The IG report has some pretty shocking information about a former Voting Section manager seeking to obtain confidential memos from Voting Section staff. He told staff that the memos would have great “monetary value.” Who was this former managing attorney?
Is this attorney quoted in news accounts from time to time? If so, will that continue when his identity is revealed? Does this attorney represent clients in private practice? Is he still a member of a bar? Are any of the clients governmental entities? Is this attorney portrayed favorably by various outlets who cover election issues?
The answers should emerge in time. It sounds like this attorney was a critic of the Bush administration. If so, we can expect some observers of the Voting Section to say nothing, and other observers to make his behavior a very very public issue.
From the report at page 137:
“We were told by three witnesses that the outside counsel’s attempt to obtain the memorandum in 2003 failed after the outside counsel stated to Section employees, in substance, that the document had substantial monetary value. One of the Section attorneys whom the outside counsel approached told the OIG that the outside counsel’s request seemed “kind of offensive.” This Section attorney stated further that, although the outside counsel’s comment had a “sort of corrupt tinge,” the Section attorney did not report the incident to any supervisors. Another Section attorney that the outside counsel approached for the memorandum told the OIG that she was not sure whether the outside counsel’s comment was a joke, but that she was shocked and scared by the comment and she promptly ended their meeting. She told the OIG that although she believed his comment was improper, she did not report the incident to her supervisors because she had no further discussion with him about it, she was scared at the time, and she did not want “to get in the eye of any storm.”
Although the outside counsel did not obtain the memorandum, he indicated in subsequent filings regarding the case that he had learned from “sources inside the Department of Justice” that career staff had recommended that the Department object to the Texas redistricting plan, which was not public information at that time. In our interview of the outside counsel, the counsel stated that he did not offer any money for the memorandum, though he acknowledged in written comments responding to this portion of the report that he did tell Section employees that the memo would have substantial value in pending litigation. In his interview, he further indicated that he tried to obtain a copy of the memorandum because he wanted to “show that the voting rights of minorities had been violated and that the Section 5 process would have protected them, but [that] instead [the career staff’s recommendation] was overruled [by the Bush administration].”