A Justice Department lawyer under fire for bringing criminal voter-fraud charges on the eve of the 2006 election may revise his Senate testimony about the case, which angered other U.S. prosecutors, officials familiar with the matter said.
Bradley Schlozman, who as U.S. attorney in Kansas City obtained indictments charging workers for an activist group with submitting fake voter-registration forms, defended the timing of the case to the Senate Judiciary Committee this week by saying he acted "at the direction” of the department’s Public Integrity Section.
The explanation, which Schlozman repeated at least nine times during the June 5 hearing, infuriated public integrity lawyers, who say it implied the section ordered him to prosecute, said two Justice Department officials. Public integrity attorneys handle sensitive cases involving politicians and judges and pride themselves on staying out of political disputes.
A clarification of Schlozman’s testimony would stress that he consulted with the section and was given guidance, not direction, said the officials, who asked to remain anonymous because the matter is being deliberated internally. The clarification wouldn’t say that Schlozman’s Senate testimony was inaccurate, the officials added.
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Says he broke no rules giving jobs to conservativesDemocrats focused on an incident less than a week before the 2006 election, when Schlozman brought four voter-registration fraud indictments against workers for a liberal group.
A department election-crime manual instructs US attorneys to wait until after ballots are cast to bring charges, lest the investigation become a campaign issue or otherwise influence the outcome. Missouri Republicans used the indictments to bash Democrats late in the campaign.
Schlozman said that he received permission from Justice Department headquarters to bring the charges when he did. He said he has e-mails proving that he was told that he was allowed to bring the indictments right before the election because voter-registration fraud cases do not involve interviewing voters.
But Democrats expressed incredulity, saying that nothing in the written text of the policy says anything about an exception for voter-registration fraud cases. Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy , Democrat of Vermont, told Schlozman to give the e-mails to Congress.
The controversy over the Missouri indictments also led to a heated retort from Leahy, who had asked Schlozman why he didn’t wait until after the election to bring the case.
"The Department of Justice does not time prosecutions to elections," Schlozman said.
Shouted Leahy: "Yes they do! That’s what the manual says!"
Schlozman is emerging as a focal point of the investigation into the firing of eight US attorneys last year — and as a symbol of broader complaints that the Bush administration has misused its stewardship of law enforcement to give Republicans an electoral edge.
No stranger to election law controversy, Schlozman previously spent three years as a political appointee in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, where he supervised the voting rights section.
There, he came into conflict with veteran staff over his decisions to approve a Texas redistricting plan and a Georgia photo-ID voting law, both of which benefited Republicans. He also hired many new career lawyers with strong conservative credentials, in what critics say was an attempt to reduce enforcement of laws designed to eliminate obstacles to voting by minorities.
"Schlozman was reshaping the Civil Rights Division," said Joe Rich , who was chief of the voting rights section until taking a buyout in 2005, in an interview. "Schlozman didn’t know anything about voting law. . . . All he knew is he wanted to be sure that the Republicans were going to win."
No do-overs!!