The U.S. Attorney Question Partially Answered

Legal Times ^ | 1-2-09

[STARWISE]

In a meeting last month with the Barack Obama’s transition staff, representatives of the nation’s top prosecutors caught a glimpse of the president-elect’s thinking on the politically fraught issue of what to do with the the current 93 U.S. attorneys.

“[The president-elect] is going to be smart and be cautious. My gut feeling is it won’t be like it was in 1993,” said U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of Texas’ Western District, a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys.

On Dec. 11, Sutton and 15 other members of the committee met with Obama’s DOJ transition chief, David Ogden, and his staff at the Justice Department to advise them on law enforcement issues and to point out areas the committee believes require special attention.

At the meeting, Ogden briefly discussed the U.S. attorney issue, though he said he had had no role in deciding who stays and who goes, according to one committee member.

Ogden, a partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, is reportedly the leading candidate for the Justice Department's No. 2 spot.

Sutton declined to characterize Ogden’s comments but said he left the meeting with the impression that the president-elect will address the U.S. attorneys individually. “I think they’re going to work on a case-by-case basis,” said Sutton, who as a member of the Bush-Cheney transition took part in similar meetings before he was a committee member.

A Justice Department official declined to discuss the committee's recommendations to the transition staff or Ogden's comments regarding the fate of the current set of U.S. attorneys. "It was a productive, informational meeting," the official said.

The transition team also met with members of the civil chiefs working group and members of the criminal chiefs working group, which are extensions of the advisory committee.

The last two administrations suffered political wounds for their handling of U.S. attorneys. The Justice Department is still recovering from the scandal over the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in President George W. Bush’s second term, and President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno were panned for sacking 92 of them in 1993, a move critics said disrupted the continuity of leadership in the U.S. attorneys offices during the transition.

At least one U.S. attorney is destined to hold his job well past Jan. 20.

Obama has said publicly he will retain Patrick Fitzgerald, of Illinois’ Northern District, who is supervising the criminal case against Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

[STARWISE]

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr

Jamie Gorelick - Partner

Co-Chair, Defense, National Security and Government Contracts Practice Group;
Chair, Public Policy and Strategy Practice Group

1875 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20006 jamie.gorelick@wilmerhale.com

+1 202 663 6500 (t) +1 202 663 6363 (f)

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Obama's Money Cartel: How Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street

The candidate that claims to be the only presidential contender who doesn't take money from lobbyists is in fact the biggest recipient of lobby-related contributions.

Barack Obama rakes in millions from law firms serving the interests of Wall Street, including the financial institutions that gave us the subprime lending crisis. Lawyers that work for firms that earn hundreds of millions of dollars for lobbying may technically not be lobbyists, but they share in their colleagues' earnings as influencers of Congress - a legal loophole that allows Obama to claim his hands are clean of lobby loot.

"The top contributors to the Obama campaign are the very Wall Street firms whose shady mortgage lenders buried the elderly and the poor and minority under predatory loans."

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Obama's Money Cartel: How Barack Obama Fronted for the Most Vicious Predators on Wall Street

Seven of the Obama campaign's top 14 donors consisted of officers and employees of the same Wall Street firms charged time and again with looting the public and newly implicated in originating and/or bundling fraudulently made mortgages.

These latest frauds have left thousands of children in some of our largest minority communities coming home from school to see eviction notices and foreclosure signs nailed to their front doors. Those scars will last a lifetime.

"How can ‘we,' the people, make change if Obama's money backers block our ability to be heard?"

These seven Wall Street firms are (in order of money given):

Goldman Sachs, UBS AG, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

There is also a large hedge fund, Citadel Investment Group, which is a major source of fee income to Wall Street.

There are five large corporate law firms that are also registered lobbyists; and one is a corporate law firm that is no longer a registered lobbyist but does legal work for Wall Street. The cumulative total of these 14 contributors through February 1, 2008, was $2,872,128, and we're still in the primary season.

But hasn't Senator Obama repeatedly told us in ads and speeches and debates that he wasn't taking money from registered lobbyists? Hasn't the press given him a free pass on this statement?

Barack Obama, speaking in Greenville, South Carolina on January 22, 2008:

"Washington lobbyists haven't funded my campaign, they won't run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of working Americans when I am president."

Barack Obama, in an email to supporters on June 25, 2007, as reported by the Boston Globe:

"Candidates typically spend a week like this - right before the critical June 30th financial reporting deadline - on the phone, day and night, begging Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs to write huge checks. Not me.

Our campaign has rejected the money-for-influence game and refused to accept funds from registered federal lobbyists and political action committees."

The Center for Responsive Politics website allows one to pull up the filings made by lobbyists, registering under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 with the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives and secretary of the U.S. Senate.

These top five contributors to the Obama campaign have filed as registered lobbyists: Sidley Austin LLP; Skadden, Arps, et al; Jenner & Block; Kirkland & Ellis; Wilmerhale, aka Wilmer Cutler Pickering.

[STARWISE]

~~DING!

[FreePaul]

...U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton of Texas’ Western District, a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys.

Why doesn't it surprise me that Sutton is leading the suck up brigade.

[Regulator]

Johnny Sutton should be the first one fired.

The man who helped destroy the Republican Party by giving the finger to the base and telling us "its open borders for the aliens and the narcos" should feel the full weight of what he has brought on the people who put him where he is.

And after that he can re-register as a Democrat and unmask himself as just another cheap whore for the Treason lobby.

[Velveeta]

Dang, that Jamie Gorelick has her hands in everything.

She must know where all the bodies are buried - or somethin’.

[STARWISE]

Of course she does... her hands have been and probably still are in huge numbers of consequential matters.

[Cicero]

Well, I’ll say this much for the Dems, unlike Bush they have enough sense to give these key posts to people they can trust, who are part of the same mob.

I don’t know why the bad guys are so much smarter about the importance of personal loyalty than the good guys. I guess they read Macchiavelli and watch Mafia movies.

[katiekins1]

Thank You, This was very informative.

[STARWISE]

You’re welcome... ;)

[smokingfrog]

ping

[Salvation]

From an email I got today.

 

"President Obama has nominated David Ogden to a high-level position in his sub-cabinet -- not a position in agriculture or defense but the number two position at the Department of Justice, the Department charged with prosecuting adult and child pornography violations.  The porn industry is so excited by the prospect of having one of their allies in this key position that they have not been able to contain themselves.  XBiz, a leading 'adult' newswire, called Ogden a 'strong pick,' and porn attorney Colin Hardacre of Los Angeles said Ogden's nomination is 'a good sign for the adult industry.' ..."

[Taken from an article by Cathy Ruse Senior Fellow for Legal Studies at the Family Research Council
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=30794

To: Friends
From: Bill Johnson
Re: A Man Who Thinks Child Porn is Free Speech Is Not Fit for Justice
Date: February 23, 2009

Personal note:
 Read this carefully and join with me in calling your U.S. Senator. We must do our best to stop this nomination now. If we do nothing, we will have no one else to blame other than ourselves for not doing our part when we could have.
 The implications of this pornography attorney being placed as the second in command at the U.S. Justice Department are more than I can possibly imagine, but what I can imagine is enough to make me fear for children and their innocence and for their protection and the further "pornification of America"!

Remember, the vote on David Ogden is this Thursday in the Judiciary Committee.  Call your U.S. Senator, 202-224-3121.

Bill Johnson