Margaret Chiara’s Falsely-Accused “Lover” Re-Hired

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I’m really happy to see that DOJ has re-hired Leslie Hagen, the woman who was falsely tied to Margaret Chiara in the US Attorney firing scandal. But I’m a little curious about the timing.

On Monday, the Justice Department undid a small part of the damage that top officials caused in a scandal of politicized hiring and firing during the Bush administration. The department rehired an attorney who was improperly removed from her job because she was rumored to be a lesbian.

NPR first broke the story of Leslie Hagen’s dismissal last April, and the Justice Department’s inspector general later corroborated the report. Now, Hagen has returned to her post at the department’s Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

In 2006, Hagen was the liaison between the main Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys’ committee on Native American affairs.

[snip]

Last year, the Justice Department posted Hagen’s old job again. The department conducted a national search. Applications came in from around the country. After several rounds of interviews, Hagen eventually won the job.

The paperwork makes it official as of Monday, Feb. 2. Hagen now has her old position back, but this time it’s a little different. Her contract no longer comes up for renewal every year. Now, the job is permanent.

This appears to be effectively a re-hired based on a national search, and not the Mukasey (or Filip, as Acting AG) undoing some of the damage that the Gonzales DOJ did.

And speaking of Gonzales, there’s one more part of this that will make you spit: as NPR points out, Hagen has had to pay her own legal fees throughout this process.

Nobody official from the department ever apologized to her for what happened. She still owes thousands of dollars in attorney fees, and the Justice Department has refused to pay those bills.

Meanwhile, you and I are paying Gonzales’ legal fees, so he can defend himself against charges that he politicized hiring by–among other things–okaying Hagen’s firing because she was alleged to be a lesbian.

The Justice Department has agreed to pay for a private lawyer to defend former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against allegations that he encouraged officials to inject partisan politics into the department’s hiring and firing practices.

Lawyers from the Justice Department’s civil division often represent department employees who’re sued in connection with their official actions. However, Gonzales’ attorney recently revealed in court papers that the Justice Department had approved his request to pay private attorney’s fees arising from the federal lawsuit.

Something’s wrong with this picture.

39 replies
    • bmaz says:

      Well, I still think Holder, although he will be much better than what we have had, is still a load of dung. On the bright side, your fervent hope for tainted manufactured evidence from MacNamee has been answered. Clemens is guilty, but MacNamee is one of the most dishonest, tainted, pathetic and worthless witnesses I have ever seen.

      • WilliamOckham says:

        Yeah, nobody to root for in that steriod mess, just two sleazebags stabbing each other in the back.

        • Petrocelli says:

          Yep … what a terrible mess … who’s going to go back and check if All- Stars of the past 15 – 20 years took performance enhancing drugs ?

  3. randiego says:

    This is great news.

    Now, where is Rachel Paulose?

    Is it just me, or does “Falsely Accused” make it sound like accusing someone of being a lesbian is legit, but that in this case it wasn’t true? Or am I reading that wrong?

    • JTMinIA says:

      I second this. It’s too similar to the idea that one must “defend” oneself against “accusation” of being a Muslim. Don’t help them frame the issue of sexuality in this way, please.

    • mui1 says:

      Yes. Being “falsely accused” of something does seem associated with something criminal like murder, or treason, or pushing torture.
      And whatever did happen to Rachel Paulose? I keep thinking a “where are they now” story on Goodling, Miers, Sampson, Gonzales et al, a la VH1 seems like a good idea.

  4. Neil says:

    What reasoning authorizes the taxpayer to underwrite Gonzo’s legal problems?

    What reasoning requires Leslie Hagen to underwrite her own?

    Does the DOJ really want to face a suit for wrongful termination so she can recover these costs? I would have thought this would have been cleared up as part of their offer and her acceptance.

  6. WarOnWarOff says:

    Next time Gonzo pops up trying to portray himself as a victim, I hope somebody points out that Hagen paid her own legal fees.

  7. MrWhy says:

    This story sounds so ripe for retelling in song, although Chiara and Hagen might not want the attention. Sounds perfect for Ani DiFranco.

  8. Phoenix Woman says:

    I wonder: Did they go after Hagen to punish Tom Heffelfinger, who kept trying to make it easier for those darned Native Americans to vote like, you know, nice white Republicans and all?

  9. conniptionfit says:

    Well, here’s a tidbit that slid by a lot of us. In the NPR story they NEVER stated whether Ms. Hagan was a Lesbian! Which made the story all about the fact that her firing was an infringement on the anti-discrimination rule, and not about whether she is or isn’t a Lesbian. A giant step forward in journalistic integrity, if you ask me. Kudos to NPR for once.

  10. Knut says:

    On reopening old wounds. Won’t the legal proceedings against the DOJ crime syndicate be started by lawyers lower down on the totem pole? I would have thought that there are automatic procedures, which were stifled by Mukasey, but can simply be reinstated as a matter of course. In that case Holder keeps his hands clean, while the work of rooting out the criminals proceeds on its own. Nothing to see here, everything normal, so to speak.

  11. sunshine says:

    OT
    The fix was in long ago to get rid of the UAW and probably all unions.
    They are coming along nicely now with our tax dollars helping them.

    NEW YORK – General Motors Corp. will offer buyouts to all of its hourly employees, a spokesman confirmed Tuesday, as the troubled automaker continues to slash costs.

    GM spokesman Tony Sapienza said the buyouts will mainly target GM’s 22,000 retirement-eligible hourly employees, though any union employee can take the offer.

    News of the buyouts first broke on Monday. A union official told The Associated Press then that GM would offer $20,000 in cash and a $25,000 car voucher for workers who retire early and those who simply leave the company. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because workers were not yet notified of the packages.

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200…..rs_buyouts

    • sunshine says:

      Citigroup will pay nearly $4 billion in dividend payments to service the securities it has issued in the past 12 months in order to recapitalize itself.
      And some co’s are still handing out dividends.

      Sunday night, Citigroup accepted a $20 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury in the form of preference shares that carry an 8% dividend, translating into a $1.6 billion annual payout. The bank is issuing a further $7 billion of preferred stock to the government, which is getting an 8% annual dividend as a fee in return for the authorities guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup assets. This extra $560 million takes the total dividend associated with the bailout to $2.16 billion.
      This is on top of $1.7 billion in annual dividend payments Citigroup must make to sovereign-wealth funds and other investors for the $20 billion the bank had previously raised in the past 12 months to shore up its balance sheet. That takes Citigroup’s total annual servicing costs to $3.86 billion.

      In January, a group of investors including the Government of Singapore Investment Corp., Kuwait Investment Authority and Sanford Weill, Citigroup’s former chairman, invested $6.88 billion in the bank as part of a $12.5 billion capital infusion. This capital injection through an issue of a convertible bond that carried an annual dividend cost of $875 million.

      This came on top of the sale months earlier of a $7.5 billion bond to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority that cost Citigroup $825 million in annual dividend payments, taking the total annual dividend cost to $1.7 billion.

      http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/200…..-dividend/

  12. siri says:

    Can Holder put a stop to the Gonzo legal fee bleed? Why on EARTH would it be permissible for those costs to come from taxpayer monies. That just makes no sense to me, never did.

  14. katymine says:

    When do we start getting new US Attorneys?

    Didn’t Clinton & Bush have everyone resign and then put their own into each office?

  15. Petrocelli says:

    How are you doing katymine ?

    Good question, I thought the new AG had to be sworn in before the old ones resign.

    • katymine says:

      Better day…… the ginger controlling the nausea and I need to get off the blogs to keep working on cleaning my bedroom (doing a deep muck out of every room which takes me 7 or so days each room)…..

  16. smedley says:

    ew-

    Can you please forward this and other information about Alberto to syndicated columnist Ruben Naverette in San Diego? He is a fair-to-middlin’ pundit who has a blind spot re Gonzo. Thanks.

      • randiego says:

        Yep – how he’s our useless idiot. I have no truck for “conservatives” anyway, but this guy takes identity politics to new lows.

        Jackass. With clowns like this it’s no wonder the papers are dying.

  17. bmaz says:

    Obama has been in office two weeks; the vetting, nomination and confirmation process takes months. He only got his AG pick confirmed last night. Am not quite sure why so many people are thinking the USAs all get changed out overnight on inauguration day…..

  18. bmaz says:

    It is certainly not dependent on that, but generally you get DOJ Main halfway under control before you start tinkering with all the USA offices.

  19. goldpearl says:

    i just watched eric holder being sworn in.

    despite all i’ve read about him here & elsewhere, i have been forcing myself to remain optimistic that he will do the job he was nominated for, as it is defined in our constitution.

    after he took the oath – i surprised myself by tearing up.

    may he truly rise to the occasion by correcting the DOJ’s past & by holding to a standard in the present, that will enable we as american’s to once again feel proud of “our lawyer” & our DOJ.

    i will be watching closely mr attorney general.

    goldpearl – ny

    http://www.cspan.org/Watch/wat…..HP-A-15039

  20. JohnLopresti says:

    I had not known US Attorney offices had a ban, or a dont say dont tell. Recalling the Republican challenge on the Defense Secretary nomination by Clinton 1993, and recalling the recent Obama nullification of any such attempt against an Obama nominee to Defense Secretary by letting Gates remain about a year for continuity’s sake, I located a page in Mil Times which reports an actuarial study of the cost of testing, recruiting, then firing, people from its ranks based on the then William Perry policy, which pricetag MilTimes cites as $350.+ million; that probably equates with about 4 hours of the cost of running the two current wars.

    partOT: I wonder what are the human costs to families whose children become part of what the Electronic Privacy Information organization covers in its webpage about implementations of the Solomon amendment and ancillary laws, which force schools to contribute to that database, and was argued diffusely in Rumsfeld v FAIR 04-1152. That case involved some amici brief papers which addressed a too broad spectrum of issues some of which might be appropriate for the defense of a nonlesbian US Attorney office official. It may be possible that FAIR tried to accomplish too much, although the stakes were perceived as substantial, for many reasons. The GU link is a compendium of resources of the sort Scotus opts to hide from the public, all public papers filed in the case; and Scotus’ ABA repository of brief documents similarly gives important caselaw history like that the short shrift. Scotus has reprogrammed its site to reloop back to the ABA culdesac, but GU is complete.

  21. Bill says:

    Excellent. I hope she can get some donations for her legal expenses.

    Meanwhile “All I wanted to do was serve this president” Monica Goodling, an Oral Roberts U grad like Michele Bachmann MN06 and Ted Haggard, Bush2′ 3rd wave coach, is still NOT in jail. In fact she is engaged to RedStateBlog co-founder. Gruesome.
    White and pastey is not in. Don’t miss the wicked commentary here.

    http://www.abovethelaw.com/200…..s_en_1.php

    • mui1 says:

      The betrothal of the Pennsylvania natives (first reported by the legal blog AboveTheLaw.com) proves that even a congressional subpoena can have a happy ending: The two dated just after college, then lost touch for a decade — until he saw her name last spring in the front-page stories about the controversial firings of several U.S. attorneys, and called to wish her well. He surprised her with a Valentine’s Day proposal at the same restaurant where they spent V-Day 12 years ago; no date set.

      It’s a quintessential D.C. romance: congressional testimony leading to a love connection!

      I’m speechless.

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