Source:
APWASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is considering launching a grand jury investigation into whether one of its former leaders misled Congress about playing politics with civil rights issues, a government official said Monday.
The move amounts to a first step from an internal inquiry toward possible criminal charges in the scandal that helped force the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
At issue is whether Bradley Schlozman intentionally misled senators during a June 2007 hearing when he gave conflicting statements about his role in an election-eve filing of a voter fraud lawsuit in Missouri while serving, a year earlier, as a U.S. attorney based in Kansas City, Mo.
He also angered Democrats at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing when he admitted to boasting about hiring conservative loyalists over better-qualified lawyers in 2005 when he served as acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil rights division.
Read more:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jYuH3mAZbV0pXTznoxmZ2anGhojwD91BFOR00
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The investigation led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. A lawyer for Mr. Gonzales, George J. Terwilliger III, said Monday that the grand jury referral was “unrelated to anything connected to Judge Gonzales.”
Noting that Mr. Gonzales has promised to cooperate with all Justice Department investigations into the resignations, Mr. Terwilliger said, “He continues to make good on that commitment.” He declined to discuss Mr. Gonzales’s contacts with investigators, but said, “There’s no criminal investigation involving Judge Gonzales and the United States attorneys.”
Congressional Democrats said Mr. Gonzales might have perjured himself in his testimony about wireless eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, a program that the inspector general is also reviewing.
Asked whether there was any criminal investigation involving Mr. Gonzales’s testimony about the eavesdropping, Mr. Terwilliger said, “I’m not going to get into other things.”
more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/washington/17attorneys.html?hp from earlier yesterday:
WSJ: US Attorney Scandal Advances
Justin Rood Reports:
Federal prosecutors are reportedly pursuing their first criminal indictment in the U.S. Attorneys scandal.
The subject, according to the Wall Street Journal: Bradley Schlozman, for a time the U.S. Attorney for Kansas City, who resigned from his the Justice Department in disgrace last August after his role in politicizing the Justice Department was discovered. Schlozman, who most recently had served as the head of the department's Civil Rights Division, eventually admitted to Congress that he boasted to his Justice colleagues about his efforts to hire Republicans -- "good Americans," as he reportedly called his conservative hires.
The Journal reports that prosecutors investigating the scandal have filed a referral to a grand jury that "relates to allegations of political meddling," and focuses on "possible perjury" by Schlozman. It does not mean that criminal charges will be filed, only that prosecutors believe there may be grounds to do so.
more:
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2008/06/wsj-us-attorney.html