A Senate Judiciary Committee's probe into politics and prosecutions targets Bradley J. Schlozman, 36, an Overland Park native.

Questions include whether Schlozman injected Republican Party politics into his job with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and as an interim U.S. attorney.

Senate and House committees for more than a year have examined allegations that Jus-tice Department members replaced nine U.S. attorneys to pursue a political agenda.

Those forced out include former Platte County, Mo., Prosecutor Todd Graves, a conservative Republican who became a U.S. attorney. Graves took the federal job July 30, 2001, and left in 2006. He then helped found a law firm with Matt Bartle, R-Lee's Summit, who chairs the Missouri Sen-ate's Judiciary Committee.

In testimony May 10 before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee, then-Attorney Gen-eral Alberto Gonzales denied the Justice Department fired Graves for failing to pursue voter fraud allegations involving Missouri's voting rolls, hearing transcripts show.

Graves had planned to leave anyway, but not so quickly. He revealed to the committee June 5 that he had been forced out.

Schlozman, a 1989 Shawnee Mission South High School graduate, took Graves' job as U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri on March 23, 2006. The office filed fraud charges eight months later against four fired employees with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Schlozman in 2005, while at the Justice Department, also authorized a suit against Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan's office for failing to police voting rolls. She is former U.S. Sen. Jean and Gov. Mel Carnahan's daughter, and all are Democrats.

U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey ruled April 13 that the government “makes no sense” to suggest the secretary of state must police voter lists for local election officials.

At the May 10 U.S. House Committee meeting, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, questioned Gonzales about Graves, Schlozman and Carnahan's office.

“Mr. attorney general,” Lofgren asked, “are you aware that just last month this litigation was dismissed for lack of evidence? Doesn't that suggest that the judgment not to file might have been the right one?”

Gonzales replied, “Well, again, we are evaluating whether to appeal. … And, again, the Demo-cratic secretary of state issued a statement saying basically, 'You got us. Our rolls are incomplete and inaccurate.' And I think it's legitimate for the American people to expect that voting lists be reasonably accurate.”

Robin Carnahan said Monday that her office has helped voters.

“We have consistently said that the lawsuit was unnecessary, unwise and costly. Our position is supported by the federal ruling that concluded my office went beyond federal requirements through our many efforts to assist the county clerks with their voter list maintenance responsibilities, and confirmed that there is no evidence of voter fraud in Missouri,” she said. “In addition, with the implementation of a statewide voter registration database, Missouri has the most accurate statewide voter list it has ever had.”

At the House hearing, Lofgren said, “I understand … that Mr. Schlozman had vote fraud experience but little prosecutorial experience, and that when Mr. Graves … left, that Mr. Schlozman was almost immediately appointed by you as his replacement. ... Doesn't it look like there was some plan in place to replace this Mr. Graves with Mr. Schlozman related to this prosecution?”

Gonzales replied, “I spoke with the head of the Civil Rights Division this morning and he stands behind this litigation…”

The Justice Department later appealed Laughrey's ruling, which is pending.

Lofgren read from a Boston Globe story: “I quote: 'Schlozman was reshaping the Civil Rights Division,' said Joe Rich, who was chief of the Voting Rights Section until 2005. In an interview he said, quote, 'Schlozman didn't know anything about voting law. All he knew was he wanted to make sure that Republicans were going to win.'”

Politics looks like a motive for voter fraud prosecutions against former Association of Commu-nity Organizations for Reform Now employees, ACORN head organizer Andrew Ginsberg said Friday. He oversees ACORN's Kansas City Chapter in Kansas and Missouri.

Rather than register voters, an employee may play on the Internet, then try to fool supervisors by copying names from phone books or other sources, Ginsberg said. ACORN fires and turns in cheats' names to the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office for review, he said.

“We've been turning people in to the authorities for years,” Ginsberg said. “No one's ever had any charges against them. … They're trying to cheat their employer, not cheat the election.”

Schlozman's office took ACORN-provided information about three fired job slackers and created a federal case, Ginsberg said. The government charged one other person.

“One of them we missed, but in our defense he worked for us for one day and he was fired for some inappropriate behavior. … He was only indicted for one voter registration card – that slipped by us. But the other three (people) we caught,” Ginsberg said.

The indictments became public Nov. 1, less than a week before the Nov. 7 race between Sen. Jim Talent, R-Missouri, and Claire McCaskill, a Democrat. She won with 50 percent of the vote.

Ginsberg said the indictments seemed timed politically.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokes-man Don Ledford said Friday that Schlozman's office did not publicize the indictments.

“We didn't hype it at all. We didn't even issue a press release,” Ledford said.

The Missouri Republican Party used the indictments to launch a pre-election attack.

“It is very disturbing that members of this left-leaning group have been indicted for engaging in serious voter fraud designed to cause chaos and controversy at the polls in order to help Democrats try to steal next week's elections,” party spokesman Paul Sloca said in a press release at the time. “This illegal assault on our election system should concern every voter in this state who deserves to know that their legitimate ballots won't be cancelled out by fraudulent ones. It also raises serious questions about the Democrat Party and Claire McCaskill's involvement with ACORN.”

Ginsberg has company in suggesting Schlozman used the U.S. District Attorney's Office for partisan purposes. Transcripts from the June 5 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing show Chair-man Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, grilled Schlozman.

“I did what I did at the direction of the Public Integrity Section,” Schlozman said.

Leahy asked why the charges could not have waited until after the Senate election.

“Would it … have affected your ability to bring the prosecution if you had just waited a few weeks until the election was over?” Leahy asked.

Schlozman answered, “The Department of Justice does not time prosecutions to elections.”

Leahy raised the Justice Department's manual and his voice, saying, “Well, yes, they do. That's what the manual says. And you rather reluctantly, I felt, admitted you actually did read it when you became the interim U.S. attorney. The fact is would it have changed the outcome of your prosecution had you waited a few weeks to bring it?”

Schlozman answered, “I doubt there would have been any impact on the actual prosecution.”

Six days after saying he filed charges against the former ACORN employees “at the direction of the Public Integrity Section” in the Justice Department, Schlozman changed his statement to Leahy.

“I take full responsibility for the decision to move forward with the prosecutions related to ACORN while I was the interim U.S. attorney,” Schlozman wrote.

The committee seeks more answers from Schlozman. He faces subpoenas if he does not provide those answers this week.

Graves said Monday that doing the right thing for the right reasons as U.S. attorney matters.

“The prosecutor in our system, probably more than in any other place in the world, holds a tremendous amount of discretion, and judgment is part of that discretion,” Graves said. “Part of your judgment is impacted because you are someone that has lived in that community and is going to have to live with those decisions that you make, and if I had a criticism of the department, it would be that they took a tack where they were putting people in the communities that weren't vested in those communities, making very important decisions, when they knew that they were going to leave and they weren't going to have to live with those decisions.”

Leahy slammed Schlozman after Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim's resignation last week.

“The actions of former department officials like Brad Schlozman call into question the division's commitment to civil rights enforcement and reveal the true cost of injecting corrosive political influences into the work of the Justice Department. It should come as no surprise that the result, and of course the intent, of the political makeover of the Civil Rights Division has been a dismal civil rights enforcement record,” Leahy said Aug. 23.

Gonzales thanked President Bush and resigned Monday without giving a reason.

McCaskill said in a prepared statement that Gonzales should have been removed earlier.

“The delay is another failure of leadership and display of incompetence by the Bush administration,” McCaskill said. “I urge the president to seek a replacement who has displayed staunch independence in order to restore integrity to this position.”

Schlozman quit last week as associate counsel to the director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. Schlozman could not be reached for comment.

Robin Carnahan said resignations by Schlozman, Kim and Gonzales may have ramifications for the lawsuit against her office.

“Perhaps the departure of the three will provide an opportunity for new leadership at the Department of Justice to take a fresh look as to whether this lawsuit should go forward,” she said.

Ginsberg said Justice appears to have played partisan politics.

“We now believe that our suspicions were correct,” he said.

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