Missouri attorney a focus in USA firings = Bradley Schlozman

[L. Coyote]

Missouri attorney a focus in firings
Senate bypassed in appointment of Schlozman
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | May 6, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/06/missouri_attorney_a_focus_in_firings/


WASHINGTON -- Todd Graves brought just four misdemeanor voter fraud indictments during his five years as the US attorney for western Missouri -- even though some of his fellow Republicans in the closely divided state wanted stricter oversight of Democratic efforts to sign up new voters.

Then, in March 2006, Graves was replaced by a new US attorney -- one who had no prosecutorial experience and bypassed Senate confirmation. Bradley Schlozman moved aggressively where Graves had not, announcing felony indictments of four workers for a liberal activist group on voter registration fraud charges less than a week before the 2006 election.

Republicans, who had been pushing for restrictive new voting laws, applauded. But critics said Schlozman violated a department policy to wait until after an election to bring voter fraud indictments if the case could affect the outcome, either by becoming a campaign issue or by scaring legitimate voters into staying home.

................

"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."

.............MUCH MORE >.........

[L. Coyote]

1. U.S. attorney probe raises civil rights issues

U.S. attorney probe raises civil rights issues
Focus on voter fraud under Bush may be partisan, critics say.
By Greg Gordon, Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor - McClatchy Washington Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, March 24, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A9
http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/143285.html


WASHINGTON -- Under President Bush, the Justice Department has backed laws that narrow minority voting rights and pressed U.S. attorneys to investigate voter fraud -- policies that critics say have been intended to suppress Democratic votes.

Bush, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, and other Republican political advisers have highlighted voting rights issues and what Rove has called the "growing problem" of election fraud by Democrats since Bush took power in the tumultuous election of 2000, a race ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Since 2005, McClatchy Newspapers has found, Bush has appointed at least three U.S. attorneys who had worked in the Justice Department's civil rights division when it was rolling back longstanding voting-rights policies aimed at protecting predominantly poor, minority voters.

.....................

Taken together, critics say, the replacement of the U.S. attorneys, the voter-fraud campaign and the changes in Justice Department voting rights policies suggest the Bush administration may have been using its law enforcement powers for partisan political purposes.

................

[L. Coyote]

2. Bush Appointee "most aggressively political of the political appointees"

Bush Appointee "Led by Power"
By Paul Kiel - April 26, 2007, 2:27 PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003101.php


So far, Bradley Schlozman has been a minor character in the U.S. attorneys scandal. He ought to be a major one.

To put the case succinctly: Schlozman was the most aggressively political of the political appointees in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. And the administration installed him as the U.S. attorney in a key swing state in an election year. And to clinch it all, as we'll see in our next post, he delivered.

............

Bob Kengle, formerly the deputy chief for the voting section, told me that Schlozman "led by power":

"What he sought to inculcate into people was a fear that if you disagreed, if you asked for reconsideration on something, if you pointed out something that was not correct in a decision that had been made, then you’d pay for it."

............

At the Civil Rights Division, Schlozman, who oversaw the voting section, was responsible for pushing through two of the most controversial decisions: approving Tom DeLay's 2003 Texas redistricting and the 2005 Georgia voter I.D. law. Schlozman was such an enthusiastic backer of the Georgia law that he published an op-ed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in its support after the federal appeals court barred its implementation.

After all this, Schlozman, who had zero prosecutorial experience, was installed as the U.S. attorney in western Missouri -- where Jim Talent was battling Claire McCaskill in one of the closest Senate races in the country. The administration appointed him suddenly and without consulting the senior Republican senator in the state, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO).

[L. Coyote]

11. MORE DU Discussion here

cal04 Sun May-06-07 10:40 AM
It's All About Voter Fraud & Giving Republicans an Electoral Edge
Jesselyn Radack

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x832996

[L. Coyote]

3. U. S. ATTORNEYS - 2006 Missouri's election was ground zero for GOP

U. S. ATTORNEYS - 2006 Missouri's election was ground zero for GOP
By Greg Gordon - McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/17168096.htm


WASHINGTON - Accusations about voter fraud seemed to fly from every direction in Missouri before last fall's elections. State and national Republicans leaders fretted that dead people might vote or that some live people might vote more than once.

The threat to the integrity of the election was seen as so grave that Bradley Schlozman, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and later the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, twice wielded the power of the federal government to try to protect the balloting. The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly also stepped into action.

......

The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout.

.....................

Before last fall's election:

-Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn't police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud.

..........MORE..........

[L. Coyote]

4. Erin Ferns: Voter Fraud Used to Gain Political Leverage in MO

Voter Fraud Used to Gain Political Leverage in MO
Weekly Voting Rights News Update
By Erin Ferns
This an entry in a series of blogs to keep people informed on current election reform and voting rights issues in the news.
http://houseoflabor.tpmcafe.com/blog/project_vote/2007/may/04/voter_fraud_used_to_gain_political_leverage_in_mo

Reports in recent weeks surrounding the issue of so-called “voter fraud” have revealed calculated partisan efforts to suppress low income and minority voters using the full weight of the US Department of Justice......

.............

. Earlier, in St. Louis, local officials, led by local political appointee, Scott Leiendecker, tried to stop 5,000 people who registered to vote through ACORN from being added to the rolls. These 5,000 voters were sent letters in late October 2006 warning that their applications wouldn’t be processed if they did not respond by letter and phone to confirm their identity. They sent a second notice rescinding their warning when Project Vote and Advancement Project threatened to sue.

Questioning the credentials of 5,000 applicants wasn’t the only game being played with the voter lists. In 2005, Scholzman authorized a Justice Department lawsuit, alleging that Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office had not made a “'reasonable effort'” to remove ineligible voters from the rolls. The suit was thrown out on April 13 when a federal judge said the “government had provided no evidence of voter fraud.” Before the 2006 election, the Supreme Court declared Missouri's narrowly passed voter ID law unconstitutional. The law was drafted with the assistance of St. Louis lawyer Mark “Thor” Hearne, who worked as national counsel to President Bush's reelection campaign and later “set up a non-profit group to publicize incidents of alleged voter fraud.”

Gordon and Kiel’s reports show that the real crime marring the integrity of our elections is not voter fraud, but the attempt to gain partisan advantage through manipulation of the federal government.

In Other News:

The use of voter fraud claims to pass voter ID legislation continues, this time in Mississippi and Texas ...............

................

[L. Coyote]

5. NPR: Attorneys Scandal May Be Tied to Missouri Voting

Attorneys Scandal May Be Tied to Missouri Voting
Listen to this story... by Frank Morris
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9981606


All Things Considered, May 3, 2007 · The Justice Department's push to remove U.S. attorneys in 2006 might have been larger than the eight cases that have been discussed in Congress. Other U.S. attorneys' names were on a list the agency compiled in January 2006 — the prosecutor who replaced one of them was the first to be named under the Patriot Act.

One of the federal prosecutors on the list was U.S. Attorney for Western Missouri Todd Graves. Graves resigned last year, before the forced dismissals took place. He left several months after refusing to sign off on a voter-registration lawsuit that was filed against the state of Missouri by an acting assistant attorney general, Bradley Schlozman.

Less than two weeks later, Schlozman was installed to replace Graves under a Patriot Act provision allowing President Bush to place Schlozman in the job without Senate confirmation.

Schlozman went on to bring voter-fraud charges against members of the liberal group ACORN, less than a week before the hotly contested Missouri Senate election. .......

.................

[L. Coyote]

34. MAYBE or MAYBE SMOKESCREEN. What about the MEDICARE FRAUD inquiry??

Carol Lam was ousted and she was prosecuting big medicine = Tenet, et.al.

The same thing was going on in MO.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Sandbagged Novation LLC Prosecution
Kansas City, MO 04/16/07
http://www.pressrelease365.com/pr/government/federal/alberto-gonzales-novation-prosecution-1293.htm


Novation LLC a hospital supplier in Irving, Texas admitted in a Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals filing dated April 9th, 2007 that it was identified as a co-conspirator in a 2002 scheme to use US Bancorp’s trust division to prevent Medical Supply Chain from entering the market for hospital supplies by withholding escrow accounts and misusing the USA PATRIOT act as a pretext. ....

In an April 18, 2005 affidavit, Medical Supply Chain founder Samuel Lipari complained about FBI misuse of USA PATRIOT Act surveillance powers. The affidavit described interception of electronic communications and searches by law enforcement officials being used to interfere with and obstruct Lipari’s civil prosecution of the Novation defendants in Medical Supply Chain, Inc., v. Novation LLC et al....

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales confirmed the existence of the program for warrantless surveillance, ............

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Lots more details about this here:

http://www.firedupmissouri.com/star_butchers_voter_fraud_story

[L. Coyote]

8. GOOD READ. "made to remove Republicans from the line of fire...";

We wrote yesterday about the outrageousness of the Kansas City Star's failure to run a McClatchy story that provided rich detail about the key role of Missouri in national Republican efforts to swing elections through the widespread and false claims of "voter fraud."

After being called on the carpet for ignoring the piece, the Star finally ran the story in today's paper --but not before making significant changes to the story's original form. Those changes serve mainly to soften the story's blow to prominent Missouri Republicans whom the Star apparently feels it must tiptoe carefully around.

A side-by-side glance at the two stories reveals subtle but meaningful contrast in their respective textures...

........................

The purposes for the changes to these grafs could not be more transparent; they are plainly made to remove Republicans from the line of fire. .......

............

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Yes it is sick, is it not?

That reporter is very biased to repukelicans.

[L. Coyote]

7. Gonzales Favorite Also Allegedly Hired GOPers

Gonzales Favorite Also Allegedly Hired GOPers
By Paul Kiel - May 3, 2007, 4:23 PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003149.php

..... Bradley Schlozman, who was then the second in command at the department's Civil Rights Division. A former Justice Department lawyer, Ty Clevenger, says that Schlozman asked him whether a potential applicant was a Republican before deciding whether to interview him.

And where does Schlozman work now? After a controversial stint as U.S. Attorney for Kansas City, he now works in the Executive Office of United States Attorneys. Salon has quoted a former senior Justice Department official as saying that Schlozman was "one of Gonzales' guys."

What Schlozman allegedly did is against the law. So is anyone investigating that?

.................

[proud2BlibKansan]

10. I know the Dems in MO are very concerned about this

Hopefully they will press for investigations.

[L. Coyote]

12. Senator McCaskill can investigate this ...

Senator McCaskill was named as one of the select Senators to sit on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, formerly known as the Truman Committee.

[windy252]

13. I'll try to call her tomorrow.

Thanks for anyone who donated to MO last cycle to help us get rid of Talent.

[L. Coyote]

14. HOW ELECTIONS ARE STOLEN

Diving Deeper Into The Muck Of Bush Scandals
Wednesday, 2 May 2007, 11:41 am
Opinion: Bernard Weiner
Diving Deeper Into The Muck Of Bush Scandals
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0705/S00067.htm


When looking at daily news reports, we all tend to fall into the trap of focusing on juicy details of the scandaldu jour. It's natural to do so. But often by concentrating so carefully on the minutiae, we miss seeing the import of the larger picture. .........

.....................

HOW ELECTIONS ARE STOLEN

Republican officials lop tens of thousands of minority voters off the voting rolls for one reason or another: because the voters may have moved and not filed a timely change-of-address form, and because they are supposed convicted felons or those who have the same or similar name as convicted felons, etc.. What Rove and Gonzales want the various U.S. Attorneys to do is to indict liberal organizations -- the Democratic Party itself, advocacy groups such as ACORN, et al. -- for alleged "electoral fraud" in signing up new voters and in that party's get-out-the-vote drives.

It doesn't matter if there's little or no truth to the "voter-fraud" charges. (fired U.S. Attorney David Iglesias refused to prosecute what he called these "bogus" cases). The point for Rove and his minions is that by charging and indicting Democrats, a lot of legal smoke is created that could lead many wavering voters to believe there's a genuine fire there and thus not vote for the Democratic candidates. Additionally, such charges tie up the Democratic Party and its supporting organizations for many months in costly legal proceedings. Then, too, if such charges are made often enough, it sort of balances out any negative publicity Republican candidates and officials might be receiving as a result of their corrupt political and financial maneuverings.

..................

[L. Coyote]

15. BIO and DOJ History: Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division

IN EFFECT, Schlozman would have been the responsible party for bringing action for any voter fraud, and for the violations of civil rights by Republicans who were purging minority voters from the registered voter lists.

Here is the DOJ page:
United States Attorney's Office
Western District of Missouri
Kansas City | Springfield | Jefferson City
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/mow/aboutus/schlozman.html


Bradley J. Schlozman was appointed to serve as the United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri under an Attorney General Appointment on March 23, 2006.

Prior to assuming his current post, Mr. Schlozman served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the United States Department of Justice. In this capacity, Mr. Schlozman supervised all activities of the Civil Rights Division, which is comprised of over 700 employees, including 356 attorneys. The Civil Rights Division is responsible for enforcing federal civil rights statutes, including those statutes that prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, sex, disability, religion, and national origin in education, employment, credit, housing, public accommodations and facilities, voting, and certain federally funded and conducted programs.

Mr. Schlozman served for five months as the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division. Before that, he had served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General since May 2003, directly supervising the Criminal, Voting, Employment, and Special Litigation Sections of the Civil Rights Division. Mr. Schlozman began his service in the Bush Administration as Counsel to then-Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.

..................................

[L. Coyote]

16. HARPERS: The “Voting Fraud” Fraud: Missouri Division

The “Voting Fraud” Fraud: Missouri Division
BY Scott Horton - April 20, 2007
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/04/horton-20070420hjwf


One of the hotbeds of partisan manipulation and corruption for the Bush administration has been Missouri. U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman was previously in the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, where he was linked directly to efforts to push through Jim Crow legislation in Georgia. He overrode the unanimous staff recommendation of his office that the Georgia ID legislation be opposed. After arriving in Missouri, Schlozman launched litigation against the Missouri Secretary of State attempting to have voter lists culled to remove properly registered voters. On Friday, the U.S. District Court ruled against Schlozman saying that his contentions were incomprehensible and that he had failed to offer any evidence whatsoever of voter fraud. The decision to sack Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins has been directly related to a criminal investigation he had begun surrounding Missouri's Republican Governor Matt Blunt and Blunt's counsel and Karl Rove friend Mark Hearne.

[L. Coyote]

17. Of course, Karl Rove had a complaint. Claire McCaskill won.

Sunday, May 6, 2007
Bradley Schlozman's KC Activities Profiled
Posted by Corpus Juris
http://proctoringcongress.blogspot.com/2007/05/bradley-schlozmans-kc-activities.html

................

When interviewed by Savage, main justice's spokesperson said that Scholzman had received permission to file the voting fraud cases just before the election. The DoJ spokesman cited an "unwritten exception" to the general Department of Justice Guidelines as justifying the indictments. Apparently, it was OK to publicly file the politically charged indictments five days before the election because "investigators need not interview voters for such cases." If you believe that you must also believe the Gonzales 8 were fired for "performance related reasons."

Schlozman announced on November 3, 2007, that he had assigned an Assistant US Attorney Matt Whitworth and members of the FBI to guard against election fraud. He urged members of the public to report cases of voter fraud to Whitworth and the FBI.

As it turned out according to a November 8, 2006, story in the local Kansas City legal publication The Daily Record

Don Ledford, public affairs director for U.S. Attorney Bradley Schlozman in Kansas City, didn't have any complaints to report.

Of course, Karl Rove had a complaint. Claire McCaskill won.

......................

[L. Coyote]

18. DOJ rotten business "sanctioned, condoned, or even perhaps encouraged by rotten leaders. "

Here is Your Justice Department
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/benchconference/2007/05/rotten_to_the_core.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Ah, the first weekend in May. Mint Juleps. An exciting Kentucky Derby. Playoff hockey. And news of another high-ranking Justice Department official reportedly hiring federal lawyers based upon their political affiliation-- a violation of federal law. This isn't a repeat of last week's news that Monica Goodling may have hired lawyers for the Justice Department because they were Republicans. This is "new" news that a fellow named Bradley Schlozman, a former "senior civil rights attorney" at Justice, may have told Republican lawyers to delete resume references to their party affiliation and then re-submit their resumes so that they could get their jobs.

That was when Schlozman was in Washington, D.C. ........

............

Congress wants to haul Schlozman back to the Capitol to question him under oath about his hiring practices. Will he pull a "Goodling" and exercise his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent? It would not surprise me if he did. Will the Congress grant him immunity the way it did with Goodling? Too early to tell. At some point, the incentive for the legislators to trade immunity for information at the expense of the possibility of prosecution (which was the calculus for the Goodling deal) will diminish. And when it does, the person without the immunity -- maybe it's Schlozman, maybe it's the next official -- actually may face criminal charges if the evidence against him or her is strong enough.

One thing seems clear, however. With each development like this, with each new accusation of inappropriate conduct, It is becoming increasingly obvious that there are patterns of conduct at play at the Justice Department and among current U.S. Attorneys that beggar not just a fuller explanation from the Attorney General and others but also more investigative work by journalists and legislators. This is rotten business and it was sanctioned, condoned, or even perhaps encouraged by rotten leaders.

[L. Coyote]

19. Civil Rights Supervisors Used Evaluations to Punish Lawyers

Civil Rights Supervisors Used Evaluations to Punish Lawyers
By Paul Kiel - May 7, 2007, 4:11 PM
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003162.php


Now that Bradley Schlozman is in the sights of congressional investigators for his allegedly partisan approach to hiring at the Civil Rights Division, it's worth taking another look at how he ran the place.

.............

Joe Rich, the former chief of the voting section, says that under Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky, the two supervisors of the section, he was ordered to make changes to at least seven performance appraisals: "In several instances," Rich told me, he was ordered to include negative remarks about the work of at least five attorneys who had apparently done nothing more than make recommendations with which Schlozman and von Spakovsky disagreed.

Rich also said that it also went the other way: "I was also ordered to remove any remarks which noted areas where there could be improvement from the performance appraisals of attorneys who were favored by and had become allies of Mr. Schlozman."

Rich said that it was too strong of a characterization to say that he'd been ordered to "falsify" the evaluations, which would have been a crime. But he was clear that the orders, like so much of what the political appointees in the Justice Department has done, were a major departure from past practice. ........

..............

[L. Coyote]

20. GREG GORDON: GOP sought to suppress votes in Missouri ....

GOP sought to suppress votes in Missouri, critics say
Missouri is among states where alleged efforts to dampen Democratic turnout were focused.
By GREG GORDON - McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.kansascity.com/115/story/94097.html


WASHINGTON | Before the 2006 mid-term elections, Republicans in Missouri talked a lot about voter fraud.

They filed voter-registration lawsuits, passed a law in Jefferson City requiring voters to show ID cards and fretted that dead people might vote.

Even White House political guru Karl Rove weighed in, telling a talk-show host a couple of days before the election that he had just visited Missouri, where GOP strategists said they were “well aware of” the threat of voter fraud.

The threat to the integrity of the election was seen as so grave that Bradley Schlozman, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and later the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, wielded the power of the federal government to protect the ballot.

Now, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys have led to allegations that that Republican campaign was not as it appeared......

..............

[L. Coyote]

21. U.S. Attorneys to Leave in '09, but Conservative Political Hirees in Justice Dept. will Remain

U.S. Attorneys to Leave in '09, but Conservative Political Hirees in Justice Dept. will Remain
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 05/07/2007 - 1:57pm. Analysis
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/analysis/209


A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

George Bush has made sure that the upper levels of the Justice Department remained loyal to him throughout his time in office. But the new allegations of political hirings for lower level employees means that the stench of the Bush Administration will linger in federal law enforcement for years to come.

Like the Attorney General, U.S. Attorneys serve for limited terms and tend to be replaced when a new president takes office. Most other Justice lawyers, however, are career public servants and can stay as long as they want.

Even as the U.S. Attorney scandal grows worse - new reports suggest the LA U.S. Attorney was forced to resign for investigating powerful Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis - more and more questions are surfacing about other DOJ hirings.

..................

[L. Coyote]

22. MATT APUZZO, AP: Congress Expands Justice Dept. Inquiry

Congress Expands Justice Dept. Inquiry
San Francisco Chronicle, CA - 18 minutes ago

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
Monday, May 7, 2007
(05-07) 16:01 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) --
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/05/07/national/w154058D37.DTL&type=politics


Congress sought cooperation from one Justice Department official and prepared to put the agency's former White House liaison under oath in a widening investigation into the politics of Justice Department decision-making.

The Senate Judiciary Committee asked Bradley Schlozman, a former senior civil rights attorney and U.S. attorney, to speak with investigators. .....

Lawmakers want to talk to Schlozman and Goodling as part of an inquiry into whether the department played politics with the hiring and firing of department officials. The inquiry began as a question about whether U.S. attorneys — presidential appointees who serve as the top federal law enforcement officials in their state districts — were fired for political reasons.

It has grown, however, into an investigation of whether the agency let politics affect criminal investigations and whether officials made employment decisions for political reasons.

..................

[L. Coyote]

23. ACORN Takes Control of High-Level GOP Front Group ACVR's Internet Domain Names!

ACORN Takes Control of High-Level GOP Front Group ACVR's Internet Domain Names!
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4519


Abandoned Webspace of White House-Connected 'Voter Fraud' Group, 'American Center For Voting Rights', Purchased by DC Attorney; Handed Over to Non-Profit Which They Had Targeted for Years!

.............

Chalk this one up as one for the good guys. The Internet real estate once owned by a group of deceptive White House-connected Republican operatives has now come under the control of one of the non-profit groups which had taken the brunt of the GOP outfits relentless anti-democratic political tactics.

The ironic turn of events comes on the heels of new revelations connecting the Republican operatives to high-level DoJ and White House officials, and underscores the need for an immediate Congressional investigation into the conspiracy behind the supposedly "non-partisan" GOP operation.

...............

Last week, the lucky winner of the domain names was revealed to be DC-based attorney, Elizabeth Kingsley of Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, LLP, a law firm specializing in providing legal advice to nonprofit organizations. Among their clients: the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, better known as ACORN, the social justice foundation which has registered millions of low-income voters over the last several elections cycles, and which has outrageously taken the brunt of a good portion of ACVR's unsubstantiated claims of "voter fraud".

Upon receiving word that Kingsley had won ownership rights to both of ACVR's former domain names, she promptly handed the keys over to ACORN.

............

[L. Coyote]

24. How U.S. attorneys were used to spread voter-fraud fears

How U.S. attorneys were used to spread voter-fraud fears
Long before it fired eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons, the Bush administration had politicized their jobs by making them push a favorite GOP talking point.
By Mark Follman, Alex Koppelman and Jonathan Vanian
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/03/21/us_attorneys/index.html


March 21, 2007 | Under intense criticism for firing eight United States attorneys, the Bush administration has spent the past few weeks casting about for an explanation for the dismissals that involves performance rather than politics. On March 13, White House spokesman Dan Bartlett tried to come up with one. "Over the course of several years, we have received complaints about U.S. attorneys," he insisted, "particularly when it comes to election fraud cases." On Tuesday, President Bush pressed home this claim with a similar statement during his defense of embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. "We did hear complaints and concerns about U.S. attorneys," said Bush. "Some complained about the lack of vigorous prosecution of election fraud cases."

Bush and Bartlett were arguing that some of the fired attorneys had underperformed by failing to prosecute the raft of offenses that make up voter fraud -- things like vote buying, double voting, and voting by felons, illegal aliens and the deceased. And it is true that at least two of the prosecutors who were let go might not have pursued voter fraud cases to the satisfaction of their bosses at the Department of Justice. But under the Bush administration, pursuing voter fraud is not always about performance. It's often about politics.

.........................

=============================


image from http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/

[L. Coyote]

25. SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD: Federal Justice: Spinning wheels

Federal Justice: Spinning wheels
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/313432_justed.html

......

Last year's firing of high-performing U.S. attorneys, including Seattle's John McKay, underlines the changes under a highly ideological right-wing leadership in the department that seems to see law enforcement as an election tool. None of the problems have been more serious than in the Civil Rights Division, which brought no discrimination cases on behalf of black or American Indian voters in a five-year period.

This week, a Seattle P-I report on post-9/11 changes in federal law enforcement showed the FBI overall has pursued far fewer civil rights cases of all kinds than in the past. After FBI agents investigate, their cases go to Justice Department attorneys, who decide whether to file cases. A retired agent told the P-I, "A lot of us felt like they were causing us to spin our wheels on civil rights cases."

The administration deliberately has transformed Justice's Civil Rights Division, which enjoyed bipartisan respect for decades. The debasing of the division stemmed from both ideology and resource shifting, .... Last year, The Boston Globe found that Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, abandoned a tradition of non-political hiring of the division's attorneys and inserted political appointees into the screening of applicants in 2002. As a result, most hires had no civil rights experience and were more likely to be members of the Federalist Society and other conservative groups.

........

[L. Coyote]

26. BOTH Chief US Attorney and Senior US Prosecuting Attorney found DEAD in homes.

Former MO US Attorney Todd Graves the Ninth Attorney Targeted by Alberto Gonzales
http://www.pressrelease365.com/pr/government/federal/graves-attorney-general-gonzales-1275.htm


Kansas City, MO 04/09/07 - Medical Supply Chain founder Samuel Lipari unearthed a US Department of Justice memo revealing the Office of the Attorney General had targeted not eight but ten US Attorneys including the former attorney for the Western District of Missouri, Todd P. Graves. The documents were obtained during Medical Supply Chain's discovery .....

The e-mail dated January 9th, 2006 from Kyle Sampson, .....

The Western District of Missouri US Attorney office under Todd P. Graves had been active in prosecuting Medicare fraud.....

......

Samuel Lipari became concerned that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was using the firing of appointed US Attorneys and senior assistant US Attorneys to obstruct justice in investigations involving public corruption on October 18, 2004 when white collar crime prosecuting Assistant US Attorneys Leonard Senerote, Michael Uhl and Michael Snipes were fired from the Ft. Worth Texas office of the US Attorney that had issued subpoenas in an ongoing investigation of Novation LLC and other hospital suppliers for anticompetitive practices. Samuel Lipari was especially concerned over the firings in the Ft. Worth office where the chief US Attorney responsible for Medicare fraud, Thelma Louise Quince Colbert had been found dead in her swimming pool on July 20th, 2004 and the Ft. Worth office Senior US Prosecuting Attorney that had signed the subpoenas, Shannon Ross (formerly of Kansas) was found dead in her home on September 13th, 2004. ......

..............

[L. Coyote]

29. This topic now has its own thread. w/64 recs already

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x843263

[L. Coyote]

30. Greatest Thread just plain disappeared. Reasons unknown for now.

Awaiting admins on this before restarting the topic.

[L. Coyote]

31. Complete copy salvaged. n/t

[L. Coyote]

32. REPOSTED here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x849449

[L. Coyote]

37. US Attorney Firing: Voter Fraud, Medicare Fraud, WHICH IS IT ???

Discussion follows here now: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x853813

[L. Coyote]

27. Congress seeks more testimony in expanded U.S. Justice Department inquiry

Congress seeks more testimony in expanded U.S. Justice Department inquiry
The Associated Press
Published: May 7, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/08/america/NA-GEN-US-Congress-Subpoenas.php

WASHINGTON: Congress is stepping up its inquiry into the politics of Justice Department decision-making, seeking cooperation from one department official and preparing to put the department's former White House liaison under oath.

The Senate Judiciary Committee asked Bradley Schlozman, a former senior civil rights attorney and U.S. attorney, to speak with investigators. ......

Lawmakers want to question Schlozman, who now works for the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, about a voter fraud lawsuit he filed against Missouri in the lead-up to the 2006 election. Committee members said they wanted to know whether Schlozman's predecessor was forced out for not endorsing that lawsuit, which was ultimately dismissed.

"The Committee would benefit from hearing directly from you in order to gain a better understanding of the role voter fraud may have played in the administration's decisions to retain or remove certain U.S. attorneys," the Judiciary Committee's Democratic chairman, Patrick Leahy, wrote in a letter co-signed by the committee's top Republican, Arlen Specter.

The letter asked Schlozman to submit voluntarily to interviews and testimony and provide documents to the committee......................

[L. Coyote]

28. Lawmakers probing whether Missouri prosecutor was forced out

Lawmakers probing whether Missouri prosecutor was forced out
May 7, 2007 9:15 PM (3 hrs ago)
By SAM HANANEL, AP
http://www.examiner.com/a-715495~Lawmakers_probing_whether_Missouri_prosecutor_was_forced_out.html


........ Democrats claim the Missouri lawsuit was part of a calculated political effort by Republicans to dampen election turnout by alleging wide-scale voter fraud. Last month, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, saying there was no evidence of voter fraud in the state.

"Under this Justice Department, political activists like Brad Schlozman use their position to call the integrity of the election process into question even when there is no basis," said Missouri Democratic Party spokesman Jack Cardetti.

Missouri had one of the nation's most closely watched Senate races in 2006, when Democrat Claire McCaskill beat incumbent Republican Jim Talent by a narrow margin...........

"I think it's going to look terrible if he's not willing to come forward and testify voluntarily under oath," McCaskill said.

.............Schlozman clashed with career prosecutors in 2003 when he decided to approve a Texas redistricting plan that benefitted Republicans and in 2005 when he condoned a voter ID law in Georgia. Career attorneys argued that the actions would reduce minority voting. Courts later declared both plans illegal.

[L. Coyote]

33. Lawyers say hires were political

Lawyers say hires were political
Investigators look into accusations against Justice’s civil rights chief
GREG GORDON AND MARGARET TALEV; McClatchy Newspapers
Published: May 7th, 2007 01:00 AM
http://www.thenewstribune.com/358/story/56408.html


WASHINGTON – Congressional investigators are beginning to focus on accusations that a top civil rights official at the Justice Department illegally hired lawyers based on their political affiliations, especially for sensitive voting rights jobs.

Two former department lawyers told McClatchy Newspapers that Bradley Schlozman, a senior civil rights official, told them in early 2005, after spotting mention of their Republican affiliations on their job applications, to delete those references and resubmit their rsumés. Both attorneys were hired.

One of them, Ty Clevenger, said: “He wanted to make it look like it was apolitical.”

.................

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35. Olbermann: Minority voting suppressed by Justice Dept.= SMOKE SCREEN SMOKE SCREEN

Political Hatchetman may be the job description to consider in this scenario.
DO NOT for one minute think that this was JUST about vote suppression!!
Placing politicos in DoJ jobs can subvert more aspect of the law than voting rights.
Is the 'voting fraud' SMOKE SCREEN now being used to SMOKE SCREEN
the real reason WHY politicos are infiltratring the Justice Department????????

==================
Olbermann: Minority voting suppressed by Justice Dept.
David Edwards and Nick Juliano
Published: Tuesday May 8, 2007
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/olbermancnn_writeup_0508.html


Comparing the breaking scandal involving US Justice Department hiring to actions by the Soviet Politburo, MSNBC host Keith Olberman says in the video clip below that political considerations were behind the hiring of Justice Department employees at every level, "right down to the interns."

Congressional investigators are examining new claims that a top official in the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division based his hiring decisions on politics rather than experience, CNN reports.

Bradley J. Schlozman, who recently returned to Washington after serving as interim U.S. Attorney in Kansas City, Mo., allegedly hired an employee based on Republican credentials, ............

[L. Coyote]

36. Senators pursuing possible link between US Attorney firing and voter fraud suits

PAPER CHASE NEWSBURST
Serious law. Primary sources. Global perspective.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Senators pursuing possible link between US Attorney firing and voter fraud suits
Mike Rosen-Molina at 4:09 PM ET
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/05/senators-pursuing-possible-link-between.php

.... The US Senate Judiciary Committee ... seeks to question former US Attorney Bradley Schlozman , now with the Executive Office for United States Attorneys , about whether former US Attorney Todd Graves of Kansas City, Missouri, was fired when he refused to endorse a 2005 voter fraud lawsuit Schlozman filed against the state. Schlozman replaced Graves as interim US attorney when Graves resigned in 2006. In a letter to Schlozman co-signed by Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Chairman Patrick Leahy asked Schlozman to speak with the Committee and turn over documents, saying:

The committee would benefit from hearing directly from you in order to gain a better understanding of the role voter fraud may have played in the administration's decisions to retain or remove certain US attorneys.

===============================
Does anyone smell a SMOKE SCREEN????
Is the Judiciary Committee missing the real reason for the USA replacement, the investigation of Novation?? $$$$ BILLIONS $$$$

See this thread:
BOTH Chief US Attorney and Senior US Prosecuting Attorney found DEAD in their homes.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=849449&mesg_id=849449

ALSO, go directly to this article:

"On July 31, 2006 the London Times reported the existence of the US Department of Justice investigation of Novation’s conduct as a hospital group purchasing organization or “GPO” and quoted Professor Prakash Sethi, president of the International Center for Corporate Accountability at Baruch College in New York who stated “My most conservative estimates suggest that GPOs extract extra profits of $5 billion (£2.6 billion) to $6 billion which legitimately belong to their principal clients, the hospitals.” "

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Sandbagged Novation LLC Prosecution
Written by Samuel Lipari
Kansas City, MO -- Apr 16, 2007 -- /prbuzz/ --
http://www.prbuzz.com/attorney-general-alberto-gonzales

[L. Coyote]

38. CONCLUSION: Voter Fraud is just a Smoke Screen. Follow the MONEY $$$$$

I took an interest in this thread because of the "voter fraud" angle.

Researching the topic led to the conclusion that the voter fraud angle is just a smoke screen for the true reason the DoJ fired some of the USAs, the Medicare fraud issue being investigated by USAs in So. Cal. (Lam), Missouri (Graves) and Dallas, TX, where three Assistant USAs were dismissed.

Here is the thread of that investigation, a product of investigating this thread:

US Attorney Firing: Voter Fraud, Medicare Fraud, WHICH IS IT ???
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x853813

[MSC2007]

39. Excellent review !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Great work DU posters!!!

[L. Coyote]

40. Rep. ROY BLUNT (R-MO) = $3.6M in no-bid state contracts ...Graves Family

Target the Corrupt Republican Campaign (Missouri Focus)
http://corruptrepub.blogspot.com/2005/07/target-corrupt...

............... From CBS NEWS - June 11, 2003

.... Governor Matt Blunt has tried to prevent the U.S. Attorney's office from investigating his family's scandals by putting the wife of U.S. Attorney Todd Graves (U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri) on the Blunt Family payroll to the tune of a cool half million dollars a year, and he used taxpayer dollars to do it. This is described in the Kansas City Star. And here is an excerpt from a petition to Attorney General Gonzales demanding an investigation of this corruption:

It has recently been reported that United States Attorney Todd Graves and his family will personally benefit from no-bid state contracts valued at more than $3.6 million given by Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. This raises serious ethical and legal questions ..............

====================
MORE: Eleven Members of Congress Now Under Investigation, PLUS ten former members
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x831278#869679