Every Single One: The Politicized Hiring of Eric Holder’s Appellate Section
Today represents the eleventh installment of PJMedia’s expose into the heavily politicized hiring practices of the Civil Rights Division in the Obama Justice Department. The series has exposed the obvious liberal litmus test applied to the hiring of all new career attorneys since Eric Holder and liberal appointees such as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez took the reins.
It has also revealed a stunning degree of hypocrisy (even by liberal standards) by Department leaders, especially Holder himself. The attorney general, after all, trashed the Bush administration and came into office promising that neither political affiliation nor ideology would play any role in hiring at the supposedly “reinvigorated” Civil Rights Division.
If these articles have shown nothing else, they have demonstrated the hollowness of Holder’s rhetoric. He and his colleagues owe a sincere apology to those who were wrongfully criticized during the prior administration.
It is disappointing, but not altogether surprising, that it took a federal Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to pry the resumes of the new career attorney hires out of the hands of the self-styled “most transparent administration in history.” Holder and his ilk knew full well that the resumes would prove politically embarrassing and would reveal the extent of the political shenanigans going on in the Civil Rights Division. They were right. The effort to fill every last corner of the Division with left-wing partisans, militant activists, and other committed liberals has been unprecedented.
In contrast to its Bush predecessors, who filled the career ranks of the Division with attorneys from across the political spectrum, the Obama political leadership has firmly slammed the door on conservatives, sanctioning ideological discrimination.
Today’s final segment focuses on the Appellate Section. This Section handles the appeals for all sections in the Civil Rights Division, and its work thus touches on every statute within the Division’s jurisdiction. It also files amicus curiae briefs in courts throughout the country, setting forth the Division’s position on various legal and policy matters. In essence, when it comes to articulating official policy, the Division often speaks through its Appellate Section.
The Section is headed by Obama contributor Diana Flynn, who went by the name David Flynn until commencing a sex change process. Flynn is assisted by two of the most fiercely partisan individuals in the Division — Mark Gross and Jessica Silver — which is quite a feat in that hotbed of craziness. The Section is perhaps second only to the Voting Section in terms of its concentration of liberal political activists. In fact, during the Bush administration, the political leadership was confronted on numerous occasions with career attorneys refusing to sign briefs because they disagreed with the positions being advanced by the administration on an ideological (not legal) basis. I’m certain there are no longer any such reservations with Eric Holder now at the wheel.
Seven new career attorneys have been hired into the Appellate Section during the Obama administration. Just as is the case with each of the other nine sections covered in this PJMedia series — the Voting Section, the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices, the Special Litigation Section, the Education Section, the Employment Litigation Section, the Coordination and Compliance and Section, the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, the Disability Rights Section, and the Criminal Section — every single one of these Appellate Section lawyers easily passes the Civil Rights Division’s liberal litmus test. The resumes tell the story:
Thomas Chandler: Mr. Chandler joined the Section after an eight-year stint as the chief of the Disability Rights Office at the Federal Communications Commission, a barren wasteland in terms of conservatives or even apolitical individuals. This is his second tour of duty in the Section; he previously served for 12 years in the Section but, in a common theme among many of the Division’s career lawyers, opted to leave (along with the Democratic political appointees) as soon as the Bush administration came to power. On his resume, he proudly highlights the fact that he helped develop many of the Division’s most radical positions on Title VII (including its policies endorsing racial preferences in employment) during the Clinton administration.
Erin Flynn: Ms. Flynn was hired into the Section as part of Attorney General Holder’s Honors Program, and her militantly activist background must have made her one of Holder’s top candidates. As a law student at Penn, she was the project manager of the “Reproductive Rights Clinic, Judicial Bypass Project,” which “coordinates with the Philadelphia Public Defender’s Office to assist pregnant minors in accessing Pennsylvania’s judicial bypass system” to attain abortions without parental consent.
She also worked as a fellow at the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, where she “explored the admissibility of mental health evidence” to help plead insanity defense in juvenile proceedings.” Before that, she was a paralegal at the Legal Aid Society of New York.
Her activities are conspicuously redacted from her resume; no doubt the Justice Department felt that disclosing them would prove even more politically embarrassing to both Ms. Flynn and the attorney general.
Appellate Section attorneys have considerable latitude in drafting the policy-laden amicus briefs that the Division files in courts across the country, and it’s no surprise that Ms. Flynn has been tasked with authoring the most controversial (and radical) briefs during this administration. For example, she took the lead in the Division joining the ACLU in arguing that school assignment plans that rely on racial demographics to promote “diversity” are perfectly okay and do not demand strict scrutiny. (This position, incidentally, flatly repudiated Supreme Court precedent.) She also authored the amicus brief contending that a school district is liable for damages under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act even after it took disciplinary action against students for racially harassing other students. And she penned the Division’s legally dubious brief insisting that the state of Arizona’s proof of citizenship requirements for voting violate federal law. In short, when it comes time to take positions that have little or no support in law, Ms. Flynn is the go-to person.
This series has been absolutely explosive. Although I cannot say I am terribly surprised at the heavily politicized hiring by the Civil Rights Division under Eric Holder, the sheer extent of his hypocrisy — having blasted the Bush administration — is truly something to behold, even by Washington standards. PJM’s reporting is worthy of major awards. And the silence from other legacy media outlets underscores just how biased and out of touch they are with mainstream America. Well done, PJM!!
i wonder why nothing constructive happens with these people..nothing…they laugh us off..literally..
what is happening to us as a people?…we have thugs running things, blatantly , yet they stay in “power”, and do not get called out
yes, here on PJM, or other sites we vent…but nothing happens to them to stop what they have done or are doing..
Just to be clear, you are describing the Civil Rights Division’s Appellate Section, not the Criminal Division’s Appellate Section.
Really? Anyone who knows me at all well would conclude that your tally should be, at a minimum, 113-1, not 113-0. That being said, I am immensely proud of the work of the Civil Rights Division and the Appellate Section, and my association with them, over the span of nearly 25 years. In my experience, political affiliation has been, as it should be, irrelevant to the work of the career lawyers. And I am sure I am not the only one here who likes to think that they reflect the bipartisan nature of the enforcement of our civil rights laws. As to the more specific comments concerning my background, your shoddy (to put it charitably), factually incorrect article does not warrant further response.
Well, I for one would prefer if you did actually refute the things you claim are inaccurate, since the public is your employer, and the truth matters.
However, I do find it funny, the line “the bipartisan nature of the enforcement of our civil rights laws.” What does that even mean? The record of the Justice Department in defining “civil rights” over the last twenty years has been a record of replacing notions of justice with “social justice,” in other words, special privileges and special protections for some and not for others. This ideology is most disturbing in its manifestations in criminal law. The “hate crimes” racket has destroyed the very goal of equality before the law, which was allegedly the ultimate objective of the civil rights movement itself, and their means of doing so — by handing over enforcement and training protocols to non-elected, non-accountable private organizations who impose their agendas onto carefully obscure legislation — is an act so contrary to the constitutional and governmental role of the Justice Department that the only way it could be achieved was by ensuring that the DOJ itself would be topped off with enough true believers that dissent would not survive, backed by a compliant and equally ideologically pure law school faculty and msm keeping the echo chamber howling.
Lucky, that.
Turning over functions to private groups sounds like the free market to me…
And hate crimes do not create special rights, they just attach harsher penalties for things already ilegal, but done because the victim was a minority. Therefore, if you beat someone to death because they love hamburgers, it’s murder–but if you beat them to death because they are black, then it is murder and a hate crime. Violence and intimidation done because of race is an injury to the whole society, so we attach an additional penalty to it. Explain to me how that elevates certain people above others…as if it gives black people an unfair advantage or something! I fail to see the unfairness or the extremeness of hate crimes enforcement.
Please explain
Cincinnatus & Chandler::
Perhaps I can help you both — as bi-partisan is a useless buzz word here, so does one recoil from the idea that equal protection of the law can be set aside for any agenda: selective law enforcement is a crime in and of itself.
Greater punishment based upon one’s bias has no positive side.
Perhaps the death penalty seems too severe with those who toy with people’s lives, but that is what is prompted by chaos and the law of the jungle — all crimes are hate crimes, many resulting from all too intensive self-love and other delusions.
Also, not so surprising, a barbarian cannot see barbarism especially while holding a diploma. And for all these people who cannot bring themselves to honesty in even the smallest things, there is no limit to what they will try to get away with, until they are stopped.
Reality is the only judge, no matter what anyone would like to believe, no argumentation can prop up a lie.
We can wait to see you as toast for mindless abuse of power.
Greetings, Mr. Chandler:
We take our fact-checking seriously here, and we would be glad to correct any misinformation you claim our shoddy, factually incorrect article may contain. Please go ahead and list any complaints you may have with the piece.
Kindest Regards,
David Steinberg
PJM New York Editor
You’re kidding, right? If you take your fact-checking so seriously, perhaps you need to hire better fact checkers. This entire series has been rife with mischaracterizations of individuals’ backgrounds, blatant omissions of inconvenient resume items that would tend to show most if not all of these attorneys are more moderate and fair-minded than these posts suggest, and misleading inclusion of information (e.g., campaign contributions, personal information) that was not on these individuals’ resumes clearly intended to give the false impression that the hiring committees took such information into account when reviewing applications. Anyone who is relying on any of these “biographies” as objective factual reporting on these attorneys’ experiences or the Civil Rights Division’s hiring processes is being severely misled, and the editor’s protestations notwithstanding, the agenda here is clearly political and not in the interest of sharing “facts.”
Greetings, Mr. Anonymous:
Thank you for your concern, as well as that of Mr. Chandler.
I am the fact-checker on these articles. Per my previous comment: I cannot help you if you don’t list specific concerns you have with this series. Please quote from the articles and include why you believe the information is incorrect.
Also, please mention which of the 113 attorneys listed is in fact a conservative. I will be glad to change the record.
Kindest Regards,
David Steinberg
PJM New York Editor
Wow, if the DOJ litigation prep is as diligent and comprehensive as the rhetorical assertions in this forum, it’s no wonder the DOJ trial attorneys come across as impotent wannabes. They sound like little Barrys with chips on their shoulders…all whining and no substance!! What a waste of time and money…MY MONEY at that. At least we can now see how ridiculous their logic and non-logic is. Whew, what a crock.
I agree with Mr. Steinberg, PJM editor. Why not fill in what you claim was left out? All the right wing Bush and Reagan policies you defended, etc.
In any event, this column is one of the very few places average americans can find out about the backgrounds of DOJ attorneys. And you folks responded to their requests by forcing them to file a lawsuit in order to obtain your backgrounds? If your background is as benign and bipartisan as you claim, why not just disclose it? Your response to this article makes you look like you have something to hide.
I think the number refers to new hires, not to people who have worked there 25 years like yourself.
I’ve got to wonder,with all this hiring at DOJ, are there really this many position openings, or are they being created in order to flood the agency with leftist attorneys.
Since they are newly hired, government employees they have to serve a three year probationary period before they become virtually impossible to fire. That would be the time period, for an attorney general, appointed by hopefully, a Republican President in 2012, to be rid of them. Failing that, they should all be reassigned to some backwater DOJ office, outside of DC, where they can be rendered impotent. Perhaps that will convince many of them to find a job in the private sector.
The difficulty here is, how do we recover from this? The whole point of the laws they are breaking (about political affiliation being part of the hiring process in these positions) is that they aren’t political positions, so they can’t just be summarily replaced by the next administration. These extremists are IN, and there’s currently no legal way to get rid of them…
…unless there’s some kind of remedy in the laws they are breaking to get them all in place to begin with. I hope so, but I doubt it (ignorant on that point – some help from someone more knowledgeable?).
Barring that solution, what do we do? I suppose Congress could abolish the department/whole group and re-create them (all positions to be hired fresh). Anything less extreme?
At first the next administration could first reorganize, placing the lefties into a special “Division for sticking it to the “Man”, and least lock them up and prevent them from doing more active harm than cashing their paycheck.
If fired, the fired group would get civil service protection, to include the right to elbow aside others less senior in other groups not fired. Accordingly, they should be assigned to where their work supervised by a political appointees, whose job would be contingent on finding grounds to reduce payroll.
Because of the corruption (by a Chicago Politican? Be still my heart!) of the civil service, there needs to be a widespread and severe reduction in number of government paid lawyers. Private lawyers or law firms should be contracted to perform work on a case by case basis, supervised by political appointees.
You want to contract out the people who, amongst other things, regulate the government itself? I’m all for the free market, but I think that’s taking it a bit too far. Just because you’re upset about the presumed ideologies of various government lawyers doesn’t mean that the whole thing should be dismantled. That’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
We have these lawyers because he have these agencies. We have these agencies because the President needs them in order to lead. I thought hatred for the “imperial presidency” was a liberal pet project. I guess I was wrong…
But…how are Gross and Silver partisan?
What significance does Flynn’s sex change have to the discussion of partisanship? And don’t most civil servants have politicians they personally support, and those they don’t? Merely being an “Obama contributor” does not say much.
What were the contents of the briefs that attorney’s refused to sign?
How long have these attorney’s served in the section? Did none of them serve under Reagan and Bush I? Were they insufficiently conservative? I can’t believe you would say that Reagan was insufficiently conservative! That would upset me personally.
Some details would be nice. When “exposing” inappropriate partisanship, shouldn’t you endeavor to appear as neutral and forthcoming as possible? Otherwise, it doesn’t really cut through the fat: it’s just more partisan noise.
This reads like a gossip column about which celebrities are dating. I do not mean to insult…I’m sure you can back up what you’re saying with more than sophistry and implications
On David Flynn, who thinks that he has changed his sex by an operation and calls himself “Diana Flynn.” (“Diana Flynn, who went by the name David Flynn until commencing a sex change process.”) He is mentally disturbed, as his attempt to change his sex indicates. No one can change their sex – every cell in his body will show that David Flynn is a man. The operations to change sex are only plastic surgery, that no more change the sex of the individual than wearing clothes of the opposite sex (“transvestites”) changes one’s sex.
Yup, lawyers are the vanguard party of the administrative state, regularly rotating between paid lobbyists and government officials. They make up less then .3 of a percent of the population but staff over 50 percent of the policy making positions in government–now that’s an avocational disproportion producing a peculiar mindset monopolizing the alleged representative state. No wonder the economy is presently stuck producing a planned perpetual dump while fighting and endless war requiring lawyers to sign off on target selections. I suspect in five years acts of coitus between consenting adults will require anticipated before action CFU (Consensual Force Used) reports to be filed with the local sheriff or police chief, which ever has jurisdiction, at five dollars a pop. We have to pay for those special victims units somehow, so it may as well be user fees.
Zandree: “How long have these attorney’s served in the section? Did none of them serve under Reagan and Bush I?”
Can’t you read? This series is about the 112 attorneys who have been hired into the Division in the last two and a half years, that is, during the Obama Administration, under the direction of Eric Holder.
Of the seven discussed in this posting, two had previous service in the Division. Thomas Chandler served from 1989 to 2001, as stated in the posting. Jennifer Levin Eichhorn served from some time in the Clinton Administration till early in the Bush II Administration.
Of the other five, one was hired directly from law school, two are former ACLU attorneys, one is a former NAACP attorney, and one was on the staff of Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy.
So – no Reagan/Bush I time except Chandler, at the start of his career. Chandler “came out” as a hard-line liberal during the Clinton Administration, when (as he boasts) “he helped develop many of the Division’s most radical positions on Title VII.” And Chandler re-affirmed his alignment in 2001, when he left the Division rather than serve under Bush II.
How much evidence do you want of bias?
I think Zandree may have been wondering about Flynn, Silver, and Gross…while they weren’t the focus of the article, they were mentioned as being “fiercely partisan,” but no mention is made of when they were hired, and by whom.
“Without justice being freely, fully, and impartially administered, neither our persons, nor our rights, nor our property, can be protected. And if these, or either of them, are regulated by no certain laws, and are subject to no certain principles, and are held by no certain tenure, and are redressed, when violated, by no certain remedies, society fails of all its value; and men may as well return to a state of savage and barbarous independence.”
–Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution, 1833
(Joseph Story must have had a premonition of Eric Himpton Holder and his very questionable appointment policies!)
and with the help of these people, The Ministry Of Truth will correct
such errors in the history books.
And everyone he’s hired needs the hard drive checked on the computer they used in the Federal Government, before they’re fired. There will be no explanation needed when they’re removed. They aren’t going to get away with placing radical marxists in Washington, thinking they will be able to stay and destroy the country more, even after these demons Obama and Holder are in prison. God willing.
Every computer hard drive in every government agency in and out of DC need to be examined. We need to know, exactly what they’ve been doing.
Do you really think anything except dissolving these depts can rid US of the infection? It seems reasonable that down-sizing gov’t will be the major task of the “partisan” 2012 Congress, and these folks at Justice qualify to stand first-in-line for a change. Of course that’s a first step toward solving one of many problems.
As far as forensics of on their harddrives, forgettaboutit. All incriminating evidence will be scoured from desktops and servers – accidentally erased and overwritten 388 trillion times.
Maximum penalty – destroying evidence, like the guy with the original documents stuffed in his shorts, over at the archives?
I have been paying very careful attention to the politics of this region for the last five years, and have been catching up on a lot of history to boot. This appears to be one more nail in the coffin for Obama Politics. I’m not saying that the Republican view is any better (they promise smaller, less intrusive government but deliver the same thing as Liberal Democrats), but I do think at this point it’s going to be choosing the lesser of two evils for this election period.
The fact that the two party system is an utter failure is not lost on me. I can only hope that enough of the population of the U.S. pulls its head out of its ass long enough to mitigate the damage from a failing European economy, a Socialist push for “collective salvation”, and a rising Communist China. Unfortunately, the reality of the consequences of our actions as an entitlement culture is probably going to smack us in the face before we get the shit out of our eyes.
A careful analysis of the trends between Republican and Democratic legislators actually show that there is little difference in the end effect when it comes to social values. Both are guilty as sin of elevating the status of the female under the guise of “good intentions”, when the actual players behind the scenes are the lobbyists throwing money at the system so that the U.S.’s largest consumer demographic will spend their way into owing the souls of their children and grandchildren (women). We continually market products that are meant to “enhance” the daily life of this demographic.
But I digress.
I would suggest to any serious scholar interested in misandry to begin to look farther than feminism, and start fingering the not just the policies and politics, but the ACTUAL power behind the proverbial throne. Most feminists, even those in high ranking state positions, are really no more than patsies. They parrot and caw, and gnaw the bones they throw to themselves, without ever realizing that they are slowly being corralled.
Yes, I understand that what I say is a little…….unusual. It is my fervent belief that by attacking feminist ideology we can affect real change, but that change is only due to turning people into free-thinkers…..something that even the Feminists’ masters are afraid of.