3/12/2017

CABINET/LABOR/TRUMP PEOPLE/ALEXANDER ACOSTA: “In 2008, three years after R. Alexander Acosta had decamped from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for the United States attorney’s post in South Florida, the Justice Department’s in-house investigator laid out a damning conclusion: Under Mr. Acosta’s watch, his office had repeatedly violated federal law and department policies by weighing political affiliations in hiring and assessing civil rights employees.
The inspector general laid most of the blame on a subordinate of Mr. Acosta’s, Bradley Schlozman, but the investigation concluded that Mr. Acosta had ignored warning signs about hiring practices.
To William Yeomans, who spent 26 years working at the Justice Department and now teaches constitutional law and civil rights at American University, Mr. Acosta got ‘a little bit of a pass.’
‘There was a coordinated, political effort to drive out career attorneys, people who had been there for many years, and replace them with conservative ideologues,’ said Mr. Yeomans, who worked for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and is active in liberal legal circles. ‘Acosta certainly knew what was going on.’ “

-Yamiche Alcindor, “New Labor Nominee: Fair Leader or Self-Serving One?,” The New York Times onlline, March 12, 2017