Ethics . . . The Woman Who Disabled Sessions Through Recusal, Then Enabled Weissmann

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Announce bad news on a Friday afternoon, the rule in official Washington goes. Attorney General Eric Holder seems to have a new corollary: Make bad appointments over holiday breaks.

It works. Holder’s announcement on Christmas Eve that he was appointing Robin Ashton as the new head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) went virtually unnoticed in the press, other than a highly complimentary article in the Washington Post.

That’s unfortunate, considering how important this position is. OPR investigates ethics violations by Justice Department lawyers. It should be headed by someone who does not place partisanship above the law, and who has the highest ethical standards and a sterling reputation. Robin Ashton does not fit that bill. Indeed, Ashton’s antics at DOJ have often been so petty and juvenile that she should be disqualified from serving in any career leadership position at Justice, much less the one responsible for enforcing ethical standards.
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Ashton may be a “veteran Justice prosecutor,” as the Post called her, but according to lawyers who worked with her at DOJ, she is also a highly political person who was so upset over George Bush’s reelection in 2004 that she angrily vented her frustration to her colleagues in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA) — of which she was a deputy director — and made no effort to hide her contempt for President Bush or his administration.

Ashton’s bad reputation goes beyond partisan grievance. Two former directors of EOUSA were interviewed in 2006 by the House Judiciary Committee during its investigation of the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. According to someone familiar with the entire transcripts of those interviews (which are not public), the directors were scathing in their criticism. Ashton reportedly would go through the desk of one former director, Mary Beth Buchanan, when she was out of the office, rifling through confidential files and documents. Ashton was also characterized by former colleagues as completely untrustworthy — someone who treated subordinates like chattel while she did everything possible to ingratiate herself with her bosses, often claiming credit for work that others had done. This sounds more like the behavior of a less-than-stellar high-school student than that of a DOJ lawyer.

Ashton’s political loyalties were demonstrated emphatically by her request to be detailed to the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, one of the fiercest and most partisan liberal Democrats in the Senate. The Justice Department acquiesced to Ashton’s request and actually paid her salary while she worked in Leahy’s office, helping him attack the Bush administration’s Justice Department. As one Justice Department lawyer who worked with Ashton told me, “You don’t do a detail with Patrick Leahy if you’re not a committed, solid Democrat whose political loyalty Leahy would never question.”
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“Given her partisan instincts and the loyalty she feels to the current attorney general,” one former DOJ lawyer told me, “there is no way that Robin Ashton will allow any report to come out that criticizes Eric Holder or his deputies.” Moreover, the lawyers in OPR and the IG’s office know that from a standpoint of professional advancement within Justice, their own careers would suffer if they came out with such a report.

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