Another former Justice Department lawyer went before Congress on Wednesday with few answers for his Democratic interrogators and a spotty memory.Hans von Spakovsky, who’s seeking a full six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, deflected questions about whether he undermined voting rights laws, saying, "I was not the decision maker in the front office of the Civil Rights Division."
Time and again during his confirmation hearing, he cited either the attorney-client privilege or a cloudy memory for his purported role in restricting minorities’ voting rights.
Von Spakovsky couldn’t remember blocking an investigation into complaints that a Minnesota Republican official was discriminating against Native American voters before the 2004 election.
Under oath, he also said he didn’t recall seeing data from the state of Georgia that would have undercut a push by senior officials within the Civil Rights Division to approve the state’s tough new law requiring photo IDs of all voters. The data showed that 300,000 Georgia voters lacked driver’s licenses. A federal judge later threw out the law as unconstitutional.
Von Spakovsky was among four nominees to the bipartisan FEC, which regulates federal campaign finance laws, to appear before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. He and two of the others have had presidential recess appointments since early last year.
Nearly the entire two-hour hearing focused on von Spakovsky and on allegations from former career Justice Department lawyers that he was the administration’s "point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division’s mandate to protect voting rights" of minorities during his more than four-year tenure.
Citing a scathing letter from six former senior officials of the Voting Rights Section, Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told him bluntly: "It is really a problem for this body to vote for someone with this letter on the record."
It’s not as if he were called to testify yesterday morning and didn’ t have time to review the information. It is both disgusting and fascinating to see person after person come before these committees with only part of their memory in tact! People forget. They do. We all do. However, when you are about to go before a Senate committee wouldn’t you think it a good idea to refresh your memory a little so you don’t look like a bumbling idiot?
Hans would rather look like a bumbling idiot than a shrewd crook.