1 Boring Old Man

The Politicization of the Department of Justice

The truth is, the high-level decay and politicization of the DOJ that has been so starkly exposed in the past months did not begin with the arrival of Alberto Gonzales in 2005. It began with the arrival of Bush and Cheney in January of 2001. From the moment they moved into the White House, they set about to pervert the functions of the office of the attorney general to advance not only their own personal and political agendas, but also those of the Republican National Committee. To achieve that cynical aim, they elevated their inexperienced politicos to key positions at DOJ’s main offices in Washington, DC and gave them free rein to ignore, undermine, overrule and mistreat career attorneys. Consequently, by the end of 2004, many of the most experienced DOJ attorneys had left. But they left quietly, so the public didn’t pay much attention. Having quite successfully cleared the way for its political agenda at Main Justice, the administration could then move on to the politicization of US attorney offices around the country. This process – which began in 2005 and led to the much-publicized US attorney firings – was not the beginning of the chief executive’s unprecedented injection of politics into the operation of the DOJ; it was actually the second phase of the project. ..

Elizabeth de la Vega is a former federal prosecutor with more than 20 years of experience. During her tenure, she was a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force and chief of the San Jose Branch of the US attorney’s office for the Northern District of California. Her pieces have appeared in The Nation, the Los Angeles Times and Salon. She writes regularly for TomDispatch.com. The author of United States v. George W. Bush et al…

…Ashcroft was the wrong man for this task, but nevertheless the right man for Bush. The darling of the Christian right and the National Rifle Association (NRA) as well as big business, anti-environment and anti-civil rights lobbies, he could be expected to carry out the duties of attorney general with due attention to the wishes of the president’s conservative base.

Ashcroft did not disappoint. Almost immediately, he delighted Christian conservatives by gathering his subordinates together on federal property to participate in daily Pentecostal Christian prayer meetings. (Hey, they were voluntary meetings and anyone – Jew, Muslim, Pagan, Buddhist, Atheist, Wiccan – could participate, so what is the big deal?) In May 2001, he turned to another top priority: undermining gun prosecutions by formally advising the NRA that the DOJ would no longer take the position that the Second Amendment does not guarantee private citizens the right to bear arms, a 180 degree shift from longstanding DOJ policy.

Using the DOJ to repay the gun lobby that had donated over $1 million to the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign was a trifle, however, compared to the decision to pull the plug on over 50 environmental cases against air-polluting power plants and refineries that had also, coincidentally, been huge donors to the Republican party in the 2000 election. In late June of 2001, the DOJ not only suspended its lawsuits against the energy companies, but advised them to abandon the pollution-control upgrades they were implementing as part of pending settlement agreements. This, as we now know, was merely the beginning of the administration’s use of both the Ashcroft and Gonzales DOJ to benefit big business at the expense of the environment – an assault that is now in its sixth year.