Melanie Sloan (born December 16, 1965) is an American attorney, former counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, and the former Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit government ethics and accountability watchdog group. [1] In March 2017, Sloan joined a new government ethics watchdog group, American Oversight, as senior adviser. [2]
Sloan was born in Washington, D.C. to parents Leonard S. Togman, who then worked at the U.S. Department of Justice, and Barbara A. Togman. She grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, where she attended Wilmington Friends School. [3] Her father, who still resides in Delaware, is a lawyer "of counsel" (retired) with the law firm Potter Anderson & Corroon LLP. [4]
Sloan received her B.A. and J.D. from the University of Chicago. [5]
Before founding Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in 2003, Sloan served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the District of Columbia from 1998 to 2003. Before becoming a prosecutor, Sloan served as Minority Counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, working on criminal justice issues for then-Ranking Member John Conyers (D-MI). Sloan also served as counsel for the Crime Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by then-Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY). There, she drafted portions of the 1994 Crime Bill, including the Violence Against Women Act. In 1993, Sloan served as Nominations Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, under then-Chairman Joseph Biden (D-DE). [6]
Sloan has published in the Yale Law & Policy Review and other publications. [7]
In November 2017 Sloan publicly accused Conyers of harassment and verbal abuse during her tenure working for the House Judiciary Committee. On one occasion, she was summoned to his office and found him sitting in his underwear, and quickly left. [8]
Sloan frequently appears on national media to provide analysis and commentary. She has appeared on shows including Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! show, [9] Air America's Al Franken Show, [10] NPR's All Things Considered [11] and Morning Edition , [12] CNN's The Situation Room , [13] Larry King Live [14] and Lou Dobbs Tonight , [15] MSNBC's Hardball , [16] Countdown with Keith Olbermann [17] and The Rachel Maddow Show , [18] NBC Nightly News , [19] CBS Evening News , [20] and ABC World News Tonight . [21] Sloan has been profiled in a number of publications including Ms. Magazine , [5] Time Magazine [22] and Mother Jones. [23] In 2009, Sloan was featured in O Magazine's first-ever "O Power List" [24] and was declared one of the "100 People Who Are Changing America" [25] in Rolling Stone . She also appeared in the documentary Casino Jack and the United States of Money .
Sloan serves as legal counsel for former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson and his wife, retired CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson, [26] whose then-classified covert identity was disclosed, leading to the CIA leak grand jury investigation and the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in United States v. Libby (see Plame affair). Sloan is one of the attorneys representing the Wilsons in their civil lawsuit against former and current officials of the George W. Bush administration ( Plame v. Cheney ).
Agreeing with the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department has argued the Wilsons have no legitimate grounds to sue. [27] On the current Justice Department position, Sloan, stated: "We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson. The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions." [27]
When Sloan was a guest on Hardball with Chris Matthews in December 2006, she spoke openly about many details in the Libby trial. Following her appearance on the show, she drew a strong warning from Judge Reggie Walton: "the Court would not tolerate this case being tried in the media." [28]
In October 2010, The American Prospect reporter Mike Elk raised allegations that Sloan was working in conjunction with for-profit college lobbyists to attack the credibility of student lending reform advocates. [29] Elk alleged that while Sloan was criticizing the student lending reforms advocates, she was also talking about potential jobs with lobbyists, including Lanny Davis, who worked for the for-profit college industry. In the summer of 2010, Sloan and CREW were highly critical of famed short-seller Steve Eisman, writing letters to the congressional subcommittee, denouncing the fact that he had an adverse financial interest. CREW published a rebuttal of the article's claims, noting the ethics concern about individuals manipulating the regulatory process for personal benefit. In 2021, NPR reported that after two federal investigations, none of the allegations lodged against those individuals were proven. [30]
In the fall of 2010, Sloan announced she would be leaving CREW and joining with Lanny Davis in a legal practice. [31] Sloan subsequently decided against joining Davis' firm and remained as the Executive Director of CREW. [32] She left CREW in 2014 when David Brock became the chairman of CREW's board of directors. [1]
Lawrence Ari Fleischer is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the 23rd White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003.
Valerie Elise Plame is an American writer, spy, novelist, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. As the subject of the 2003 Plame affair, also known as the CIA leak scandal, Plame's identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of The Washington Post. She described this period and the media firestorm that ensued as "mortifying, and I think I was in shock for a couple years".
John James Conyers Jr. was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. Conyers was the sixth-longest serving member of Congress and the longest-serving African American member of Congress in history.
Joseph Charles Wilson IV was an American diplomat who was best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent leaking by the Bush/Cheney administration of information pertaining to the identity of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA officer. He also served as the CEO of a consulting firm he founded, JC Wilson International Ventures, and as the vice chairman of Jarch Capital, LLC.
Patrick J. Fitzgerald is an American lawyer and former partner at the law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) watchdog organization devoted to U.S. government ethics and accountability. Founded in 2003 as a counterweight to conservative government watchdog groups such as Judicial Watch, CREW works to expose ethics violations and corruption by government officials and institutions and to reduce the role of money in politics.
During the presidency of George W. Bush, several American politicians sought to either investigate Bush for possible impeachable offenses, or to bring actual impeachment charges on the floor of the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. The most significant of these efforts occurred on June 10, 2008, when Congressman Dennis Kucinich, along with co-sponsor Robert Wexler, introduced 35 articles of impeachment against Bush to the U.S. House of Representatives. The House voted 251 to 166 to refer the impeachment resolution to the Judiciary Committee on June 11, where no further action was taken on it. Bush's presidency ended on January 20, 2009, with the completion of his second term in office, rendering impeachment efforts moot.
Larisa Alexandrovna is an American journalist, essayist, and poet. She has served as the managing editor of investigative news of The Raw Story and contributes opinion and columns to online publications such as Alternet. She is also an American blogger for the Huffington Post and for her own journalism blog, at-Largely. Alexandrovna has had her work referenced in publications like Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, and Newsweek. She is married to Scott Horton.
The Plame affair erupted in July 2003, when journalist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame worked as covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, although the seeds of the scandal had been laid during 2001 and 2002 as the Bush administration investigated allegations that Iraq had purchased Nigerien uranium.
The Plame affair was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.
The CIA leak grand jury investigation was a federal inquiry "into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee's identity", a possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, and Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.
United States v. Libby was the federal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former high-ranking official in the George W. Bush administration, for interfering with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame affair.
John Deacon Bates is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in December 2001, and has adjudicated several cases directly affecting the office of the President. Bates served as Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, from July 1, 2013 to January 5, 2015, after which he returned to full-time service as a District Judge.
Wilson v. Libby, 498 F. Supp. 2d 74, affirmed, 535 F.3d 697, was a civil lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on 13 July, 2006, by Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, against Richard Armitage (individually) for allegedly revealing her identity and thus irresponsibly infringing upon her Constitutional rights and against Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Karl Rove, and the unnamed others (together) because the latter, in addition, allegedly "illegally conspired to reveal her identity." The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed.
The Plame affair was a dispute stemming from allegations that one or more White House officials revealed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame Wilson's undercover status. An investigation, led by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, was started, concerning the possibility that one or more crimes may have been committed. The initial focus was on Scooter Libby; however, he was not the primary source of the leak.
Irve Lewis "Scooter" Libby is an American lawyer and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney known for his high-profile indictment and clemency.
During the 2007 Congressional investigation of the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, it was discovered that administration officials had been using a private Internet domain, called gwb43.com, owned by and hosted on an email server run by the Republican National Committee, for various official communications. The domain name is an abbreviation for "George W. Bush, 43rd" President of the United States. The use of this email domain became public when it was discovered that Scott Jennings, the White House's deputy director of political affairs, was using a gwb43.com email address to discuss the firing of the U.S. attorney for Arkansas. Communications by federal employees were also found on georgewbush.com and rnchq.org. Congressional requests for administration documents while investigating the dismissals of the U.S. attorneys required the Bush administration to reveal that not all internal White House emails were available. Conducting governmental business in this manner is a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Over 5 million emails may have been lost. Greg Palast claims to have come up with 500 of the Karl Rove emails, leading to damaging allegations. In 2009, it was announced that as many as 22 million emails may have been lost.
The Scooter Libby clemency controversy arose when U.S. President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, the former Chief of Staff to Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, on July 2, 2007. It resulted in a hearing, "The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials", held July 11, 2007, by the full Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives. The hearing was intended to "explore the grave questions that arise when the Presidential clemency power is used to erase criminal penalties for high-ranking executive branch employees whose offenses relate to their work for the President", as well as to assess the consequences of the perjury and obstruction of justice of which vice-presidential Chief of Staff Lewis Libby was convicted March 6, 2007.
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House is a memoir by Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson is the former covert CIA officer whose then-classified non-official cover (NOC) identity as "Valerie Plame" was leaked to the press in July 2003, after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, had criticized the George W. Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War. The outing made her the center of the American political scandal known as the Plame affair. Her public outing led to her decision to resign from the CIA in December 2005, when she attempted to retire early at the age of 42. Being told that she could not collect her pension until the age of 56, she determined to write this book both as a means of telling her own story in her own words and as a means of earning income to replace her deferred retirement annuity. She encountered resistance from the CIA in the course of chronicling her work with the organization.
Richard Lee Armitage is an American former diplomat and government official. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Armitage served as a U.S. Navy officer in three combat tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a riverine warfare advisor. After leaving active duty, he served in a number of civil-service roles under Republican administrations. He worked as an aide to Senator Bob Dole before serving in various posts in the Defense Department and State Department.