Earlier this morning, TAP obtained a copy of a letter from the Office of Professional Responsibility in the Justice Department detailing the conclusion of an investigation into possible ethics violations by former Voting Rights Section Chief John Tanner and one of his former deputies, Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, who is referred to in the letter as a senior litigation counsel. According to the letter, dated June 24 of this year, Tanner authorized Lorenzo-Giguere to submit "false travel vouchers" for government reimbursement of per diem expenses ($64 a day) while ostensibly on a work-related trip in Boston, when in fact she was in Cape Cod (where she owns a beach house) or Maine on trips unrelated to work--something Tanner was apparently aware of, though he authorized the expenditures anyway. The OPR said they did not have enough evidence to conclude that Tanner and Lorenzo-Giguere's much ballyhooed trips to Hawaii in 2004 were improper. The OPR came to similar conclusions about per diem expenses Lorenzo-Giguere claimed in Springfield, Massachussetts, in 2006. The Washington Post reported in October of 2007 Tanner's extravagant travel habits had become a focus of OPR investigation.
Sources in the Justice Department describe Tanner as a "friend and mentor" of Lorenzo-Giguere, who was hired in 2003 shortly after Tanner took over the section. Although the OPR found that both Tanner and Lorenzo-Giguere "committed misconduct", Lorenzo-Giguere is apparently still employed at the DoJ, although both she and another Tanner deputy and current DoJ employee, Yvette Rivera, were demoted in January of 2008. Rivera, like Tanner, had developed a reputation for racial insensitivity. Tanner resigned in disgrace in 2007.
In the ocean of scandals surrounding John Tanner and his tenure in the Voting Rights Section, this is pretty small stuff. But it's a reminder of the kind of corrupt shop the Bushies ran in the Justice Department, and the kind of lax, unprofessional practices Eric Holder and company are having to clean up.
The Justice Department did not respond to TAP's requests for comment.
UPDATE: I feel like I should note explicitly that Paul Kiel, while he was at TPM, was doing a lot of the heavy lifting on this story when it first broke.
-- A. Serwer
