Audit: DOJ Played Politics, Broke Law in Hiring

According to the report, McDonald was assigned to the selection committee only weeks after having joined the Justice Department in late 2006.

In a Nov. 29, 2006 e-mail, McDonald had noted one candidate was unacceptable because he belonged to a "leftist" group, writing, "Poverty and Race Research Council actively works to extend racial discrimination through increased affirmative action and, while there, [the candidate] helped draft [a] document arguing that federal law requires recipients of federal funding to seek actively to discriminate in favor of minorities (racial, language, and health), rather than merely to treat all applicants equally."

In an instance, when Fridman noted his concerns, the report documented McDonald's criteria. "One candidate was at the top of his class at Harvard Law School and was fluent in Arabic. McDonald's written notations indicated that she had concerns about the candidate because he was a member of the Council on American Islamic Relations, and that she had placed the application in the questionable pile. Fridman said he wrote on the application that this candidate was at the top of his class at Harvard, and was exactly the type of person DOJ needed."

The review added how McDonald also used Internet searches, saying, "Fridman learned that McDonald was obtaining additional information about candidates on the Internet when he saw notations by McDonald providing information that was not contained in the candidate's application. When Fridman asked McDonald how she obtained the additional information, she told him she conducted searches on Google and MySpace, and read law review articles written by the applicants."

As the head of the approval process, Elston, when he was interviewed by the inspector general, "stated that he wished he had been 'more proactive and more protective of the department's reputation.'"

"...We concluded that Elston violated federal law and department policy by deselecting candidates based on their liberal affiliations," the report continued.

The report notes that, while both officials violated the law "because both McDonald and Elston have resigned from the department, they are no longer subject to discipline by the department for their actions." Elston might have been influential in deciding which prosecutors would be dismissed.