Justice Department hiring probe expands

Justice Department investigators said Wednesday they were probing whether the agency’s civil rights division engaged in improper hiring and personnel decisions -- expanding an investigation that arose from the firing last year of eight U.S. attorneys.

The internal review also will look into hiring for the agency’s prestigious honors program for entry-level attorneys and for summer internships, according to a letter to the House and Senate judiciary committees from Inspector General Glenn A. Fine and H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility.

Last week, a former top aide to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, Monica M. Goodling, testified before a House committee that she had “crossed the line” by considering the party affiliations of people applying for nonpolitical jobs at the Justice Department. Goodling acknowledged that she included political factors -- including campaign contributions -- in screening for such career positions as immigration judges and assistant U.S. attorneys.

Injecting party politics into federal hiring decisions is a possible violation of federal civil service laws, and can lead to the suspension or firing of those involved. Goodling resigned from the Justice Department this year, and testified under a grant of immunity from prosecution.

The expanded investigation also appears to reflect concerns among a growing number of career employees at the Justice Department who have suggested that politics have compromised the hiring process at the department during the Bush administration.

In a letter this spring to the judiciary panels, an anonymous group of Justice employees wrote that they thought department political appointees were using politics to screen candidates for the honors and internship programs.

“Most of those struck from the list had interned for a Hill Democrat, clerked for a Democratic judge, worked for a ‘liberal’ cause, or otherwise appeared to have ‘liberal’ leanings,” the “Group of Concerned Department of Justice Employees” wrote in the April 7 letter.

After meeting with some of those concerned staffers, the Justice Department issued new guidelines for the honors and summer programs, removing high-level political appointees from the selection process. The department said the moves were taken “to avoid even the perception of any political influence in the process.”

Several former senior officials in the department’s civil rights division also have said they believe that Bush administration appointees applied a political litmus test to purge the division’s ranks in favor of Republican loyalists. The newly reconstituted division, the former employees have said, often filed lawsuits that benefited Republican candidates.

“Investigation of hiring practices throughout the department, especially the civil rights division, is long overdue,” said Joseph D. Rich, a former voting rights chief in the division, commenting on the expanded internal probe.

In their letter, Fine and Jarrett said they were looking at “allegations regarding Monica Goodling’s and others’ actions” in “hiring and personnel decisions.”

The probe is an outgrowth of their investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year by the Bush administration. Democrats have alleged that the dismissals were part of a plan by the administration to appoint top prosecutors who would pursue voter fraud and public corruption cases that would benefit Republicans.

“It is deeply troubling that the crisis of leadership at the department allowed the White House and others to wield political influence over key law enforcement decisions and hiring policies,” Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday.

“It is unacceptable that a senior Justice Department official was allowed to screen career employees and some judicial appointments for political loyalty,” Leahy said, alluding to Goodling’s testimony last week. “It confirms our worst fears about the unprecedented and improper reach of politics into the department’s professional ranks.”

*

rick.schmitt@latimes.com