|
The Senate and House judiciary committees pressed Attorney General Michael Mukasey for information Monday about the Department of Justice's decision to pay as much as $24,000 a month for a private attorney to defend Alberto Gonzales from a federal lawsuit accusing him of politicizing the DOJ when he was attorney general.
Last week, McClatchy Newspapers reported the unusual arrangement approved by the DOJ to have taxpayers pick up the tab for Gonzales's private attorney. Usually, attorneys in the DOJ's civil division represent agency employees who are sued based on decisions they made while they were employed by the Justice Department.
The Justice Department reportedly has set a $200 an hour limit, or $24,000 a month, on fees for Gonzales's private attorney, which he asked the DOJ to pay for.
Asked why Gonzales made the request, Gonzales spokesman Robert Bork Jr. told McClatchy that his client "values the work that the department's civil attorneys do in all cases" but thinks that "private counsel can often be useful where (department) officials are sued in an individual capacity, even where the suit has no substantive merit."
In a joint letter sent to Mukasey Monday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and his counterpart in the senate, Patrick Leahy, asked Mukasey to explain "the arrangement the Department has reached with Mr. Gonzales in connection with representation in this matter, and why has that arrangement not been made public."
"Under section 50.16 of title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, the Department may provide for a private attorney for a current or former employee sued individually for conduct within the scope of his employment, but the Government should not pay for private representation if the Attorney General or his designee "determines that the employee's actions do not reasonably appear to have been performed within the scope of his employment" or that "representation is not in the interest of the United States," says the Democratic committee leaders' letter.
Additionally, Conyers and Leahy want to know who at the DOJ "made the decision to pay for Mr. Gonzales's private legal expenses in connection with the politicization of hiring at the Justice Department, and how, when, and on what basis was the decision made," and "what other current or former Department officials has the Department decided to pay legal expenses in connection with these matters."
Dan Metcalfe, a former top DOJ official, filed a lawsuit seeking class action status on behalf of eight law students earlier this year after a DOJ inspector general's report found that DOJ officials who worked alongside Gonzales implemented hiring practices that bypassed liberal applicants for internships, immigration jobs, and prosecutor vacancies.
The report, released in June by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine, concluded that senior DOJ officials engaged in hiring practices that "constituted misconduct and also violated the Department's policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations."
Metcalfe's lawsuit accused Gonzales, who resigned from the DOJ in disgrace last year, and other current and former DOJ officials of preventing liberal leaning law students from securing internships at the DOJ. The lawsuit claims the law students suffered irreparable harm because they were rejected for the program on the basis of partisan politics.
"Given the Inspector General's findings of violations of Department policy and Federal law in connection with the politicization of Department hiring, on what basis did the Department determine that the conduct at issue in this lawsuit was within the scope of Mr. Gonzales's employment and that his representation is in the interest of the United States?" Conyers and Leahy wrote in their letter to Mukasey.
Leahy released a report last week that accused Gonzales and former White House political adviser Karl Rove of engaging in a "cover-up" in connection with the firings of nine federal prosecutors in December 2006.
"The evidence shows senior officials were focused on the political impact of Federal prosecutions and whether Federal prosecutors were doing enough to bring partisan voter fraud and corruption cases," said the 60-page Judiciary Committee report released by Leahy last Tuesday. "It is now apparent that the reasons given for these firings, including those reasons provided in sworn testimony by [Gonzales] and [his] Deputy Attorney General, were contrived as part of a cover-up."
The decision to terminate the prosecutors, the report said, was based on resistance by the U.S. Attorneys to pursue partisan political prosecutions. Rove was just one top Bush administration official that worked with the Justice Department on compiling a list of the U.S. Attorneys who should be fired.
"The evidence...shows that the list for firings was compiled with participation from the highest political ranks in the White House, including former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove," the report said.
The White House and the Justice Department have previously denied that senior Bush administration officials were involved in the firings.
Many of the report's findings have already been laid bare in a 356-page report issued in September by the DOJ's inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility. That report "found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several of the U.S. Attorneys."
But the Senate Judiciary Committee's report is an attempt to establish the justification for holding Rove and other White House officials in contempt for failing to testify before the committee about the firings. On Wednesday, Leahy will discuss the report before a meeting of the Judiciary Committee where he will also submit resolutions of contempt approved in December 2007 against Rove, former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten.
Furthermore, the report lays the groundwork for keeping the issue at the forefront of the 111th Congress, said an aide to Leahy, at which time committee members will decide whether to renew their efforts to pursue the sworn testimony of Rove, Miers, and Bolten.
Trackback(0)
 |
Subscribe to TPR 
Law 
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
