Hume: Unlike Adams, who was “dismissed as a Republican activist,” Coates was a “Clinton-era appointee”

From the September 27 edition of Fox News' Special Report:

HUME: There is now powerful evidence that the Justice Department's Voting Rights section under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder has been seriously corrupted. It was one thing when former Justice Department attorney Christian Adams testified to that effect back in July. Adams said, among other things, that the department had basically dropped the Philadelphia voter intimidation case it had already won against the New Black Panthers Party because the accused were black and the victims were white. But Adams was dismissed as a Republican activist.

Now, though, his former boss, Clinton-era appointee and former ACLU attorney Christopher Coates, has supported the Adams testimony and taken it further, much further. He told the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Friday his Justice Department superiors had made clear that they did not want the voting rights laws enforced when the victims were white.

Coates was not a Clinton political appointee

Coates is a career civil service attorney and has not received a presidential appointment. As numerous conservative media outlets have reported, Coates is a career member of the Justice Department, not a political appointee. During his September 24 testimony to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Coates provided the following description of his career at the Justice Department:

DAVID BLACKWOOD (general counsel, Office of the General Counsel): If I could, before getting into the merits of some of what you have testified to today, I'd like to ask you a little bit about your background. You were hired at the Department of Justice in 1996. Is that correct?

COATES: That's correct, hired in 1996 as a trial attorney, worked in that capacity until -- it was '99 or 2000. It was during the Clinton administration. I was promoted to special litigation counsel, served in that position until 2005, at which time I was appointed principal deputy chief of the Voting Section. And then in May -- in December of 2007, I was appointed acting chief, and then appointed permanent chief in May of 2008, served as chief of the Voting Section until the end of December of 2009.

Trial attorney positions are listed for hiring through the Justice Department's Office of Attorney Recruitment and Management and are career positions, not presidential appointments. In the federal government's United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions book, Chief of the Justice Department's Voting Section is listed as a career appointment, not a presidential appointment. A career appointment is a "[c]ompetitive service permanent appointment given to an employee who has completed 3 substantially continuous, creditable years of Federal service."

Coates reportedly became “a true member of the team” during the Bush administration

Coates reportedly filed a “reverse-discrimination” complaint against DOJ and became “more conservative” after not being promoted. A 2007 McClatchy Newspapers article connected Coates to Bradley Schlozman and the Bush-era politicization of the Justice Department. McClatchy reported that Schlozman attempted to refute the notion that the DOJ had used political ideology in its personnel practices in part by citing “the promotion of Chris Coates, a former ACLU voting counsel, to serve as top deputy chief of the voting section.” McClatchy went on to report that Joseph Rich, then head of the DOJ's voting rights section, and other DOJ lawyers interviewed said that Coates “seemed to grow more conservative after his superiors passed him over for a promotion in favor of an African-American woman, and he filed a reverse-discrimination suit.” [McClatchy Newspapers, 5/6/07]

Schlozman reportedly identified Coates as a “true member of the team.” A July 2008 report from the Department of Justice Inspector General's Office and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that Schlozman improperly considered ideology when making personnel decisions and cited numerous emails in which Schlozman discussed adding conservative members to “the team.” In a January 8, 2010, American Prospect article, Adam Serwer reported that “several current and former Justice Department officials” identified Coates as the attorney Schlozman called “a very different man” from his days of working for the American Civil Liberties Union and “a true member of the team” while recommending him for a job. In his September 24 testimony, Coates said that he believed he was the person Schlozman was referring to as a “true member of the team.”