Why Paulose has suddenly moved to Washington

The Washington Post weighs in on the Rachel Paulose case this morning. They report that Ms. Paulose is going to a job where she "will be one of several counsels in Justice's office for legal policy." The new Attorney General was involved in the decision:

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who was narrowly confirmed by the Senate and sworn in 10 days ago, was aware of the decision, the source said. Paulose "has come to realize, and the new attorney general and others, that management was a challenge for her there," the source said. "She felt it was best for her office for her to . . . get out of this management position and into a place where she could excel."

This is an acknowledgement that her management skills are, to put it charitably, somewhat inadequate.

An obvious question considering the suddenness of Ms. Paulose' move is "Why now?" The answer is that her interview with the National Review Online and the efforts to defend her tenure brought about a major reaction in her office in Minneapolis.

In an interview with a blogger last week, posted on National Review Online, the usually press-shy Paulose denied saying anything racist to the staff member and added that "the department is defending me against this outrageous and defamatory lie."

She also decried "the McCarthyite hysteria" that surrounded her.

The brief interview provoked some of Paulose's staff, according to her predecessor as Minnesota U.S. attorney, Thomas W. Heffelfinger. He said in an interview last night that "at least one and as many as three of her current staff managers either had resigned or were threatening to resign today."

Such defections would have been the second in Paulose's office in less than a year. This spring, her top assistant and two other senior prosecutors stepped down from their management responsibilities, saying they no longer could work with her.

[See yesterday's post The defense of Paulose steps up the rhetoric on this interview and the NRO defense of Paulose.]

It appears that the ham-handed and perhaps desperate defense of Ms. Paulose' position as U.S. Attorney caused a counter-reaction that forced her out as U.S. Attorney. So why does she still have any job in the Department of Justice at all? At a guess, I suspect that her conservative ideology, membership in the Federalist Society, and her political status as an ardent Christian Fundamentalist are what caused Mulkasey to give her an alternative job at DoJ instead of just firing her. In this administration those are strongly desired characteristics, and to simply fire her would anger all those political groups. That tells us a lot about the Bush administration as a whole.

Ms. Paulose is representative of why the Bush administration is so incompetent in running government. People are appointed to office not because they are competent to do that job, but because of strong conservative ideology and strong Christian Fundamentalist beliefs. Ms. Paulose was not appointed as U.S. Attorney because of her skills running an office of federal prosecutors. She was appointed because of her conservative and religious beliefs. She is a poster child for strong conservatives and for devout Fundamentalist Christians, while at the same time being a poster child for technically incompetent Republican political appointees. She represents the ideal Republican Movement Conservative.

Ms. Paulose has proven that she is worse than incompetent as a U.S. Attorney. In fact, she has been destructive to the office she was appointed to manage. So she was removed. But she is the ideal movement conservative, so she is still being protected, being given a safe position out of the limelight back in Washington after her total and very public failure as U.S. Attorney.

That makes Rachel Paulose an excellent metaphor for the disaster inflicted on the Department of Justice when Bush appointed Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. she is ideologically pure, but highly incompetent and quite unable to work with those who do not fall in line with her ideology.

Paulose has lost her U.S. Attorney position

Associated Press has announced late this afternoon:

Staff
AP News

Nov 19, 2007 16:22 EST

Rachel Paulose, the embattled U.S. attorney for Minnesota, will be leaving the post to take a position at the Justice Department in Washington, according to a Bush administration official and congressional aide.

That's the entire report. No telling what the job in Washington will be.

Looks like Rachel and NRO couldn't sell the victim defense.

The defense of Paulose steps up the rhetoric

Scott Johnson from Powerline ratchets up the rhetorical defense of his friend and fellow conservative, Rachel Paulose in an article published in the ultra right-wing National Review Online. In it he confirms the facts that I reported in my previous article. His spin, however, is quite different from mine or any reasonable conclusion that can be drawn from the facts.

In Ms. Paulose' defense, Scott complains that the New York Times is calling on the new AG, Michael Mudkasey, to fire her "just because she is a Republicans." Scott then goes on to provide this:

The Times recites that Paulose is also charged with having “used a racial epithet in reference to another employee.” I’ve known Rachel for ten years. For those of us who know her, the allegation is absurd on its face. Among other things, Rachel is herself an Indian-American immigrant sensitive to racial slights. I’ve never heard Rachel utter a swear word or cast a racial aspersion. In her first on the record statement regarding this charge, Paulose states: “I NEVER made any such statement. I have told the department so, and the department is defending me against this outrageous and defamatory lie.”

Paulose adds: “The McCarthyite hysteria that permits the anonymous smearing of any public servant who is now, or ever may have been, a member of the Federalist Society; a person of faith; and/or a conservative (especially a young, conservative woman of color) is truly a disservice to our country.”
[Highlighting mine - editor, WTF-o]

This is a statement using victimology as a defense that really goes way over the top. It would appear that for anyone to acknowledge the clearly factual items found in her biography and resume (member of the Federalist Society; person of faith; conservative; young; woman; and conservative woman of color) is to attack her in a McCarthyite manner. Sorry. That flat doesn't wash.

Tail-gunner Joe attacked individuals and named them as Communists without a shred of evidence to support his allegations, at a time when it was illegal for a member of the Communist Party to work for the government and when places like Hollywood were banning alleged members of the Communist Party from working at all. Joe McCarthy was searching for people to persecute, whether they were guilty or not. Joe's mere unproven allegations destroyed lives. That's McCarthyism.

As far as I know, being a conservative, a woman of faith, young, a woman of color (that's a euphemism for being a native from India, not, as she is attempting to imply, Black) or being a member of the Federalist Society are not at this time criminal offenses, or even negative characteristics. She is has proudly publicized all of those characteristics as being positive aspects. How does recognizing those things become "McCarthyism" when she and many others proudly proclaim to the public that she is all of those things?

Any honest look at the evidence will show that for all her academic honors and abilities, she is an incompetent manager who was thrown in over her head and she has all the political instincts of a hermit. She was also a person who worked closely with Alberto Gonzales and his top subordinates, all now removed or resigned in the wake of the Dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, and while she may not have participated in the firing of the U.s. Attorneys, she certainly benefited from the political misuse of the Department of Justice they represented in order to get her current position as U.S. Attorney in Minnesota. She is one of the right-wing extremists who were misusing the DoJ for political gain.

Had she been politically and managerially astute, she very likely could have escaped notice when the ringleaders of corruption at DoJ headquarters were removes or forced to resign. That wouldn't make her innocent, but it wouldn't have opened her up to forced removal as appears likely right now. In the absence of the current outcry against her and the impending removal, she probably would retain sufficient credits on her otherwise short resume so that she could later still be considered for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.

That's what this hullabaloo is all about. First, it is quite clear that she is more ideologue than lawyer. Second, it is clear that she is an incompetent manager. Third, it is very clear that she is not suitable for appointment to any federal bench or to any federal management position where she makes decisions on her own.

Apparently the NRO is unwilling to give up on her. They want her kept in play. So Scott Johnson is pulling out every rhetorical trick in the deck to try to help her in these, her last few days as a government employee. It won't work. largely because of her political incompetence she has made herself into a political lightening rod.

But becoming a political lightening rod because of managerial incompetence and ideological extremism is not McCarthyism. To try to revive her career with the government by public use of inappropriate victimology simply demonstrates the political tin ear that both Ms. Paulose and NRO share, and which justifies her immediate removal from office.

[ h/t to TPM and to Eric Black Ink. ]

US Atty Rachel Paulose being hounded out of office for being too aggressive against sex-trafficking and prostitution

One of the more obvious and severe problems caused by Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General is the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose. New Attorney General Michael Mukasey is being urged to act quickly to deal with the damage Ms. Paulose has caused.

Rachel Paulose - a short history

Rachel Paulose was born in Kerala, India and raised in Ohio. She obtained a B.A. (Summa Cum Laud) from the University of Minnesota and a J.D. from Yale Law School where she also excelled academically. Her great-grandfather, Cheruvallethu Mathunni Abraham (Avarachan Upadeshi), founded the Indian Brethren Christian Evangelical movement in Kerala and she remains an evangelical Christian. She bagan working for the Department of Justice in 1997 until 2002, then entered private practice where she worked until returning to Alberto Gonzales' Department of Justice in January 2006.

A month later she was appointed as interim U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, to replace Thomas Heffelfinger. Her appointment exposed the new provision of the Patriot Act that allowed the Department of Justice to appoint interim U.S. Attorneys for an indefinite period. Heffelfinger had apparently been placed on a list for dismissal because he spent too much time focusing on Native American affairs and because he failed to prosecute anyone to intimidate Native Americans out of voting. She was confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on the last night before the Senate adjourned for Christmas in December 2006. This was most unusual because she had never undergone Senate hearings or being voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead her confirmation was moved out of committee through a rarely used procedure called a "discharge resolution."

Ms. Paulose was the youngest woman ever appointed as a U.S. Attorney. For all her academic (and ideological) qualifications, she had limited legal experience and had no management experience when appointed. Her appointment was very probably based on her academic record, her evangelical Christianity, and her membership (beginning in 2001) in the ultra-conservative Federalist Society.

Rachel Paulose' unusual appointment as U.S. Attorney shows that she was on the conservative fast-track. It is very likely that the legal conservatives surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez intended to provide her the credentials needed so that she could be appointed to a life-time position as a young, very conservative, very religious federal judge as soon as they could get her to a Senate nomination hearing. Not only would she then be able to skew legal decisions to both the political and legal right, she would block the appointment of a liberal judge for many years. This was also the intent when Clarence Thomas was appointed as a very young Supreme Court Justice.

Unfortunately, the entire group at the Department of Justice responsible for her appointment and protection has resigned or been forced out of office, along with Alberto Gonzales, in the wake of the scandal over the firing of the U.S. Attorneys. So her boosters and protectors are now gone. She will have to depend on her own political acumen to survive. That makes her survival problematic. Her tenure suggests that she has little or no political acumen.

Rachel Paulose - The controversial tenure

Dismissal of U.S. Attorney's - Ms. Paulose took over management of the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney office upon the resignation of her predecessor, Thomas Heffelfinger. Monica Goodling later testified to Congress that Heffelfinger had been put on a list for dismissal because of "his preoccupation with Indian Affairs issues." Since Bradley Schlozeman is named as a participant in forcing Heffelfinger out, it is reasonable to assume that he, as head of the Civil Rights Division at DoJ, was unhappy that Heffelfinger was not prosecuting more Native Americans for vote fraud. [The Wikipedia article cites Schlozeman's participation in The Georgia Voter ID Law, the Missouri Lawsuit and the ACORN voter registration prosecutions, all intended to use the power of the Department of Justice to cause the state to restrict voting or to actually manipulate the outcome of a close election that Schlozeman was involved in.] Schlozeman's participation suggests that Ms. Paulose was appointed interim U.S. Attorney with, among other things, a brief to work to suppress Native American voting.

The Coronation - Upon being finally confirmed in as U.S. Attorney, Ms. Paulose conducted an elaborate swearing-in ceremony that included a processional, a professional photographer, a color guard and a choir. Such an elaborate swearing-in ceremony was not only out of the norm for U.S. Attorneys, it very likely grated on the nerves of many Minnesotans. Culturally, Minnesotans tend to be very suspicious of elaborate ceremony. It certainly caught the notice of the news organizations who were less than flattering in how they reported the event.

Such public grandstanding does not indicate that Ms. Paulose has a lot of political awareness. With the departure from the Department of Justice of the individuals who appointed her and who would normally be her political protectors, this does not bode well for her ability to survive politically on her own.

The list of "problem reporters" - Ms Paulose' reaction to the negative press coverage was to blame individual reporters for attacking her. Emulating an earlier conservative politician, Richard Nixon, who is known to have hated the press, she developed a six-page, single-spaced list that "identified Problem Reporters." Someone in the U.S. Attorney's office apparently leaked the list to the reporters. That leak suggests that Ms. Paulose does not have the total support of the workers in the U.S. Attorney's office she is attempting to manage. We have a strong indication of how much less that "total" that support is.

The Staff Resignations - On April 5, 2007 her second in command, John Marti, the civil division head Erika Monzangue and criminal division head James Lackner all resigned their management positions working directly for Ms. Paulose and returned to their civil service positions of Deputy U.S. Attorney. A fourth immediate subordinate would not comment on whether he had also resigned his management position. This was not a surprise. A representative from the Executive Office of the U.S. Attorney in Washington had already traveled to Minneapolis and tried to talk them out of resigning.

Anyone familiar with personnel management recognizes that a high turn-over rate among employees is a key indicator of management failure. Apparently Ms. Paulose is known for dressing down subordinates in public and for quoting Bible verses on the job. Neither practice is good management, especially when attempting to manage civil service professionals. What do these problems demonstrate?

We know that Ms. Paulose had a sterling academic record, outstanding ideological credentials and the connections with the Federalist Society that have been the key for advancement for so many conservative federal judges. She was being fast-tracked to a lifetime federal judgeship. It is a political plus that she is an attractive young woman and an Indian-American. Those two characteristics alone guarantee her a large number of political supporters. Unfortunately, in her first real management position she has proven that she has few political or management skills. She simply does not play well with others and her first reaction to those who disagree with her or question has been to identify who are her enemies. But she has defenders.

Defenders of Rachel Paulose

Eric reports that University of Rhode Island Women’s Studies Professor Donna M. Hughes claims that (unnamed) DoJ officials are attempting to hound Rachel Paulose out of her job as U.S. Attorney because she has been too active is too active in trying to prosecute human trafficking cases. She offers no evidence or details to support these accusations. She is circulating for signatures a letter she sent to Michale Mukasey making this clam. It can be read at Powerline, a well-known ultra-right-wing blog. The letter was posted by Scott Johnson Bio who strongly supports Ms. Paulose and claims he has known her for ten years.

The investigation of these allegations

Eric responds to this rather breathtaking but unsupported allegation:

Paulose’s job is indeed in jeopardy, but until this breathtaking new theory was introduced by Hughes and Powerline, the jeopardy was attributed to several other causes:

• She was promoted by the now-discredited circle of Justice Department officials who were implicated in the forced resignations that caused several openings for new U.S. attorneys who were considered to be “loyal Bushies.” She had little administrative/managerial experience to run a large office and has alienated most of the staff in the Minneapolis office.

• Several of Paulose’s highest-ranking subordinates voluntarily took demotions to non-management positions to protest against her leadership style. Her staff has been in nearly open rebellion against her, on one occasion bursting into applause, in her presence, to honor those who demoted themselves.
• She is the subject of an ongoing investigation by the federal Office of Special Counsel into allegations that she mishandled classified material and mistreated employees. She received a very negative job review by a team of Justice Department specialists, focusing on her shortcomings as a manager and administrator. A pending Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint alleges that Paulose created a hostile working environment by making a racist remark about an administrative employee in the office — a remark that has been corroborated by two witnesses.
• The morale of the office has been in the toilet for many months. One of her predecessors, former U.S. Attorney Todd Jones who hired her for her first federal job, told the New York Times that his former colleagues described the office as “dysfunctional” and said that that there was “an inability to have effective leadership move forward in a nonpartisan way.”
• The same New York Times article portrayed her situation as “representative of much that went wrong at the [Justice] Department under” former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and as representing “what [Mukasey] is up against in restoring stability to the Justice Department.”
• Sen. Norm Coleman, who sponsored Paulose’s appointment, has become a critic, and extracted a promise from Mukasey to look into the problem and take corrective action. Her original sponsors and patrons at Justice and in the White House are gone.

So, yes, as Prof. Hughes letter suggests, Paulose’s tenure is in some jeopardy. But the idea that her problem derives from powerful dark forces in Washington who are soft on human trafficking, child prostitution and related crimes is a breathtakingly new explanation for Paulose’s problems since taking office. It is offered without any names, facts or other form of substantiation. Hughes is careful to describe her theory as a “suspicion” and a “surmise” but she offers not even a theory as to why — in a Justice Department in which the prosecution of human trafficking and child pornography have been officially declared to be priorities — these unnamed department officials have decided to hound from office anyone who implements the stated policy.

Eric, as a good reporter should, then followed up by asking Professor Hughes what evidence she had for her allegation. Professor Hughes has not responded. Eric also contacted Rachel Paulose' predecessor. Here is Eric's report:

I also asked Paulose’s predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger, to assess the Hughes theory about the possible dark reason that Paulose might be in danger of losing her job. He made three points.

• Yes, Paulose has aggressively pursued human trafficking prosecutions, and he salutes her for it.
• No, during his years in the Justice Department, he never heard of any element that was opposed to cracking down on these crimes. On the contrary, this policy unites several important departmental factions: those who favor cracking down on street crime; those who want to emphasize crimes against women; and those who want to emphasize border security (since many human trafficking crimes involve women who have come illegally across the border).
• No, from everything he has heard from his former colleagues and subordinates in the U.S. attorney’s office, “there’s no link” between Paulose’s troubles and the priority that she has placed on trafficking cases. Her problem is not based in Washington. Her problem is based in Minneapolis.

Paulose will speak at noon Tuesday at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute. Her talk is titled: “End Slavery Today: Policy Responses to Human Trafficking.”

So it appears at this time that the the rather extreme allegation that some cabal of supporters for sex trafficking and prostitution is attempting to get Rachel Paulose removed as U.S. Attorney because he is too effective is merely a smokes screen designed to defend her and paint those who want her gone in the worst possible light.

See also:

• The defense of Paulose steps up the rhetoric
  November 19, 2007 4:12 PM CDT
  
• Paulose has lost her U.S. Attorney position
  November 19, 2007 5:26 PM CDT
  
• Why Paulose has suddenly moved to Washington
  November 20, 2007 9:38 AM CDT