Until recently, Rachel Paulose had told friends and colleagues that she hoped and planned to keep her job as U.S. attorney for Minnesota until the end of Pres. Bush’s term. She has stopped making that statement around the office.

Signs and portents augur that the end of her tenure may (or may not) draw nigh. To wit:

• Two witnesses gave statements to Office of Special Counsel investigators about the allegation that Paulose made a derogatory racial remark about an administrative staffer in the office. The first told the investigators that she heard the remark. The second either corroborated the remark itself or told the investigators that she has heard Paulose make similar remarks. Paulose has not publicly confirmed or denied that she made the comment. If there was a corroborating witness, Paulose’s ability to credibly deny is reduced. (More about this below. For now, I’m overviewing the signs and portents.)
• The OSC investigation (which includes several other allegations) continues. There’s also the dismal job review Paulose received from a team of Justice Department experts drawn from U.S. attorney offices around the country. These reviews, called EARS (Evaluation And Review Staff) are submitted to the attorney general or, in the current situation, the acting attorney general.
• Paulose has just canceled a trip to Washington to talk about her situation with Acting Attorney General Peter Keisler. Given the total circumstances, it’s unlikely the meeting would have been an exchange of compliments. It is standard procedure in DOJ for an acting office holder to try to clean up pending problems as much as possible so that the incoming permanent appointee doesn’t have to deal with those issues.
• I have asked Paulose, through her public affairs assistant, about the reason the meeting was scheduled and the reason it was canceled. Her new spokester, David Anderson, said her standing instruction was to decline interview requests on these matters. My offer to interview her, or publish her reply to any of the points in this post, stands.
• Those in Washington who sponsored Paulose have left the positions from which they might have protected her (Alberto Gonzales, Monica Goodling and most of the rest of the White House and Justice Department crew that oversaw the appointment of several loyal Bushies to U.S. attorneyships) or turned from supporters to critics.
• Sen. Norm Coleman, who submitted Paulose’s name to the White House as one of his two choices for the job, has become publicly critical.
• The rift between most of the staff and the U.S. attorney is irreconcilable. Her subordinates are open about their disdain, even in her presence. She has little contact with the staff and spends many days on the road, having developed an ambition to make an official visit to each of Minnesota’s 87 counties
• Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey begins confirmation hearings tomorrow. He could be asked about the Paulose situation. In his private meeting with Coleman, Mukasey promised a “thorough review” of the allegations against Paulose. Mukasey bears no responsibility for the controversial holdovers from the Gonzalez mess. If Paulose is still in office when Mukasey is sworn in, he likely will want to distance himself from the allegations of excessive politicization caused by some of those appointments, and to demonstrate that there’s a new sheriff in town.

Fat, black, lazy

I promised a bit more context for the allegation that Paulose made a vulgar race-tinged remark about an employee of the office. The allegation was part of the complaint under investigation by the Office of Special Counsel, as I previously reported. The remark allegedly included the words “fat,” “black,” “lazy” and “ass.”
Decide for yourself how serious it is if the feds conclude that Paulose made the remark. As the top Justice Department official in Minnesota, Paulose bears responsibility for enforcing federal civil rights statutes, which could make her attitudes about race more relevant.

The staffer in question has filed an official complaint that the remark created a hostile work environment. Although she declined to discuss the specifics, the employee confirmed to me that she was the subject of the remark.

Scott Johnson of Powerline, who is a friend and defender of Paulose, thought enough of this allegation to dispute it in a post he wrote, replying to my earlier modest scoop about the OSC investigation. Johnson, whom I know and like, didn’t attack the accuracy of my post, but dismissed the allegations in the OSC complaint as “absurd,” particularly the idea that Paulose would have made the alleged “fat lazy black ass” remark because:

“Rachel is herself an Indian, sensitive to racial slights. I’ve never heard Rachel utter a swear word, let alone a racial epithet.”

As mentioned above (but not previously reported) two other employees, one of whom heard the remark and the other of whom heard similar comments, confirmed as much to the Special Counsel investigators. The Office of Special Counsel is an independent executive branch agency that, among other things, receives and investigates allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers and other inappropriate treatment of federal employees. Paulose has been accused in the OSC complaint of retaliating against others in the office who disagreed with her.