via TPM Muckraker:
From 2001 on there were repeated occasions on which I discovered after the fact that front office personnel (that is, the political appointees) had directly contacted attorneys I was supervising without first advising me or the section chief. Before this Administration such contacts were extremely rare and generally only occurred under exigent circumstances. This was a serious problem for several reasons. First, the front office personnel lacked the specialized litigation experience needed to successfully litigate voting rights cases at the highest level. Even if such direct contacts were well-intentioned, the political appointees’ judgment often was poorly informed. By first discussing a matter with me or the section chief we could ensure that the appointees were aware of the relevant legal, factual, policy and tactical considerations before any directions were given to the line attorneys. What may appear to be a good argument in a particular case may be inconsistent with longstanding positions that in fairness should be adhered to absent a convincing reason to change. States, political subdivisions and public officials (who are the parties against whom the Voting Section generally litigates) have every right to expect the Department to be consistent. Ad hoc arguments are de rigeur for private litigants but the Department must be judged by a higher standard. Direct contacts with the line attorneys undermine these policy considerations….
also was very concerned that increased interaction between line attorneys and political appointees would result in retaliation against line attorneys who did not toe the line. The Civil Rights Division historically had been structured so that part of my role as a supervisor was to be a buffer against such conflict between political appointees and line attorneys, who could then be evaluated by the quality of their work rather than the extent to which they were “team players” with the Administration. If there was a price for disagreeing with the front office, it was mine to pay – not the attorneys I supervised. In bypassing the section chief and deputy chiefs the front office seriously (and in my view quite deliberately) undermined the institutional safeguards protecting the Section’s career staff.
…
ut by late 2004, I did not believe that I could ensure that following the law and facts would remain a higher priority than partisan favoritism. This was based partly upon my expectation that the Administration, if returned to office, would feel less constraint against heavy-handed management and biased enforcement than had been the case in the aftermath of the controversial 2000 election. To put it bluntly, before 2004 the desire to politicize the Voting
Section’s work was evident, but it was tempered by a recognition that there were limits to doing so. That such constraints diminished over time is evidenced by the well-known and ham-fisted handling of decisions involving Texas’ congressional redistricting plan in late 2003 and Georgia’s voter ID law in 2005. My concerns also were greatly magnified by the evident intention of the political appointees to replace Joe Rich after the 2004 election with a new section chief who would be a willing “team player”.….
It is a menace to the historic credibility of the Civil Rights Division (which I can tell you was a real thing and part of what made being a Division lawyer different), and especially the Voting Section, if its line attorneys come to be viewed by federal courts, by state and local governments and by the general public as just a bunch of Administration flunkies. It is an even greater danger if that is true.
