WASHINGTON — Democratic senators cited concerns Wednesday about political meddling and policies likened to racial and ethnic profiling in urging Attorney General Mich ael Mukasey to ensure the Justice Department abides by the laws it is supposed to enforce.
“I wish you were more focused on restoring the department’s role as protector of the rule of law,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told Mukasey at the end of nearly three hours of testimony. “Instead, you seem content to serve as a caretaker for the regime of excessive executive power established by the Bush administration.”
Mukasey, eight months into his tenure as President Bush’s third attorney general, said he is doing all he can to make sure that the once fiercely independent department recovers from months of scandal last year.
Republicans on the Senate panel largely left Mukasey unscathed. But front and center on Democrats’ minds was a recent Justice Department report that concluded politics improperly, and perhaps illegally, played a part in the 2006 hirings of newly graduated career attorneys and summer law interns. Liberal-leaning or Democratic law students with sterling credentials were passed over for the jobs in some cases, while GOP applicants with less impressive resumes were hired, the report showed.
The problematic hirings led, in part, to accusations of a politicized Justice Department and triggered the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., asked Mukasey about a proposed Justice Department policy that would allow the FBI to investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing. The tentative policy, first reported last week by The Associated Press, would let agents begin investigations by relying on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.
Mukasey made clear that race, ethnicity or religion would not be the only factor used in deciding whether to open an investigation.
But he did not rule out the possibility that race and ethnicity might be used with other traits — such as travel or gun ownership — to create a profile of a potential terrorist.
