Missouri's photo ID law was struck down by the state Supreme Court in October 2006, just before the midterm elections. But by then, the Bush administration had used a loophole in the Patriot Act to appoint Bradley Schlozman, who had supervised the voting section of the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ at headquarters in Washington, as Graves' successor in the Western District. The loophole was closed by a vote of the Senate on Tuesday, but in March of 2006 Alberto Gonzales was able to make Schlozman a U.S. attorney without seeking confirmation from the Senate.Not only was Schlozman apparently not regarded very highly by his colleagues, but while working at the Department he had already been involved with high-profile, politically motivated suit against state officials viewed by the Bush administration as political adversaries. Those with good memories will remember Bradley Schlozman as a key representative of the Justice Department in its suit against Missouri's Democratic Secretary of State Robin Carnahan.
The appointment, the first under the controversial Patriot Act provision, raised eyebrows at DOJ, one former senior Justice Department official told Salon. "Schlozman was one of Gonzales' guys," the former senior official said, "but several of us were scratching our heads when we heard about it because he was not a very well-regarded trial attorney."
Way back in November of 2005, FiredUp Missouri was already pointing out the ways [2] in which the Bush Justice Department was breaking with past practice to push legal strategies intended to advance thinly veiled political priorities:
Sadly, it appears that the DoJ was in a hurry to file the lawsuit for nothing more noble than petty vindictiveness and crass political advantage.At the time that the DoJ's Civil Rights Division was working on that suit, Bradley Schlozman was the Acting Assistant Attorney General. Schlozman was personally involved in many aspects of the suit's correspondence and litigation.
How so? Consider for a moment the identity of the Justice Department's newest Missouri high-profiler, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District. The holder of that office, you may remember, is one Catherine Hanaway. Hanaway, former Republican Speaker of the Missouri House, has a unique and perverse political incentive for lobbying internally at the Justice Department for this action. You'll also recall that Hanaway was roundly defeated in 2004 for the position of Secretary of State by Robin Carnahan --who now finds her office the target of a suspiciously thin lawsuit.
And as though the personalities involved in the suit did not already point toward a political motive, the method does as well. In fact, the Justice Department's website lists recent litigation undertaken to enforce the National Voter Registration Act, and indicates that these sorts of suits have traditionally been pursued against county election authorities, not state bodies. To illustrate, the litigation list notes that the other recent action for NVRA violations was against Pulaski County Arkansas, and it was lodged because that authority refused to register voters in accordance with the act, a seemingly much greater violation that simple list managment issues. The suit filed against Missouri, it would appear, is a new and unique creation by individuals at the DOJ.
Which brings us back to the Salon.com piece, which is heavy with the recognition that the recent U.S. Attorney purge is merely the extension of a politically charged agenda that Department of Justice has been chasing (and to which some of us have been trying to bring attention) for quite some time:
But sometimes pursuing an investigation can be just as effective as a conviction in providing that ammunition and creating an impression with the public that some sort of electoral reform is necessary. The battle between Democrats and Republicans over photo ID has been most contentious in so-called battleground states like New Mexico. In one such purple state, the GOP used repeated and very public accusations of fraud to ram a photo ID law through the state legislature. In Missouri, Republicans have been accusing Democrats of fraud since the 2000 election. During the Bush administration, three different U.S. attorneys have launched investigations into electoral fraud in Missouri, indicting nine people. Last year, prior to the midterm elections, the administration even dispatched a key voting fraud expert from Washington to assume the job of U.S. attorney in Missouri's Eastern District.No surprise that Schlozman was a key advocate of such laws, going so far as to write an opinion piece in an Atlanta newspaper in favor of a similar Voter ID bill then moving through the legislature in the State of Georgia.
It all began in November of 2000, when then-Sen. John Ashcroft lost a close election to a dead man, Democrat Mel Carnahan. That election was a controversial one in Missouri -- polls remained open past the official closing time in St. Louis, a city dominated by African-American Democrats. This infuriated Republicans, especially Sen. Kit Bond, who delivered a podium-pounding denunciation of alleged voter fraud at the Missouri GOP's victory party on election night. Bond later spearheaded calls for an investigation, pushing Republican lawyers to put together a dossier of allegations that was then delivered to the outgoing, Clinton-appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District. ...
Missouri Republicans used the multiple investigations, which together lasted more than a year, as evidence in a push for tougher election laws. By spring of 2002, they were proposing a law requiring that voters show photo ID. The state Legislature finally passed a Republican-sponsored photo ID law four years later, in May 2006. Helping the Republican cause was yet another major investigation of voter fraud by the state's other U.S. attorney, Todd P. Graves of Missouri's Western District, headquartered in Kansas City. In 2004 and 2005 he prosecuted and convicted four people for voting in both Missouri and neighboring Kansas.
What's all this mean? Well, for one thing, it shows that the Bush Administration had carefully placed politically minded allies with well-defined agendas in key Justice positions long before it was in vogue to suggest that the United States Department of Justice was operating as a political arm of the national Republican Party --a proposition which now seems little in doubt.
While at DoJ, Schlozman --an individual with apparently limited aptitude as a Justice Department lawyer-- is involved in a key lawsuit against a Missouri Democratic officeholder and becomes a critical public advocate for a Voter ID law almost identical to one that gets passed in Missouri. He then gets appointed as U.S. Attorney for Missouri's Western District in the midst of a Justice Department investigation of the state's Republican governor. That investigation quickly gets whitewashed, the federal prosecutor responsible fired along with seven others around the country.
Given these facts and the facts that have become known about the way the Bush Department of Justice operated under Alberto Gonzales, it is impossible to see these episodes as anything other than what they are: bold, brazen, and fearless attempts to commandeer the trappings of the federal law enforcement infrastructure in the state as a mechanism for the perpetuation of Republican power. The more facts we learn, the more crystal clear that's become.