Government Report Finds Rampant Nepotism At The DOJ

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

A new government investigation has uncovered rampant nepotism at a Justice Department agency, where senior officials routinely gave paid federal jobs to their children stretching back at least to 2005.

The investigation focused on three senior officials at the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a DOJ agency whose mission is to “to adjudicate immigration cases by fairly, expeditiously, and uniformly interpreting and administering the Nation’s immigration laws. Under delegated authority from the Attorney General, EOIR conducts immigration court proceedings, appellate reviews, and administrative hearings.”

The report not only implicated all three in hiring relatives for paid student positions, but found that “the practice of hiring relatives of employees into step positions in EOIR was widespread over a period of years. … Multiple EOIR officials told the OIG that hiring relatives for paid student positions was a standard practice or commonplace.”

“Juan and I chatted this morning, and concluded that we would place [his niece] on the board, as far from him as possible, and she is to be treated as just another student,” she emailed later that day — although Osuna denies that that part of the conversation occurred.

The same day Cromartie asked BIA chief clerk Donna Carr whether she’d hire Osuna’s niece, and she agreed, without ever having seen her resume or interviewing her. Osuna’s niece worked for the BIA full-time for six weeks that summer, and returned again the following year, before resigning in August 2009 to continue her studies in New York.