When Prosecutors Get Political (The Nation)

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article | posted June 6, 2007 (web only)
When Prosecutors Get Political

Justin Levitt


Thanks to fine print in the renewed USA Patriot Act, 35-year-old Bradley Schlozman, the man presiding over the partisan reshaping of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, was the first federal prosecutor installed without Senate confirmation. He arrived in Missouri eight months before the 2006 election, with one of the closest Senate races in the country on the line.

His timing was remarkable.

Schlozman spent some uncomfortable hours Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, defending the curious use of his prosecutorial privilege. Seems that scant weeks after a few renegade workers for the nonpartisan community organizing group ACORN submitted fake voter registration forms, Schlozman rushed through four federal indictments, even getting one of the names wrong in the hurry. The indictments were announced five days before the election.

Schlozman's handiwork fed a predictable partisan flurry. His press statement cited ACORN, which was registering voters in Missouri's poor and minority communities, and announced a vague national investigation that was "very much ongoing." Local partisans took up the call, attempting to tie the Senate campaign of Democrat Claire McCaskill to the alleged criminal activity. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page took its outrage over ACORN national.

Schlozman knew better.

...(snip)...

On November 22, 2005, Schlozman's voting rights attorneys sued Missouri to force the state to purge its registration list more aggressively. The suit was filed despite the ongoing construction of a database that would allow effective maintenance of the rolls. It also revealed Schlozman's limited sense of history: Just four years earlier, DOJ had filed a mirror-image suit against St. Louis, based on the overly aggressive purge that had wreaked havoc on the 2000 elections.

The public may yet get some help connecting these disturbing dots. Schlozman's time on the Senate floor may be over for now, but he did not act alone. Fortuitously, one of his principal colleagues and advisers at DOJ, Hans von Spakovsky, appointed by President Bush to the Federal Election Commission, comes up for a long-overdue confirmation hearing in the Senate next Wednesday. Just eight days after Schlozman's testimony, senators will have another chance to seek explanations for the time that the Justice Department has spent working against its constituents. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/levitt