Brad Friedman's excellent article on the Missouri situation includes a summary of Todd Graves' role along with this:
The interim replacement for Graves would be Bradley J. Schlozman, a key Bush appointee to DoJ's Civil Rights Division. Schlozman had previously overridden the unanimous opinion of 8 career attorneys and staffers in the division who had concluded that Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting scheme had violated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The U.S. Supreme Court would later agree with the career employees and overturned several parts of DeLay's redistricting.
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Schlozman had never even served as a prosecutor when he was appointed to take Graves's place just two weeks after the Bush administration had accomplished their PATRIOT Act coup allowing for appointments without Senate approval. He would pick up where Graves left off in a "voter fraud" suit (naturally) against the Missouri Secretary of State. That case was decided in favor of Missouri (naturally), and against the DoJ just last week when the federal judge found "the United States has not shown that any Missouri resident was denied his or her right to vote as a result of deficiencies alleged by the United States...Nor has the United States shown that any voter fraud has occurred."
More to come on this situation at TPM - http://www.talkingpo...
And then there's what Biskupic did to Kimberley Prude, still in jail:
A less well-known casualty of Biskupic's need to prove he was "Bushie enough" to retain his job is Kimberly Prude, an African-American Milwaukee woman who has been jailed for more than a year for the crime of voting.***
We now know the Republican Party of Wisconsin had complained directly to Rove that Biskupic was not prosecuting enough Democratic voters in response to Republican claims about vote fraud.
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Prude's offense was typical of the sort of innocuous mistakes that Republicans turn into exaggerated claims of vote fraud. Prude was convicted in 2000 on a bad check charge. The charge didn't result in any jail time. She was placed on six years' probation. Four years later, Prude attended a rally in Milwaukee to hear the Rev. Al Sharpton urge everyone to register and vote. Along with hundreds of others, she marched to City Hall and did so. ***
When Prude learned from her probation agent that she wasn't allowed to vote because she was still on probation, she actually called City Hall and tried to rescind her vote. She was told that wasn't necessary. But voting has now cost Prude something her original crime involving a fraudulent check never did. As a result of Biskupic's charge against her for voting, she has been in jail for more than a year for violating her probation.
Get ready for another blistering opinion:
http://www.madison.c...The federal appeals court in Chicago has not yet ruled on her appeal. But Federal Judge Diane Wood at a hearing expressed the same incredulity at Biskupic's charge as other judges on the appeals court did regarding the Thompson case.
"I find this whole prosecution mysterious," said Wood. "I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times. She cast one vote."
And Tom Davis continues to say nothing illegal was done here.