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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. Read more →

The Smearmongers Who Took Down Chiara and Hagen Got Promoted to Main Justice

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TPMM and LAT elaborate on what I reported yesterday–that the anti-gay discrimination described in yesterday’s Monica Goodling report was targeted at Margaret Chiara and Leslie Hagen. Both have interviews with Hagen’s attorney; the LAT did an interview with Chiara herself. And together, the LAT interviews describe the gossip-mongering of a few people within the USA office in Grand Rapids providing both the rumors that the women were in a gay relationship–and that Chiara’s management had created morale problems in Grand Rapids.

The report describes an alleged "sexual relationship" between a career prosecutor and a U.S. attorney, who were not named. Margaret M. Chiara, the former U.S. attorney in Grand Rapids, Mich., said in an interview with The Times that she now believed she was fired because of the erroneous belief that she was having a relationship with career prosecutor Leslie Hagen.

"I could not begin to understand how I found myself sharing the misfortune of my former colleagues," Chiara said of the eight other U.S. attorneys who were fired. "Now I understand."

Justice officials said after her firing that Chiara was let go because of mismanagement and because she had caused morale in her office to sink. Chiara said Monday she believed those concerns were raised by the same people who spread rumors about her and Hagen. [my emphasis]

Most troubling, though, is the suggestion from Lisa Banks, Hagen’s attorney, that the attorneys who started those rumors eventually won jobs at Main Justice.

Banks said she believed the rumors were started by other attorneys in the Grand Rapids office who eventually landed jobs at the Justice Department in Washington. [my emphasis]

How convenient. Someone plays to Monica Goodling’s narrow-mindedness and gives her a reason to fire Chiara–and they get moved up to DC. I wonder if they share an office with Rachel Paulose?

Monica Discriminated against Margaret Chiara’s Purported Lover, Too

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Over a year and a half has passed since Margaret Chiara was fired with a bunch of other US Attorneys–and we still have no good explanation why she was targeted. The apparent reason, though, is a rumor that she was having a gay relationship with an AUSA in her office, traveled with her on the government dime, and gave her preferential bonuses.

But today’s Monica Goodling report includes a denial from Chiara and the AUSA–Leslie Hagen–that they were in a relationship.

The AUSA told us that the rumors were false and that she was not involved in a sexual relationship with her U.S. Attorney. Similarly, the U.S. Attorney denied that she and the AUSA were involved in a sexual relationship.

We know these two are Chiara and Hagen because the details line up perfectly with Chiara’s description of learning that Hagen’s EOUSA detail on the Native American Issues Subcommittee would not be extended.

Here’s a description of the incident from today’s report.

In October 2005, an AUSA was detailed to EOUSA to work on Native American issues. She had been an AUSA since 2002, and had previously been a Republican elected office holder in her home state. As discussed below, we found evidence that, in part on the basis of this AUSA’s alleged sexual orientation, Goodling prevented an extension of the AUSA’s detail in EOUSA, attempted to prevent her from obtaining a detail to the Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking (SMART) in the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), and attempted to prevent her from obtaining a position with the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW).

A. EOUSA Detail
In the summer of 2006, the AUSA’s supervisor at EOUSA, Dan Villegas, offered her an extension of her EOUSA detail, which she accepted. Later, in October 2006, Villegas and the U.S. Attorney for whom she had worked told the AUSA that her EOUSA detail would not be extended. Villegas told the AUSA that EOUSA Deputy Director Nowacki had been instructed by Goodling not to extend the detail. The AUSA said that Villegas also told her this was a political decision and was not based on her performance. In fact, the AUSA’s 2006 performance appraisal, which covered her detail at EOUSA, rated her performance as “Outstanding” on all performance elements, the highest possible appraisal.

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