Bush Officials Mocked Sen. Pryor’s Concerns About Gender Discrimination At DoJ

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http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/10/sampson-mock-pryor/

Bush Officials Mocked Sen. Pryor’s Concerns About Gender Discrimination At DoJ

In June 2006, the Justice Department fired Bud Cummins as U.S. attorney in Arkansas and replaced him with Karl Rove-protege Tim Griffin.

In a Dec. 26, 2006 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse explained that they “temporarily” appointed Griffin, rather than Bud Cummins’ deputy Jane Duke, because Duke was pregnant:

He noted that often, the first assistant U.S. attorney in the affected district will serve as the acting U.S. attorney until the formal nomination process begins for a replacement. But in this case, “the first assistant is on maternity leave,” he said, referring to Jane Duke, who gave birth to twins earlier than expected the same week of the announcement.

As ThinkProgress noted earlier, on Jan. 11, Sen. Mark Pryor (R-AR) wrote a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and expressed concern with the maternity leave excuse, saying that it “concerns me on several levels, but most importantly it uses pregnancy and motherhood as conditions that deny an appointment.” He added, “The U.S. Department of Justice would never discriminate against women in this manner.”

Today, Murray Waas reveals that the Justice Department has withheld several e-mails from congressional investigators, including one “in which Sampson wrote to six other senior Justice Department officials and derided Pryor’s letter“:

The PDF below is an outrageous letter we got from Sen. Pryor; we don’t think it has hit the press yet. … respond to the allegation that we troglodytes discrimatorialy passed over the FASU because she is apparently a mother out on maternity leave.

In recent written testimony provided to the House Judiciary Committee, Cummins confirms that pregnancy and motherhood were used as excuses to deny an appointment. He said that Roehrkasse’s statement was “ridiculous” and “mocked” by people in the Arkansas legal community because Duke would have been perfectly able to serve as an interim U.S. attorney “for six weeks or more” if she would have been asked.

Additionally, as Waas notes, “Sampson and the White House had decided to name Griffin as a U.S. attorney in June 2006 even before Duke knew she was pregnant.”