Constitutional Law

Mukasey Suggests No Charges In DOJ Hiring Controversy

Top advisers in the U.S. Justice Department will not be criminally prosecuted for using political considerations in filling career positions at the Department, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said today. In an address to the American Bar Association, Mukasey acknowledged the “well-publicized recent reports that some people at the Justice Department in the past few years failed to observe professional standards and violated civil laws that govern the hiring of career employees and summer law interns.”

In remarks this morning before the ABA, Mukasey highlighted his efforts to address the reports’ charges, and noted that, “The mission of the Justice Department is the evenhanded application of the Constitution and the laws enacted under it. That mission has to start with the evenhanded application of the laws within our own Department. Some people at the Department deviated from that strict standard, and the institution failed to stop them.”

Mukasey said he would continue to take numerous “steps” to repair the Department’s reputation, noting that the Department intended to reach out to the candidates who were rejected because of their political affiliations and “encourage them to apply for any vacancies at the Department.”

But Mukasey said it was doubtful that criminal prosecutions of those former aides who improperly used political considerations in hiring for Department jobs would follow. He claimed that “some commentators have suggested that we should criminally prosecute the people found in the reports to have committed misconduct. Where there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing, we vigorously investigate it. And where there is enough evidence to charge someone with a crime, we vigorously prosecute. But not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime. In this instance, the two joint reports found only violations of the civil service laws.”

The reports issued in June and July by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) revealed that top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales used political criteria in seeking to fill non-political positions within the Justice Department.

The first report, issued June 24, revealed that in 2002 and 2006, candidates for nonpolitical jobs and internships were rejected because of their affiliations with progressive organizations, including the American Constitution Society. During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in late July, Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) denounced the hiring actions within the Justice Department and said several of top aides to Gonzales “broke the law.”

The Justice Department’s internal investigative offices are still looking into improper hiring practices within the civil rights division and the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.

For additional coverage on the controversy over hiring at the Justice Department watch a video message from ACS Executive Director Lisa Brown here and read her commentary on the matter for TPM Café here.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on August 12, 2008 (boomark / email).