(Note: PJ Media has since published a better version of this post. Suggest you click to go there.) We received inconsistent responses from CRT staff to our questions concerning the purpose of the list of former Voting Section attorneys that DAAG Fernandes requested in late 2009 – a list that ultimately included 25 former Voting Section attorneys but omitted several former Section attorneys who were widely perceived to be conservatives. Fernandes stated that she requested a list of attorneys who had left the Section since 2005 and did not seek a list that excluded conservatives. Herren told the OIG that he could not remember how the list of attorneys was compiled, but believed it should have included attorneys who left during the prior administration, primarily those who departed the Section due to improper practices like those described in the prior OIG report. Wertz told us she believed that she may have worked on the list and said that she thought that Fernandes was looking for staff with extensive voting rights experience who might be interested in returning. However, when we pointed out that some attorneys on the list did not have extensive voting experience, she could not explain why they were included. She also could not explain why conservatives were left off the list even though they had significant voting litigation experience. She said that they may not have been interested in returning, though we found that Voting Section staff did not make any attempt to gauge the interest of the conservative attorneys. Berman said that the list was made up of attorneys with redistricting experience.
Sources familiar with the thinking of Civil Rights Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez report that he and others in the Department believe the Inspector General’s report vindicates the attorney hiring decisions over the last few years in the Civil Rights Division. In essence, Perez believes that the report shows that the attorneys were qualified. He must not have read page 218 of the report.
This, of course, misses entirely the point of the charges levied at the Division about hiring. Qualifications weren’t the core issue, ideological biases were. And on that score, the IG Report offers Perez no quarter. In fact, the IG report concludes that the criteria that only attorneys with experience working at a civil rights organization, which is invariably (and empirically) left of center, will be hired should not be a qualification. Perez should know better than to claim that the report vindicates the Division’s hiring decisions – because Perez himself complained about the recommendation to jettison this qualification.
But ideological binders can produce skewed thinking, and that’s happening in relation to the report by Division leadership. Consider the damning passage below. For years we heard that the Bush administration made hiring decisions based on ideology. Turns out Julie Fernandes, with the help of Deputy Becky Wertz were up to the same shenanigans – except this time for the purpose of recruiting liberal attorneys because of their ideology. The pair created an ideologically pure list of left wing lawyers to recruit to the Voting Section. The list excluded conservative attorneys who left the section in the same timeframe who also had extensive experience litigating Voting Rights cases – but left in part because of the harassment by liberal DOJ employees.
Will the names “Fernandes” and “Wertz” be thrown around for years in the left wing blogs as violators of DOJ policies against ideological hiring? Of course not, because the ends justify the means to this crowd. Note the horse-hockey explanations offered by Wertz and Berman for the list. From the IG Report starting at 218:
Although we did not receive a consistent explanation for the purpose of this list, we did not find sufficient evidence to conclude that the list was actually used in the recruitment and selection of new attorneys for the Voting Section. However, we found the explanations we received about the list troubling because it appeared that the list was prepared in part for recruiting purposes (Fernandes said she thought that there may be former staff who wanted to return to the Section), people widely perceived to be conservatives were omitted from it, and staff in the Voting Section failed to provide a consistent explanation as to why that was the case.
We believe these incidents point to ongoing risks within the Voting Section for future violations of merit system principles, as well as for creating perceptions that CRT engages in favoritism based on ideology and politics. “
Wertz said the conservatives “may not have been interested in returning,” because of course Becky Wertz is a clairvoyant. She was able to tell that hardworking lawyers who left because of the poisonous atmosphere she has personally presided over for years drove them out didn’t want to return (more on that management style another day). She seems confident that they never wanted to return even though she never contacted a single one of them, and some of them were in fact looking for jobs.
In the real world outside of government, Wertz’s excuse has a name not fit for this blog but it starts with bull.
Then consider Bob Berman’s response to the IG, that he wanted lawyers with “redistricting experience.” (And it is no accident the two – Wertz and Berman – were sympaticao on this effort.) His response doesn’t hold water because the list of attorneys who left didn’t all have redistricting experience. I can name names, but I won’t. So that explanation for the ideological hiring by Fernandes and Wertz doesn’t hold water.
Why does all this matter? Ask South Carolina, ask Texas. Ask Louisiana or Florida. Ask the Governor of Pennsylvania who received a letter from this Voting Section demanding he turn over documents his office used to prepare a press release. Ask any of the jurisdictions who faced a Voting Section willing to twist the law (or overrule career lawyers on South Carolina Voter ID) to achieve partisan ends.
We’ll have much more on this here at this blog, other news sites and in time in Congress. But this episode gives you yet another example of the mismanagement and ideological rot that has infested that place for years.