The Scandal That May Haunt the New Nominee for Labor Secretary
R. Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s pick to run the Labor Department following the withdrawal of Andrew Puzder’s nomination, was the head of the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice in the Bush administration during a period in which his subordinates became embroiled in a scandal over politicized hiring.
.. But at the Justice Department, his subordinates skirted the law, seeking to purge liberal attorneys from the division and replace them with conservatives. Acosta told investigators he was unaware of what was occurring.
.. The report states that Schlozman used terms like “real Americans,” “right thinking,” “solid,” and “on the team” to describe conservative attorneys—the ones he wanted to hire—and that Bradshaw was aware of the meaning of those terms.
Schlozman, deploying a colorful metaphor, stated in an email that “My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs rights out of the [voting] section.”