MINNEAPOLIS -- It’s a major shakeup at the offices of new U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose.
Four of her top staff voluntarily demoted themselves Thursday, fed up with Paulose, who, after just months on the job, has earned a reputation for quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings.
Deputy U.S. Attorney John Marty is just one of the people dropping themselves in rank to simply a U.S. Attorney position. Also making the move are the heads of Paulose’s criminal and civil divisions and the top administrative officer.
The move is intended to send a message to Washington – that 33-year-old Paulose is in over her head.
Paulose was appointed before the 8 U.S. Attorneys were given their pink slips, but she has deep connections to the scandal.Rachel K. Paulose has drawn criticism since her swearing-in ceremony last month as the United States attorney in Minneapolis. Jean Pieri/St. Paul Pioneer, via Associated Press.
She was a special assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, worked as a senior counsel for deputy attorney general Paul McNulty and is best buds with Monica Goodling – the assistant U.S. Attorney who recently took the Fifth rather than testify before Congress.
Add to the suspicions the fact that Minnesota’s former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger stepped down just as the White House was developing its hit list.
Heffelfinger responds to questions whether he was forced out by saying, “emphatically no.” But there’s been a lot of speculation that Heffelfinger, a moderate Republican, may have been able to read the writing on the wall.
And indeed, some of the early White House memos indicate three people on the hit list resigned before they could be fired.
Paulose was not available for comment on the shake-up.
So we've got four U.S. attorneys demoting themselves because they do not like Paulose's "quoting Bible verses and dressing down underlings." And this demoting is taking place among the top staff there--not only is the Deputy U.S. Attorney demoting himself in protest, but also the heads of the "criminal and civil divisions and the top administrative officer." This is a huge message that is being sent by the staff to the Bush White House on Paulose's qualifications and competence regarding this job. In other words, the staff is saying that Paulose is not qualified to hold this position at U.S. Attorney.
But there is more to this story. According to WCCO Channel 4 News:
The four top administrators in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota have resigned their administrative positions. According to highly placed sources, the administrators have quit in protest over the job being done by Rachel Paulose, the U.S. Attorney for Minnesota.
[....]
The Bush Administration did not want to see this happen and in an eleventh hour attempt to prevent it, sent a top justice official to Minneapolis Thursday to mediate the situation. The mediation failed.
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Late Thursday afternoon the four top administrators in her office resigned their management positions in protest of what three well-placed sources say was "a highly dictatorial style" of managing.
Paulose confirmed that John Marti, a first assistant U.S. attorney, Erika Mozangue, head of the office's civil division, and James Lackner, who heads the office's criminal division, have "decided to go back to being prosecutors," said her spokeswoman, Jeanne Cooney.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune confirmed that Paulose's staff quit their management positions due to Paulose's "management style and communication than politics." In addition, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that the Department of Justice is sending a top official to help Paulose:
A Justice Department official in Washington is expected to return to Minneapolis next week to help run the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota, according to an attorney with knowledge of an upheaval that led three lawyers to quit their management jobs Thursday.
The official, John Kelly, the chief of staff and a deputy director in the U.S. attorney's executive office in Washington, may wind up being tapped to be the first assistant to U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose in Minneapolis, the attorney said Friday.
Kelly's potential role in quelling turmoil in the 110-person office underscores the dissatisfaction among some prosecutors with the 34-year-old Paulose's management style, which several sources described as abrasive and, at times, disrespectful.
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Kelly first came to Minneapolis at Paulose's request to try to bridge the divide between Paulose and her top assistants, said the attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for job protection. But they resigned later that day to return to prosecuting cases full time.
"She had briefed him that there was an uprising," the attorney said. Initially, Kelly was scheduled to have short interviews with the attorneys but the meetings went nearly two hours, the attorney said.
Paulose declined to comment on Friday after issuing a brief statement. "We have work to do," the statement said. "The office remains focused on our law enforcement priorities and service to this community." The Department of Justice did not respond Friday to the Star Tribune's requests for comments.
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A second federal attorney, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because of worries about job security, described an office environment in Minneapolis in which lawyers and support staff felt that they would face retribution from Paulose if they disagreed with her.
"Disagreement is treated as disloyalty," the attorney said.
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune gives an example of Paulose's "disagreement is treated as disloyalty," here:
One case that caused a rift in the office soon after Paulose started involved a narcotics case, according to the two federal attorneys.
Paulose ordered that an internal memo be prepared for high-ranking Justice Department officials who would be coming to Minneapolis from Washington to highlight the office's high-profile cases, the attorneys said.
Paulose instructed the head of the narcotics section, Andy Dunne, to state in the memo that prosecutors had won convictions that ended drug dealing by St. Paul's Latin Kings gang, they said.
Dunne was told by Paulose to say that the Latin Kings were the biggest gang in St. Paul and that the office's recent convictions would stop the so-called Latin King Nation, the attorneys said.
But Dunne told Paulose he couldn't abide by the request, one of the attorneys said, and when he refused, Dunne was forced to give up his position as chief of the narcotics section. Dunne would not comment Friday.
Another attorney, who has knowledge of office operations, said Dunne and several others stepped down because of the way Paulose treated them. "It gets to the point where you can't manage in that environment," said the attorney, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Paulose has clearly defined her prosecution priorities: guns, child porn, immigration enforcement, public corruption and methamphetamine trafficking.
As a result, some enforcement programs have been scaled back, one attorney said. Among them: going after landlords who have not removed lead paint from their properties, easing up on enforcement of laws protecting people with disabilities and health care, that source said.
Al Durand, the office administrator who took early retirement in February after 26 years, said Paulose had a tendency to micromanage people in the office. "She got involved in a lot more detail than previous administrations ever did," he said.
That is the new scandal here. Interestingly enough, this latest scandal is starting to be picked up by mainstream media outlets of The New York Times, USA Today, Yahoo News, Forbes, and numerous other news organizations. What we have here is that the Bush White House decided to appoint their own little political "Bushie loyalist" in this position of the U.S. Attorney for Minneapolis. Unfortunately, Rachel Paulose, who the Bush White House appointed into this attorney slot, turned out to be a Bible-quoting, tin-pot dictator, who was clearly not qualified for this job. This is another example of nepotism, and cronyism on the Bush administration's part in rewarding friends and political supporters with top government jobs.
Update: I've been thinking about this story here. I know that there have been plenty of previous administrations that have engaged in some type of cronyism, appointing political friends and perhaps family members into government jobs. But I don't think I've ever seen the amount of cronyism that has taken place with this Bush White House. Rachel Paulose was a Bushie loyalist who was rewarded with a position as U.S. Attorney in Minneapolis. We've seen how Karl Rove's aid Timothy Griffin was appointed as a U.S. Attorney for Arkansas--just before the 2008 presidential elections can take place, with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton running. You can bet that Griffin will his attorney position to initiate political investigations into former president Bill and Hillary Clinton's past--Whitewater Part Two? There is this April 4, 2007 ABC News story reporting that President Bush appointed businessman Sam Fox as U.S. ambassador to Belgium in a recess appointment. Fox contributed $50,000 to the conservative group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which was responsible for airing a series of controversial ads attacking 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry's Vietnam military record. Senate Democrats opposed Fox's nomination. Then there is Michael D. Brown--Heckuva-Job Brownie! Brown was appointed to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency by President Bush, despite having no experience in disaster planning. Brown's "qualifications" for managing FEMA was his 11 years of managing the the Arabian Horse Association. If anything, Hurricane Katrina clearly showed just how damaging the Bush administration's cronyism has destroyed the U.S. government's ability to protect and help its citizens in times of emergency. And I have found even more examples of Bush cronyism here, here, here, here, and here. And the Bush cronyism isn't confined to domestic politics. There have been a number of reports documenting Bush cronyism in Iraq, and even Homeland Security. And finally, let's not forget that President Bush selected his White House counsel Harriet Miers to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to have Miers withdrawal her nomination from Senate questions regarding her qualifications, and lack of judicial record.
It is just incredible.
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