Disgraced Former Members of Bush Justice Department Challenge Order Denying 'True the Vote'

[Scuba]

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20905-disgraced-former-members-of-bush-justice-department-challenge-order-denying-true-the-vote-intervention-in-texas-photo-id-case

Disgraced Former Members of Bush Justice Department Challenge Order Denying 'True the Vote' Intervention in Texas Photo ID Case

"True the Vote" (TTV), the Orwellian-named Republican "voter fraud" front group with a long and sordid history of deception and fraud won't take 'no' for an answer. Release the hounds.

The group has filed a formal notice of appeal [PDF] of U.S. District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos' recent refusal to permit TTV to intervene as a party defendant in the U.S. Justice Department's (DoJ) federal legal challenge to SB-14, the Texas polling place Photo ID statute.

Judge Ramos found that the interests of the organization --- which masquerades as an "election integrity" group in order to actually advocate for voter suppression --- were already adequately represented in the lawsuit by the state of Texas itself.

As they were filing their notice of appeal, the disgraced GOP "voter fraud" front man, Hans von Spakovsky --- who also just happens to serve on the "advisory board" for TTV --- challenged the court's rejection of the groups Motion to Intervene in an article published at the right-wing National Review. His work there, as usual, represents a masterful example of deception, dishonesty and well-remunerated cherry-picking. That is, apparently, what Hans von Spakovsky does for a living.

[elleng]

1. and he was member of Federal Election Commission.

The man who has stoked fear about impostors at the polls.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/29/121029fa_fact_mayer

[Gothmog]

10. Hans could not get confirmed

Hans was a short term recess appointee

[northoftheborder]

2. The Stench is being stirred

[Octafish]

3. Systemic corruption is conspiracy frozen into law.

The BFEE at work.

[Gothmog]

4. Another disgraced bushie is representing True the Vote

An idiot named Christian Adams is one of the counsel of record for True the Vote. Christian Adams is the idiot hired by Monica Goodman and von Spakovsky to gut the DOJ voting rights section. Under Bush, the Voting Right Sections was essentially dismantled to a large degree. Adams could have never been hired without the bush appointees using political criteria to hire this idiot. Bush political appointees overruled the DOJ staff on issues such as redistricting and the Georgia voter id law. Here are some excerpts from the Inspector General report http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2013/03/justice_department_s_inspector_general_report_is_the_voting_rights_section.html

The record of political bias in the Justice Department’s voting section during President George W. Bush’s administration is well-known. (The department’s voting section is charged with enforcing the Voting Rights Act and other federal voting laws.) We know from earlier reports that election officials, including Monica Goodling, went on a hiring binge to hire conservative attorneys to work in the section and, in the words of Bush appointee Bradley Schlozman, to “gerrymander all those crazy libs right out of the section.” We know that senior Justice Department officials in the Bush era, including Hans von Spakovsky, overruled the recommendations of career civil-service attorneys in the section to approve Georgia’s controversial voter identification law. And we know that the Justice Department during the Bush era made decisions widely perceived to help Republicans, such as approving Texas’s mid-decade re-redistricting of its congressional seats to create more safe Republican seats, an effort partially overturned by the Supreme Court after finding it violated the Voting Rights Act.

There is no way that an idiot like Christian Adams could have been hired without the aid of von Spakovsky and Schlozman.

I am glad the idiots hired by the bushies are leaving or have left the DOJ. Christian Adams first made a fool of himself on the New Black Panther silliness.

I have been dealing with the True the Vote in my county. These idiots had "poll watchers" at most of the minority precincts in my county and I had my poll watchers out keeping these idiots from doing any harm.

[Gothmog]

5. Here is some more on that idiot-Christian Adams

This is from the article cited by in the OP

Joseph Rich, a former Chief of the DoJ's Voting Rights Division described Adams as a paradigm example of the type of illicit, ideologically-based Bush DoJ hiring practices that were exposed by a July 2008 report issued by the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). It was Adams who abused his position in the DoJ's Voting Rights Division by filing acivil rights action against the New Black Panther Party, based upon allegations of voter intimidation that were thoroughly debunked by a 2011 OPR report.

According to Sergio Munoz of Media Matters, Adams' "claim to fame as a federal lawyer seems to be his penchant for accusing black people of discriminating against whites."

Since leaving the DoJ, you'll not be surprised to learn, Adams has become a frequent guest on Fox "News" and a contributor to an obscure right-wing website where he accused the Eric Holder DoJ and the venerable NAACP Legal Defense Fund of possessing a "radical racial agenda" --- part of what Munoz describes as a "tired page of the right-wing media's playbook against those who litigate and uphold longstanding civil rights precedent, a body of law that tends to help...those systematically disadvantaged by racism."

[starroute]

7. Adams was attracting attention even in his Bushie days in 2007

There was a McClatchy story that discussed his conflict of interest that was posted here at DU several times. The original link doesn't work any more, but the story can be found through Google Groups: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.politics/siqkH1lcw4E

Here's one of the DU posts from that time:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x629265

In his day job, Christian Adams writes legal briefs for the voting rights section of the Justice Department, a job that requires a nonpartisan approach.

Off the clock, Adams belongs to the Republican National Lawyers Association, a group that trains hundreds of Republican lawyers to monitor elections and pushes for confirmation of conservative nominees for federal judgeships.

Vice President Dick Cheney credited the 3,000-member association in 2005 with helping the Republicans win the previous two presidential elections. Last year, President Bush's political adviser Karl Rove shared with the group his insights on winning elections in key battleground states. At a conference the association organized last month, speakers called the controversy over whether eight U.S. attorneys had been fired for partisan political reasons "farcical" and "ridiculous."

[Gothmog]

8. I have been following this idiot for some time

I remember this idiot pushing the New Black Panther non-story and then saw that he was counsel for The King Street Patriots and True the Vote. This many could not have been hired without Monica Goodman and the other bushies pulling strings for him.

[starroute]

6. I just posted about True the Vote on a thread about Groundswell

The short version is that they're not just devoted to voter suppression. They have connections to various other factions on the right -- Groundswell, the Breitbart people -- and seem to have grown from a Tea Party spinoff to a major player in right-wing dirty tricks.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4250757

[Gothmog]

9. I missed this thread this weekend

I have been dealing with the True the Vote people for a while. They are nasty people. Juanita Jean has some good comments about these idiots http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4251203

[Gothmog]

11. Here is some more on that Christian Adams who is an idiot

Here is a great article on the illegal hiring of Christian Adams by the bush Department of Justice http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/07/06/adams-hired-for-conservative-credentials-former-doj-official-says/

Christian Adams was clearly hired illegally in the Bush DOJ http://my.firedoglake.com/cindykouril/tag/voter-rights-section/

MainJustice’s Ryan Reilly tells us that Christian Adams is a “foot soldier in the conservative movement, hired into the Justice Department during the Bush administration under a process the department’s Inspector General concluded was improperly politicized.”

MainJustice Reilly reveals that Adams is one of those “right thinking Americans” a/k/a loyal Bushies, who were hired by Brad Schlozman into what are supposed to be non political jobs at DOJ specifically because of their political agenda.

Joseph Rich, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division’s Voting Section and a 36-year employee of the Department of Justice, said that shortly before he left the DOJ in 2005 he received a call from Bradley Schlozman, then a Deputy Assistant Attorney General who later became acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division.

So, basically, Schloz picked Adams to be his little sleeper cell mole, all burrowed in in a hard-to-fire-him "career" DOJ job, with all those nice civil service protections. Like a land mine left in a farmer’s field after the army has departed

Christian Adams is too stupid to make in it private practice and so has to rely on right nut cases like True the Vote.

[Gothmog]

12. Adams is involved in the attempt to impeach the Penn. Attorney General

If there is a bogus cause out there, Adams will be there