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The House Judiciary Committee issued a report on abuses of power by the Bush Administration called “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush.” The report is a comprehensive exploration of all the ways in which the Bush administration abused its powers.

The report covers abuses that are familiar: secret domestic wire-tapping, torture, extraordinary rendition, and so on. But it also highlights - putting first and foremost - a section called “Politicization of the Justice Department.” It explores in detail the way in which the Bush administration used a department with enormous powers, which is supposed to administer the law impartially, for partisan purposes. 

The report points to the prosecutions of Governor Siegelman, Georgia Thompson, and Cyril Wecht, as well as Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor and says, “Each of these matters presented at best a questionable exercise of prosecutorial discretion, and they often involved charges that appear to have elevated routine political fund-raising or similarly mundane conduct into aggressive federal criminal charges.”

It is difficult to argue, in light of the extensive, detailed evidence compiled in the report, that the Bush administration was not engaged in political prosecutions. Congress has subpoenaed extensive information in connection with these matters and is still awaiting many answers. The report seems designed to remind people that Congress is still demanding a great deal of information about these prosecutions and that once the new administration comes in, a great deal of that was previously hidden will likely be released.

You can read the full report here.

A story in the New York Times, based on an internal investigation conducted by the Justice Department, reported that a former Justice Department official carried out a partisan campaign to ensure that only conservative Republicans worked at the Justice Department. Bradley Schlozman was in charge of hiring for the Civil Rights Division of the Bush Administration Justice Department. In his own emails, voice mails and other internal documents, he talked about ”reshaping the political makeup of the Civil Rights Division and doing away with ‘pinko’ and ‘crazy lib’ lawyers and others he did not consider ‘real Americans.’”

Mr. Schlozman’s bias was clear. “When a colleague reported that he had been given an office next to a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal affairs group, Mr. Schlozman responded in an e-mail message: ‘Just between you and me, we hired another member of ‘the team’ yesterday. And still another ideological comrade will be starting in one month. So we are making progress.’”

According to the Times: “The report found that Mr. Schlozman had selected conservative lawyers for prime assignments and transferred three lawyers out of the Civil Rights Division because they were seen as liberals who were opposed to his political agenda. All three later brought federal discrimination claims and returned to the division after Mr. Schlozman left. The transfers, the report found, violated federal civil service law and ‘constituted misconduct.’”

When Justice Department officials are chosen for ideological reasons, it should not be surprising if partisan prosecutions result.

Read the entire story here.

The Raw Story

Lindsay Beyerstein and Larisa Alexandrovna

The federal judge who denied a prominent Democratic fundraiser’s motion for release pending appeal last week is a former client and protégé of former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. 

On Aug. 15, US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Priscilla Owen (above right) upheld a lower court’s decision to keep Mississippi attorney Paul Minor in jail pending his appeal, adding more controversy to a case already steeped by allegations of both a politically motivated prosecution and conflicts of interest on the part of the US Attorney. 

Minor, a once-prominent trial lawyer, was formerly Mississippi’s largest Democratic donor and made millions from a 1998 settlement with tobacco companies of a lawsuit for costs incurred by Medicare from smoking-related illnesses. The suit kindled resentment among Republicans who had been beneficiaries of the tobacco companies’ largesse.

Owen’s two-sentence order reads: “Minor has failed to establish by clear and convincing evidence that he is not likely to pose a danger to the community if released.”

Minor was convicted of mail fraud and bribery in 2007. The prosecution has contended that Minor is dangerous because he violated the terms of his pre-trial bond two years ago. The defense countered that Minor’s rule-breaking was trivial, non-violent in nature, and unlikely to recur because Minor has now been successfully treated for his drinking problem.

As reported in Raw Story’s ongoing award-nominated series, The Permanent Republican Majority, many saw the two Minor trials – which included as co-defendants Justices Wes Teel and John Whitfield, who were also found guilty, and Justice Oliver Diaz, who was not – as connected with the politicization of the US Department of Justice and the alleged use of US Attorneys by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove to target political opponents and perceived enemies of the Bush administration. (See links to part 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the series following this article.) 

Both Minor and Diaz allege that they were victims of political prosecution orchestrated by Rove.

It is the alleged involvement of Karl Rove in the prosecutions of Paul Minor – as well as the better-known case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman – that has raised eyebrows among Minor supporters about Owen’s recent ruling.

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