Bush’S Justice Dept. Hired Partisan Judges, Say Officials

Has the Bush Administration been appointing judges with ties to partisan politics? Bush’s Justice Dept. Hired Partisan Judges, Say OfficialsBy Cliff Montgomery – May 28, 2007The Bush Justice Department used a political affiliation litmus-test in hiring applicants for immigration court judgeships for several years, admit current and former Bush Administration officials. Further hiring was suspended in December after objections to the partisan practice from department lawyers, the officials add.The disclosures reveal that Bush’s Justice Department may have directly violated civil service laws–which outlaw political considerations in hiring–for a solid two years before Monica Goodling, the former senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who testified to Congress about the process last week, was put in charge of hirings at the department.Goodling admitted to the House Judiciary Committee on May 23rd that she “crossed the line” in weighing political affiliation for numerous categories of Justice Department career applicants, including immigration judges.The attorney for Kyle Sampson, Gonzales’ former chief of staff, wrote in a May 25th statement that Sampson and other top Justice officials also forwarded names of applicants with the proper political affiliation for appointments to the immigration courts, based on both legal advice given to Sampson and on common historical practice in the Bush department.”Based on this understanding, Kyle Sampson and others in the department believed it appropriate to forward names of qualified candidates who enjoyed political support,” Sampson Attorney Bradford Berenson wrote in a statement.The Justice Department admitted to the Washington Post on Friday that its administrative immigration courts are prevented by civil service laws from making appointments on the basis of political considerations.Sampson began his tenure at Justice in late 2003, and officials have told the Post that the partisan hirings probably began in early 2004. Goodling was made Gonzales’ counsel in October 2005, and his White House liaison and senior counselor and in April 2006.The department’s hiring practices have come to light because of the controversial firings last year of nine U.S. attorneys, in part over political considerations. A Justice Department investigation of the firings has now been expanded to include whether Goodling and other Gonzales aides used presumed political affiliation as a basis for hiring applicants filling non-political jobs.But one wonders how impartial the department will be in its investigation of itself. This “investigation” probably is not meant for fact, but for debate. With the Justice report, George W. Bush can then claim that the results of any other investigation which do not match those at Justice must be “biased”, thus providing him a needed rhetorical device.Such an “investigation” at Justice doesn’t have to be accurate; it merely has to allow deniability, and the chance for Bush to project the obvious failing of his administration onto his opponents.Goodling testified to representatives that Sampson told her the department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) had decided that immigration judges were not under civil service rules.The Justice Department countered, declaring after her testimony that it had “located no record” of any OLC opinion reaching that conclusion. But Goodling’s attorney, John Dowd, retorted that in her testimony Goodling was discussing verbal advice she received from Sampson, and not referring to any written OLC opinion.Berenson told the Post that the legal debate over whether immigration judges are under civil service rules “was highly uncertain and legally complex.”America’s 226 immigration judges are civil service employees hand-picked by the attorney general. Gonzales has hired 26, while his predecessor, John Ashcroft, chose 49, Justice officials told the Post.Many judges appointed over the past two years have fierce Republican or Bush Administration ties. They include former top Justice officials and even a former Capitol Hill Republican Party counsel, according to records.Look at it this way: One judge hired in 2005, Garry Malphrus, had been associate director of the Bush White House Domestic Policy Council from 2001 to 2004, records reveal. Another judge, Mark Metcalf, was appointed last year; before that, Metcalf was a Bush Justice and Defense department lawyer who lost a run as a Republican congressional candidate in Kentucky.Officials told the Post that the issue of partisan judges came to a boil late last year when, in answer to a lawsuit, Justice Department lawyers finally conceded that political considerations were being improperly used as a part of the hiring process.Hiring was frozen from December until April of this year, when a new merit-based personnel process became the hiring standard, say Justice Department officials.