7 Deadly Sins

You just have to wonder. I've heard the expression "women troubles" before, but for some reason there seems to be a lot of troubles with women lawyers these days. For example, there's the case against Cozen & O'Conner by Patricia Biswanger and the Ballard Spahr dispute with Jane Ennis Sheehan that I wrote about just the other day. See Nobody Does It Better.

But the winner take all is definitely Rachel Paulose, the US Attorney from Minnesota, about whom I've written several times. As I noted most recently in Princess Jasmine:

After her 'royal ordination' ceremony inducting her into office, she proceeded to cause great upheaval in the US Attorney's Office, so much so that 4 top staffers voluntarily demoted themselves to protest her dictatorial style.

However, the latest news about Paulose is not about the investigation by the federal Office of Special Counsel that is under way with respect to various allegations against her.

Rather, the news just out is that she is returning back from whence she came. After wreaking havoc on the US Attorney's Office in Minnesota, Paulose is returning to DC to take job as a legal policy adviser to Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy. As TPM notes, Paulose Offered Justice Department Position:

So it sounds like she's returning to essentially the same job she had before she was appointed U.S. attorney for Minnesota. Before that appointment, she was 'senior counsel to then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty in Washington, D.C., where she was also a special counsel for health care fraud.'

Or as Wonkette so aptly sums the situation up:

Despite showing expertise as a prosecutor far beyond her years and bringing a new kind of racial harmony to the office of US Attorney in Minnesota, 34-year-old Rachel Paulose will be leaving that post after only seven months or so to come work for Justice in Washington.

So how did this come to pass? Well, although it doesn't seem possible, things were going from worse to worser for Paulose . The shine was definitely off the crown. It looked like a new wave of high ranking officials in the office were ready to resign en masse. More protest resignations of supervisors in Paulose office.

Anticipating this move, Paulose and her supporters apparently tried to do a preemptive strike. As Eric Black explains, Rachel Paulose plays seven victim cards:

The Paulose campaign team seeks to portray her as a martyr and as a victim of most of the forms of prejudice and unfair smear tactics known to U.S. history. On Friday, Paulose herself became the spokesperson for the defense team.

* * * *

On Friday, Paulose, in a single 48-word sentence, played the race card, the gender card, the religion card, the age card, the ideology card, the Federalist Society card, and the Joe McCarthy card. That’s a large percentage of the cards available in the victimology deck.

Here’s the sentence, published Friday at National Review Online by Powerline blogger and Paulose friend Scott Johnson:

Paulose adds: “The McCarthyite hysteria that permits the anonymous smearing of any public servant who is now, or ever may have been, a member of the Federalist Society; a person of faith; and/or a conservative (especially a young, conservative woman of color) is truly a disservice to our country.”

Black then proceeds to refute these silly claims in his post. See also, his follow up post on the resignation. Paulose resigns.

So, either Paulose was a victim of the 7 Deadly Sins (a victim of racism, sexism, ageism, bias against her conservative ideology and her religious faith, and as a victim of unnamed elements within the Justice Department that didn’t like the fact that she was aggressively prosecuting human trafficking) or it was something else. Let's see, it's either that, Rachel, or maybe -- Baby It's You.

Tags: Law, News, Attorneygate, Rachel Paulose