Report: Justice Dept. Official Violated Ethics Rules in Grant-Making

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Washington Post

A former Justice Department grant-making administrator violated federal ethics and procurement rules in awarding hundreds of thousands of dollars in sole source contracts to ideologically favored companies and individuals, the department's inspector general concluded today.

The administrator, J. Robert Flores, was a political appointee during former president George Bush's administration who left his post after the inauguration in January. The department's public integrity section declined to pursue civil or criminal charges against Flores after ethics watchdogs forwarded their findings, investigators said.

The report issued this morning culminates a nearly two-year investigation into alleged irregularities with grants awarded by the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention during the Bush administration.

Investigators focused in part on the hiring of Hector Rene Fonseca, a former Colombian military official who worked as a contractor to the office between November 2004 and July 2007, when he collected about $281,000 for his work on anti-gang programs.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043002302.html?hpid=topnews

[aquart]

1. So? Are we planning to do anything about it?

Or is just knowing we were ripped off enough?

[sofa king]

2. That's a good question.

What's going to be the line when it emerges--as I fully expect it will--that there was a person like this deliberately placed in every department and independent office in the executive branch? I know for sure the same games were played all over the Department of the Interior, and others tell me that EPA, HHS, and others were equally unethical and corrupt.

[Metta]

3. Naming isn't dealing. No dealing, no healing.

Happy karma to whoever is making these decisions.

[PSPS]

4. The headline writers will need to add to their style manual

While this headline is technically correct, it is becoming increasingly important that headline writers distinguish between the current government and bush's criminal regime much as German papers did after Hitler.

This headline should have read, "Report: Bush-Era Justice Dept. Official Violated Ethics Rules in Grant-Making"

But then, I suppose that wouldn't entice a potential reader to read the piece. They'd just shrug it off like a "sun is rising" headline and turn the page.

[harmonicon]

5. if the department won't press charges, how can we?

It was our taxes that were misused. We should be able to file at least civil charges against the bastard, with all of the money to be paid back into government coffers.

[stillcool]

6. Why do they even bother...

2 years to come up with nothing?

Investigators said they could not conclude based on all the evidence and 30 witness interviews, however, that Fonseca's contract amounted to a "misuse" of Justice Department funds.

---------------------------------------

Investigators ultimately said that they could not determine whether the awards were appropriate because there weren't enough documents to reflect department decision-making at the time.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) decried the "abuses, ethical lapses and cronyism" that he said the report detailed and called the findings "consistent with what we have seen in so many parts of the Department of Justice under the past administration.