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sponsorship
You know it's a bad day when the inspector general for the Department of Justice issues a report with your name in the title. As in"An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General." When DoJ hires career attorneys—as opposed to lawyers who are political appointees picked by the administration in power—it is barred from considering "politics" or "political affliation." Goodling broke this rule in lots of ways. The IG reports that sometimes she got right to the (illegal) point by asking job candidates, "Why are you a Republican?" On the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr describes a similarly soliticous moment. Goodling also blocked the detailing of a lawyer to particular projects because she thought that lawyer was gay, even though DoJ policy prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Was Monica Goodling, young Christian college graduate, really at the heart of all the hiring shenanigans going on at Justice? When Dahlia and I (with Slatesters Kara Hadge and Chris Wilson) wrote up potential Bush administration proseuctions last week, we suggested that Goodling might not have been as involved as some of her higher-ups. And we thought that because Congress gave her immunity from prosecution, except for perjury, when she testified in 2007, her role might be to help catch bigger fish. Now I'm less hopeful. Because Goodling no longer works at DoJ, she can't be compelled to talk unless a criminal investigation is opened. Breaking the civil service laws at issue here doesn't count; that's not a criminal violation. And nothing in the IG report, based on my quick skim, reaches to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is the big tuna. Did Goodling really dream all of this up without Gonzales' explicit urging or tacit approval? I'd say we've learned from the IG that if Gonzales (or someone from the White House) was in on Goodling's out-of-bounds litmus tests—and I still don't see how she comes up with this all on her own—he was smart enough not to leave an e-mail trail behind.
And so for now, we have to settle for Goodling's embarrassment, along with that of Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' former chief of staff who turned on his boss before Congress. Sampson and Goodling are responsible for what the IG calls "the most systematic use of political or ideological affiliations in screening candidates for career positions." This involved the hiring process for immigration judges. Sampson went so far, in 2003, as to make the White House the "sole source" for generating IJ candidates. He told the IG he thought that the judges were political appointees. The report doesn't buy that excuse and finds that both Sampson and Gonzales committed misconduct. That's something. But the whole thing makes one former DoJ attorney I know "physically sick." Nor, he says, has current AG Mukasey done nearly enough in response. He says, "Simply expressing regret and issuing the odd memo is not the response of a real manager and certainly not a response that recognizes the importance of righting an institution as important and fundamental to the country."