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Shorter Schloz' Criminal Referral

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Is here. Or rather, the Inspector General’s report describing his criminal referral for lying to Congress.

We have referred this matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia for a decision on whether the evidence warrants a criminal prosecution. We provided to the prosecutor the evidence we gathered in the course of our investigation, including transcripts of interviews and relevant documents and e-mails.

[snip]

Schlozman is no longer employed by the Department and, therefore, is not subject to disciplinary action by the Department. We recommend, however, that, if criminal prosecution is declined these findings be considered if Schlozman seeks federal employment in the future. We believe that his violations of the merit system principles set forth in the Civil Service Reform Act, federal regulations, and Department policy, and his subsequent false statements to Congress render him unsuitable for federal service.

Of course, the report is dated July 2, 2008. So what has happened?

Here’s the answer to that question:

We referred the findings from our investigation to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia in March 2008. We completed this written report of investigation in July 2008.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office informed us on January 9, 2009, of its decision to decline prosecution of Schlozman. The Interim U.S. Attorney, Jeffrey Taylor, was recused from the matter and the decision.

So, after taking ten months to decide whether or not to prosecute (ten months which happened to include an election in which one of those named in the report–Hans Von Spakovsky–served on FEC), they now release the report. Nice.

Consider this a working thread. I need to run out for a few hours, and I assume that WO and others will get a good start on this before then.

Why Might Schlozman Have Been Referred to a Grand Jury

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While I’m waiting to hear from the next President of the United States, I thought I’d make some suggestions about what Brad "Shorter" Schlozman said that got him a perjury referral to the grand jury for. In this post, I laid out several things Schlozman said when he testified before the Senate which are probably truth-challenged.

The ACORN Investigation Is/Is Not National
You’ll recall that Brad Schlozman indicted 4 former ACORN workers (one of whose name he got wrong) for submitting fraudulent voter reg information. Well, he strongly suggested that the indictments were not part of a national investigation (a few Senators hammered him on this point–suggesting that, since the investigation was not national, it shouldn’t have been filed before the election). But, at the same time, Schlozman indicated over and over again that the investigation is national.

There needs to be follow-up on this. Did Schlozman and some other flunkies dream up a national campaign against ACORN based on the 4 flimsy indictments in MO?

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Schlozman Claims He Didn’t Know of MO Job Until It Was Publicized
If there is one claim, of many, that I think Schlozman will eventually get busted on, I suspect it’s this one (which is remarkably similar to Rachel Paulose’s claims, I might add). Schlozman argued he didn’t apply–or know about–the potential opening in WD MO (Todd Graves’ old job) until it was published. Only once it was, Schlozman tells it, did he apply for the job.

As Schumer elicited, it’s not like Schlozman should have thought he was qualified for the job. He had never prosecuted a case, neither civil nor criminal at that point.

But he applied for the job and–only because they needed someone within 2 weeks, Schlozman said–he was hired.

Schlozman Claims He Didn’t Tell Monica about the MN Voting Rights Case
You’ll recall that (as perhaps first reported here), there was a voting rights issue that may be behind the planned firing of Thomas Heffelfinger. The Republican SOS wanted to prevent Native Americans from using tribal IDs to vote. And an AUSA in Heffelfinger’s office wanted to make sure they could do so.

For the record, Schlozman claims he didnt’ spike the investigation. Rather, he told the AUSA to refer the investigation to the SOS, rather than investigate allegations at the county level. You know, the same Republican SOS who ruled against tribal IDs in the first place? Yeah, that investigation is going far.

Read more →

Big Shitpile Data Point

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Last week I noted that Tommy K, Duke Cunningham’s briber, dealt at least $50 million of his fraudulent mortgages to one of the companies buried deepest in the mortgage meltdown shitpile, Washington Mutual. I’m not suggesting that WaMu knew they were buying up Tommy K’s greek shitpile–though I do suspect that the same things that enabled WaMu to create its own corner of the shitpile (like lax oversight) made them an easy mark for a guy like Tommy K.

But the coincidence got me wondering: I wondered whether WaMu had been similarly bilked by others. And who were the other companies getting cheated in mortgage fraud leading up to the explosion of the shitpile?

So I decided to check the other politically-tainted mortgage fraud case, that of Democrat Katheryn Shields in Missouri. The day before she filed to run for Mayor of Kansas City, Shields and her husband got indicted for mortgage fraud by none other than Brad Schlozman, who replaced Todd Graves after he refused to take bogus cases against Democrats. Shields and her husband were recently acquitted of the charges.

As it turns out, it wasn’t WaMu that got stuck with the over-valued mortgage after Shields sold her home. But it was another of the mortgage companies stuck deep in the shitpile: Fieldstone Mortgage, which just filed for bankruptcy. Read more →