Says Recent Comments and Other Actions by John 'Minorities Die First' Tanner Demonstrate He and Others Have 'Perverted the Justice Department'
PLUS: New Allegations of Financial Improprieties by a Subordinate, 'Could Not Have Occurred Without Tanner's Approval,' Charges a BRAD BLOG DoJ Source...
By Brad Friedman on 10/24/2007, 2:27pm PT  

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...

Now there's word that the acting deputy director of the section, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, has been accused of collecting a $64 per diem, including on weekends and the Fourth of July, while spending half of June and most of July and August with her husband and kids at their 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: Democratic Congressmember Jerrold Nadler of New York joins us now from Capitol Hill. He is the chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
...
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.


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Article Categories: Dept. of Justice, John Tanner, Jerrold Nadler