Rockford guy focus of wider DOJ probe

The Justice Department's inspector general and the department's Office of Professional Responsibility have notified the Senate Judiciary Committee of an expanded investigation into hiring practices at the agency.

The wider probe involves, among other things, allegations of improper practices by Rockford native Michael Elston in the operation of the department's Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program.

Elston, who was chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, already has been questioned by congressional investigators behind closed doors in connection with the controversy over the firing of eight federal prosecutors.

Elston has been accused by several of those cashiered prosecutors of threatening them with retaliation if they made a fuss over their dismissals.

Background on Elston's role in the Attorneygate scandal can be found here and through the links therein.

WaPo scribe calls Rockford guy "infamous"

Washington Post columnist Andrew Cohen has written a piece about how a group of "concerned Department of Justice employees" has blasted department hot-shot Michael Elston, a Rockford native, for his excessive ideological zeal.

Elston, you'll recall, has been implicated in the Prosecutorgate scandal, which has left Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hanging onto his job by a thread, with only President Bush still supporting him.

Several federal prosecutors have suggested that Elston might have criminally obstructed justice by trying to intimidate a couple of the U.S. attorneys who got canned last year by the Bush administration.