Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Wan Kim testified yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which focused on allegations that career attorneys were pushed aside to (in the reported words of Brad Schlozman) “make room for some good Americans.” Kim called the remarks “[a]t a very minimum … intemperate and inopportune.” The Washington Post has this report and the AP this one, which also discusses Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty’s House testimony. McNulty reportedly portrayed himself as out of the loop on the U.S. Attorney firings.
I caught part of Kim’s testimony on C-SPAN last night. Although not mentioned in the stories, the DOJ’s decisions to preclear Georgia’s voter ID bills in 2005 and 2006 was among the subjects on which Kim was aggressively questioned. Kim said he didn’t know details on the 2005 decision, made one day after a staff memo recommeded against preclearance, since it occurred before the start of his tenure. He defended the 2006 decision, after his tenure began, partly on the ground that ID would be provided free to those who didn’t have it. The video doesn’t appear to be on C-SPAN’s video archive page, but perhaps it will appear later.