Report: Gonzales Aides Did Break Law In Hiring Process at DOJ

July 28, 2008 · Filed Under Legal News

A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office concluded today that aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did violate the law by politicizing the DOJ.

The report singled out former Gonzales aide Monica Goodling for damaging the department’s credibility by bringing politics in to the hiring process at DOJ.

The inspector general’s investigation found that Ms. Goodling and a handful of other senior aides to Mr. Gonzales developed a system of using in-person interviews and Internet searches to screen out candidates who might be too liberal and to identify candidates seen as pro-Republican and supportive of President Bush.

…In her position as White House liaison for the Justice Department, Ms. Goodling was involved in hiring lawyers for both political appointments and non-political, career positions. Regardless of the type of position, the report said, Ms. Goodling would run through the same batch of questions, asking candidates about their political philosophies, why they wanted to serve President Bush, and who, aside from Mr. Bush, they admired as public servants. Sometimes, Ms. Goodling would ask: “Why are you a Republican?”

Such questioning was allowed for candidates to political appointments, but was clearly banned under both civil service law and the Justice Department’s own internal policies, the inspector general said. Ms. Goodling’s questioning also generated complaints from one senior official who believed it was improper, long before the issue became a public controversy following the firings of nine United States attorneys. The inspector general concluded that Ms. Goodling knew that questioning applicants to career positions about their political beliefs was improper.

In one case, for instance, Ms. Goodling slowed the hiring of a prosecutor in the United States attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a vacancy because she said she was concerned that he was a “liberal Democrat.” After the United States attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, complained to her supervisors, he was allowed to hire the candidate anyway.

I can understand why Goodling and her colleagues would want to keep “liberal Democrats” out of key positions, who wouldn’t?

Having said that, I think one of the major failures of the Bush Administration was to put friends in high places instead the most qualified people.

This was evident not only at DOJ, but at FEMA, and numerous other places. The vast majority of allegations leveled at the President by liberal Democrats are totally baseless, but the charges of ‘cronyism” are unfortunately pretty accurate.