black…MYstory

At least one Department of Justice official thought so. Bradley Schlozman, the former U.S. Attorney for Missouri and former senior Justice Department official, has been called on the carpet after an anonymous leaked complaint showed that he had tried to purge the Department’s appellate section of the Civil Rights Division of minority women attorneys (read the complaint here).

The three attorneys (A Black woman, a Jewish woman and an Asian woman) were transferred out of the division by Schlozman. He said his intent was to replace them with “Good Americans”. What is “good American” to Schlozman? Maybe this excerpt might hold a key:

“Bradley J. Schlozman is systematically attempting to purge all Civil Rights appellate attorneys hired under Democratic administrations,” the lawyer wrote, saying that he appeared to be “targeting minority women lawyers” in the section and was replacing them with “white, invariably Christian men.” The lawyer also alleged that “Schlozman told one recently hired attorney that it was his intention to drive these attorneys out of the Appellate Section so that he could replace them with ‘good Americans.’”

Interestingly enough, the attorneys were transferred back after Shlozman left. Schlozman clearly intended to, at least, replace career attorneys (we are not talking about political appointees) with other career appointees based, primarily, on Republican loyalty. That seemed apparent in his exchange with Senator Chuck Schumer when questioned about it a little over a week ago:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): Did you ever boast to anyone that you hired a certain number of Republicans or conservatives for any division or section at the Justice Department?

Schlozman: I mean, I probably have made statements like that.

What this means is that he sought to stack the division with people who wouldn’t respect the minority vote, much less enforce violations of the Voting Rights Act. I’ll continue to say it — pay attention because this is about OUR vote.

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