Esther Slater McDonald, the Googling Department of Justice employee who now works for the anti-union law firm of Seyfarth Shaw (our school board’s law firm), had the job of doing political screening of DOJ job applicants. That practice is illegal.
Earler reports said that she Googled applicants with the search terms: “environmental justice,” “affirmative action,” and “social justice.”
Now reports have come out that she Googled the word, “torture.” If it was discovered that you were against torture then no job for you. And she Googled, “anarchist.”
Were there really a lot of lawyers trying to get jobs at the DOJ who would have their names come up by Googling “anarchist?”
When Fridman asked McDonald how she obtained the additional information, she told him she conducted searches on Google and MySpace, and read law review articles written by the applicants. For example, Fridman recalled that one candidate had written a law review article about the detention of individuals at Guantánamo, and McDonald noted on the application that she perceived the applicant’s viewpoint to be contrary to the position of the administration. On another application, McDonald noted that she found information on the Internet indicating that a candidate was an “anarchist.”
Fred Klonsky 