05/AR2007060502352.html?referrer=email

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Then he's the only one who thought that way!

[rfranklin]

1. These Republican bums have to be jailed...

for conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their right to vote.

[rodeodance]

2. slimeball

[maddezmom]

3. Think Progress: Schlozman’s Inadvertent Confession: Any Group That Works With Minorities Is ‘Liberal

Bradley Schlozman has emerged as a central figure in the politicization of the Justice Department, particularly for his focus on squashing the voice of minorites prior to major elections.

As an interim U.S. attorney in Missouri, Schlozman brought felony indictments of four workers in the minority advocacy group ACORN just a week before the 2006 election. That move ran counter to a longstanding policy in the Justice Department, and voter fraud charges against ACORN were dismissed. Schlozman also killed an investigation of Native American voter suppression in Minnesota, a practice that was resulting in “electoral discrimination against Indian voters.”

As TPMMuckraker noted, Schlozman played dumb today when asked about the political leanings of ACORN. But later in the hearing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) caught Schlozman baselessly labeling groups that reach out to minority voters as the “liberal” counterparts to the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Watch it:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/05/schlozman-liberal/

[pberq]

4. Kick & Nominated