The chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), says that the DoJ’s Voting Section chief, John Tanner, should be fired in light of recent controversial comments made at a panel discussion at the National Latino Congresso in Los Angeles as first video taped and reported by The BRAD BLOG.
Nadler is now the second elected official to publicly call for the removal of Tanner from his post. Senator Barack Obama, and civil rights groups such as Advancement Project, have recently made the same demand.
“He should certainly be fired, obviously,” Nadler told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman this morning when asked about Tanner’s comments admitting that while it was a “shame” that elderly voters would be disenfranchised by restrictive Photo ID laws he’d approved on behalf of the DoJ, minorities actually benefit from such laws because “they don’t become elderly. They die first.”
Nadler went on to explain the reasons why he feels that Tanner and a “few others” have “perverted the Justice Department.”
The video and complete text transcript of the interview with Nadler’s comments in regard to Tanner are posted at the end of this article.
As well, new allegations of financial improprieties by one of Tanner’s immediate subordinates have surfaced this morning in the Washington Post. Questionable travel by the Voting Section’s acting deputy director is now being investigated by the DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.
The travel in question, a DoJ source tells The BRAD BLOG this morning, “could not have occurred without Tanner’s approval.”
“Obviously, someone who has such prejudices has no business heading the Voting Rights section or any other branch of the government and certainly not being on the Federal Voting Commission, which is supposed to enforce our election laws and our voting rights laws,” Nadler continued in the interview today…
“Now, Mr. Tanner, as head of the Voting Rights section, perverted the Justice Department — or he and a few others perverted the Justice Department from seeking to protect people’s civil rights and the right to vote to seeking deliberately, I believe — and I think a number of reports have shown this — to use the Justice Department to disenfranchise people likely to vote Democratic, specifically minorities and more elderly people.”
Tanner’s objectionable comments were in reference to laws such as the proposed polling place Photo ID restriction in Georgia that was approved by Tanner on behalf of the DoJ. His approval came after four out of five of the career attorneys at the department had recommended it be rejected. The law was later found unconstitutional by two federal judges, one of who declared the law to be a “Jim Crow-era poll tax.”
Other similar decisions by the department have, arguably, gutted the intentions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Some 10 to 30 million legal voters, largely Democratic-leaning minorities and elderly, are believed not to have the type of Photo ID required to vote by such laws.
Nadler continued: “You know, here he’s admitting that procedures that he sought to put into place would discriminate against elderly people in voting, would cause valid elderly voters not to be able to vote. That’s against the law, and it obviously also should be against the policy of the United States government.
“But we know that the Bush administration has been using these voter ID cards, the fear of — so far never demonstrated — voter fraud, to put into place all sorts of new restrictions, voter ID cards, purge lists and so forth, which we know have the effect of disproportionately disenfranchising legal elderly and minority but likely-to-vote-Democratic voters,” Nadler charged in his comments.
A GOP front group calling themselves American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), founded by two operatives formerly employed by the White House and the RNC, have been pushing the agenda as mentioned above, in order to see Photo ID laws instituted across the country, since the 2004 election. The BRAD BLOG outed the group and its founders originally in early 2005, and has been covering their disenfranchising efforts and propaganda campaign in great detail. See our complete Special Coverage Page on the ACVR here.
Nadler’s sub-committee is now officially scheduled to hold hearings at 10am ET on October 30th. A staffer on that committee has confirmed to The BRAD BLOG that Tanner will be called as a witness to answer for his comments as seen in our video-tape, as well as a number of other allegations and serious concerns about Tanner as seen by Congressional overseers.
Last Friday, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama sent a letter to the Acting Attorney General demanding Tanner be fired and characterizing his “inexcusable” comments as “patently erroneous, offensive, and dangerous.” Yesterday, the Obama campaign issued an email calling on the public to join him in that demand.
In a press release issued yesterday, the civil rights group Advancement Project similarly called for Tanner’s ouster, charging that his comments displayed “such hostility toward minority voters that we have no choice but to call for his immediate removal.”
They added that the DoJ Civil Rights Division Voting Section chief’s “wrongheaded” decision on the Georgia Photo ID matter and ensuing comments displayed “poor judgment and is an affront to the work of voting rights advocates all over the country.”
In related news… Al Kamen at the Washington Post follows up on the recent Tanner controversy by adding that there seems to be still more trouble in Tanner’s Civil Rights Division Voting Section, as the acting deputy director of the section, Susan Lorenzo-Giguere, is accused today of taking “multiple” trips at department expense, and collecting per diem money all summer long while vacationing at her beach house on Cape Cod…
The allegation, made to the department inspector general apparently by someone linked to the Boston regional office, was that Lorenzo-Giguere made “multiple” government-paid trips to the Cape and that she improperly said that “her presence on Cape Cod was necessary pending litigation in Boston,” which was in the courts over the summer.
…
The complaint also alleged that Lorenzo-Giguere “spent little time in Boston” this summer and did little work on the case. Also, what supervision and oversight she provided was done by phone to Boston while she “remained on the beach,” and she would have been able to do this from her office in Washington.
TPM Muckraker has more on this, including a copy of the actual complaint. As well, their comments section has a number of notes — with additional details on Tanner and Giguere, and a leak to the effect that Tanner is also under OPR investigation — from some insider DoJ sources.
An email from one of The BRAD BLOG’s DoJ insider sources this morning notes that Lorenzo-Giguere’s “travel could not have occurred without Tanner’s approval. He is her direct supervisor.”
###
The video and complete text transcript and audio of comments concerning Tanner, as made this morning by Rep. Jerrold Nadler on Democracy Now, follows below. The quick video-taped snippet of Tanner’s comments follow below those…
Video of Nadler’s Comments (appx 3 mins)…
Transcript…
…
AMY GOODMAN: Congressmember Nadler, I wanted to switch gears and ask you about Tanner, the chief of the Voting Rights section of the department of — Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, who admitted earlier this month that elderly voters might be disenfranchised by new restrictive voter ID laws. John Tanner made the comment at the National Latino Congress. Tanner went on to say white elderly voters would be harmed most by the voter ID laws, because most minorities die before becoming elderly.
(Video clip…)JOHN TANNER: Of course, that also ties into the racial aspect, because our society is such that minorities don’t become elderly the way white people do; they die first. There are inequities in healthcare. There are a variety of inequities in this country, and so anything that disproportionately impacts the elderly has the opposite impact on minorities. Just the math is such as that.
AMY GOODMAN: This was videotaped and shown on bradblog. The comments prompted a letter from Barack Obama to the acting Attorney General, calling for Tanner’s immediate dismissal. You were asking questions about him before he was even elevated to head the Civil Rights Division. What are you calling for now?
REP. JERROLD NADLER: Well, he should certainly be fired, obviously. Obviously, someone who has such prejudices has no business heading the Voting Rights section or any other branch of the government and certainly not being on the Federal Voting Commission, which is supposed to enforce our election laws and our voting rights laws.
Now, Mr. Tanner, as head of the Voting Rights section, perverted the Justice Department — or he and a few others perverted the Justice Department from seeking to protect people’s civil rights and the right to vote to seeking deliberately, I believe — and I think a number of reports have shown this — to use the Justice Department to disenfranchise people likely to vote Democratic, specifically minorities and more elderly people. You know, here he’s admitting that procedures that he sought to put into place would discriminate against elderly people in voting, would cause valid elderly voters not to be able to vote. That’s against the law, and it obviously also should be against the policy of the United States government. But we know that the Bush administration has been using these voter ID cards, the fear of — so far never demonstrated — voter fraud, to put into place all sorts of new restrictions, voter ID cards, purge lists and so forth, which we know have the effect of disproportionately disenfranchising legal elderly and minority but likely-to-vote-Democratic voters.
Tanner is under investigation, too. This is from the comments on Muckraker. Many, if not most, of those comments are obviously from current staffers in the Voting Section. Here’s a sample: “the Chief of Staff of the Civil Rights Division, the Deputy AAG Agarwal and a Deputy Chief of the EMPLOYMENT section personally came to the Section Monday afternoon to inform Tanner that he and Lorenzo Giguere were under investigation by OPR. Fourth, and what has not yet been widely reported, there are numerous detailed complaints on file with the Inspector General about further criminal and unethical behavior by Tanner and Giguere. It is presenting a huge problem for them. Tanner’s days are numbered and Giguere may soon be WEARING a number.”
From my own comment over there: A quote from, of all places, the Moonie Paper from Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, describing why she thought the Voting Section should operate a booth at the Islamic Society of North America’s national convention: “This is an important outreach opportunity, and a chance to reach a community that is at once very much discriminated against, and very wary of the national government and its willingness to protect them,” Mrs. Lorenzo-Giguere said in an e-mail obtained by The Washington Times. “It would be a great step forward to break through those barriers. And Chicago is lovely this time of year,” Mrs. Lorenzo-Giguere said.
Unsurprisingly, the Moonie Paper focuses on the Muslims = terra, terra, terra aspect of the story, and I sure don’t want to identify myself with that (though I think the same person may well have leaked both). God knows Arab-Americans are victims of enough discrimination. But the statement “Chicago is lovely at this time of year” is extremely telling.
OT.
Does “The Nation” magazine have a blind spot when it comes to tabulating votes electronically?
Has anyone ever checked out The Nation‘s take on Electronic Voting Machines?
I know several folks that have a subscription to The Nation, and they all seem to be uninformed. Specifically about the danger of tabulating votes electronically, and why it must be banned nationally.
They apparently support (or supported) HR 811 if I am Reading correctly.
Now I am not saying un-subscribe to The Nation, but wouldn’t that be a powerful ally if they were up to date on the problems?
It seems to me they have a blind spot very similar to the PFAW. Has anyone tried to straighten them out?
A simple search on their website, for terms like “Brad Blog” or “Brad Freidman” are worryingly lacking of any hits.
Further searching “Black Box Voting” on shows one hit.
More on the “Stolen Election” Posted 11/30/2004 @ 5:09pm
I figured this out when listening to PBC’s show and they were talking about Feinstein’s conflict of interest with her husband. They were talking about a blind spot in regards to that and Peter suggested they also had a blind spot on Electronic Voting, and I wondered if there was indeed a blind spot on Electronic Voting Machines. So I did some simple searchin and what I found was that there seems to be something missing when it comes to this topic from what I see.
You’re right. It’s off-topic. So just a quick response to Phil. I can’t speak for Nation’s coverage of e-voting issues in general, and don’t know what, if any coverage they’ve given BRAD BLOG (you misspelled my name if you searched it as above, btw).
But to their credit, they did agree to break the story of the Princeton Diebold Virus hack in the summer of ’06. My article for them was good to go when Professor Ed Felten, um, surprised us, and released the information on his own blog before it was supposed to have been released publicly.
The article I had written for The Nation was released, in a shortened and quickly modified form, instead by Salon who was able to run it quicker on their website, in light of Felten’s early release.
I know you can’t speak for “The Nation” but my hope is that some speak’s to “The Nation.”
My bad on that proper name typo, but it still has no hits when spelled either way.
alright end of OT.
Brad! Once again, KUDOS. If and when I EVER make it above the poverty level, I PROMISE you a healthy tip for all you are doing. Incredible, what you’ve uncovered here.
(PHIL–I contacted THE NATION in DEC ’06 re: the upcoming CD-13 hearing/ went carpal-tunnel LIMP from DESPERATELY trying to get ANY media coverage of that nonsense) and while initially they returned my phone calls and seemed receptive–they asked me for MONEY. Yah. I thought that was odd, too. They wanted me to collect $200.00 dollars (tho’ they said the fee was ‘flexible’)to put an ad in THE NATION on behalf of the Florida Election Integrity Community. After making a few phone calls and realizing just HOW broke we all are, I had to let it go. So, it seems a story will get play in THE NATION if you can pay. Telling.)
The Nation and Salon are two of the left gatekeeper blogs. Don’t be surprised that they don’t give much ink to election fraud (or 9/11 truth for that matter). It would run counter to their purpose, which is managing the discourse on the left so that it doesn’t run into any area most damaging to the regime. I just read an article in the “news”paper today that said that Vladamir Putin is doing basically the same thing, having his government start blogs and buy out existing (anti-Putin) blogs, so as to bring them all in line with his regime’s propaganda. Just like he has his version of the Democrats, called the “Fair Russia” party which pretends to be in opposition but rolls over on command, just like the Dems here. Putin’s just less sophisticated than his American counterparts. Bottom line, don’t expect too much from the controlled elements of the “left” blogosphere. Brad Blog, Winter Patriot and The Hollywood Liberal are so far the only three big to moderate size left blogs that are genuine. Some of the small blogs probably are as well, and I will keep looking, but remember just because blogs like The Nation and Salon might APPEAR to be leftist doesn’t mean they genuinely are.
Correction, I meant to say “Brad Blog, Winter Patriot and The Hollywood Liberal are so far the only big to moderate size left blogs THAT I’VE FOUND that are genuine.”
The rest that I’ve found, including all the other big-name blogs like Daily Kos, Huffington Post, Crooks & Liars, Democratic Underground etc. are all fake. But like I said, there are likely some small left blogs that are in fact genuine.