Aides to former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales violated federal law by improperly using political considerations when hiring career Justice Department lawyers and immigration judges, an agency report found. The audit, by the Justice Department inspector general and ethics chief, concluded that Monica Goodling, the White House liaison, and Gonzales’s chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, committed misconduct. Gonzales, who resigned under pressure last year, was generally unaware of his aides’ actions, the report said. The screening ‘resulted in high-quality candidates for important department positions being rejected,” the agency’s inspector general, Glenn Fine, said in a statement. The report, the second of four that the internal watchdogs are releasing this year on politicization at the Justice Department, cites several other officials for improperly screening job candidates or for making inaccurate statements about the process. The first audit, released last month, said department staffers used partisan considerations to hire interns and young lawyers. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who succeeded Gonzales, said in a statement that he was ‘disturbed” by the report’s findings. ‘I have said many times, both to members of the public and to department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations […]