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It's worth asking why Elizabeth Holmes is still leading the embattled blood testing company Theranos Inc. But there may be a good reason why she still is in charge, one that has little to do with the scandal-ridden company's performance to date. Forget what venture capitalist Tim Draper — one of the first to invest in the Palo Alto company — implied this week that Holmes is being attacked because she's a young, female entrepreneur. The simple fact is that Theranos has not been able to deliver on its technology from a commercial, scientific or regulatory standpoint, and that falls...

2016 has not been too kind to Elizabeth Holmes, the Steve-Jobs wannabe in charge of fraudulent Theranos. She has thus far been banned for 2 years from operating labs, removed from hosting fundraisers for Hillary and lost her entire net worth. And now, the Wall Street Journal has published the "tell-all" story of the whistle-blower, 26 year old Tyler Shultz, who brought the the whole Theranos farce crashing down. It's a sordid tale complete with all the expected twists and turns of a Jason Bourne thriller including intimidation, coercion and private detectives. Tyler Shultz is the grandson of George Shultz,...

It was a rough morning for U.S. attorneys arguing the federal government’s case against Ammon Bundy, Ryan Bundy and six other defendants accused of conspiring to occupy an Oregon wildlife refuge. A visibly frustrated Judge Anna Brown struck from the record a previous ruling that effectively allowed evidence from defendants’ Facebook accounts into next month’s trial. Despite calling an assistant U.S. attorney, two legal assistants and an FBI agent as witnesses, prosecutors weren’t able to explain to the court how protected information from 11 Facebook accounts used by defendants ended up being shared as part of discovery. Judge Brown ordered...

Multiple FBI investigations are underway involving potential corruption charges against the Clinton Foundation, according to a former senior law enforcement official. The investigation centers on New York City, where the Clinton Foundation has its main offices, according to the former official who has direct knowledge of the activities. Prosecutorial support will come from various U.S. Attorneys Offices — a major departure from other centralized FBI investigations.

Two former U.S. attorneys said the FBI will likely reach a determination in the next few months in its investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server, and based on publicly available evidence said the bureau could have a strong criminal case. "I expect the FBI to conclude the investigation within 60 to 90 days and make a recommendation to the Justice Department, and I believe they will recommend a series of charges involving the classified information," said Joseph DiGenova, who was U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia during the Reagan administration. The FBI has been investigating whether classified information...

The media are focused on the “Bundy Militia” angle to the standoff in Burns Oregon, where Aamon Bundy and brothers have taken over a Malheur Wildlife Refuge Headquarters to draw attention to the plight of the Hammond family (Full Complex Back Story Here).However, a little research (HatTip NeverTooLate) into the original legal battle reveals a rather startling update.Hammond Family The initial, and regarded by many as overreaching, federal prosecution resulted in a federal court judge Michael Hogan assigning a 3-month sentence and 1-year sentence for Dwight Lincoln Hammond Jr (73) and his son, Steven Dwight Hammond (46) respectively.Even federal Judge...

Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia appointed by President Obama and set to step down next month, has not acted on a contempt of Congress charge for former IRS official Lois Lerner. Machen, who announced at the beginning of the week he'd step down April 1 to return to private practice, has not referred Lerner's case to a grand jury. Her contempt citation for not testifying at two hearings has been in Machen's hands since May 2014. During Machen's five-year tenure as a top prosecutor, the largest U.S. Attorney's Office was dominated by cases related to...

Feds suggest anti-Muslim speech can be punished By BYRON TAU | 5/31/13 5:26 PM EDT A U.S. attorney in Tennessee is reportedly vowing to use federal civil rights statutes to clamp down on offensive and inflammatory speech about Islam. Bill Killian, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, was quoted by the Tullahoma News this week suggesting that some inflammatory material on Islam might run afoul of federal civil rights laws. "We need to educate people about Muslims and their civil rights, and as long as we’re here, they’re going to be protected," Killian told the newspaper. Killian, along...

The US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Ronald C. Machen - the man responsible for the aggressive surveillance and phone record scrutiny at Fox News - is also a big donor to the Obama Campaigns. At the time of his appointment, the Washington Post wrote a profile on Machen including this tidbit: Over the years, he has donated $4,350 to Obama's campaigns. He gave $250 to Obama's U.S. Senate campaign in 2003, a year before Obama, then an Illinois state senator, emerged on the nation's political radar, according to campaign finance records.

One of the theories floating around about the murder of a Texas district attorney and one of his prosecutors is that the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas is behind the killings as revenge for prosecution. If so, the group can consider its message received. A federal prosecutor has just resigned from a big racketeering case against the white supremacist group in Houston, reports the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News. The US attorney dropped out over what both papers call "security concerns." Another attorney from the Justice Department is heading from DC to Texas as a replacement. “He’s obviously made a...

U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald — who toppled two Illinois governors and a top aide to the former vice president, and also went after the Chicago mob, a notorious police commander accused of torture and even international terrorists — is stepping down. The corruption-busting prosecutor said he will leave the post June 30 after serving nearly 11 years in the post, longer than anyone else in Illinois history. In a written statement, Fitzgerald said he told the White House, Attorney General Eric Holder, and U.S. Sens. Richard Durbin and Mark Kirk about his decision Wednesday morning. “When I was selected...

A former U.S. Attorney appointed by President Obama who previously came under scrutiny by the Jewish Orthodox community may soon be confirmed by the U.S. Senate for a federal judgeship, after she received a majority vote from the Senate Judiciary Committee. Stephanie Rose, 39, was recently nominated for a lifetime appointment by President Obama in the Southern District of Iowa. Rose’s appointment is controversial within the Orthodox Jewish community because of her previous involvement in the prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin, the former CEO of a now-bankrupt, Iowa-based Kosher meatpacking company that was accused of employing hundreds of illegal immigrants and...

Suspected Tucson gunman Jared Loughner has been indicted on 46 new charges, including the murders of a federal judge and an aide to congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. The new indictment, by a federal grand jury in Arizona, is the first step in a formal Department of Justice process to decide whether to seek the death penalty against the 22-year-old.

There was some head-scratching a couple of days ago over the Justice Department’s indictment of Jared Lee Loughner in the Tucson shootings case because he was not charged with the murders of Chief Judge John Roll and Gabriel Zimmerman, a legislative aide to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Instead, the indictment charges only the attempted murders of Representative Giffords and her two other aides, Ron Barber and Pamela Simon. (My column a few days back explained that there is no federal jurisdiction to charge murder or attempted murder in connection with the victims who were not federal officers.) I was interviewed by...

It appears to me the entire mortgage/securitization industry is one giant criminal enterprise. And yet, last Wednesday, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said, “We have not found any evidence at this point of systemic issues in the underlying legal or other documents that have been reviewed.” What! Well, look a little harder Mr. HUD Secretary. (Click here for the complete Reuters story with Donovan’s quote.) Donovan did say the foreclosure fiasco is “shameful,” but that is not the same as a criminal prosecution now is it? Where is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in all of this? I...

Obama's zealous civil rights enforcer gets busy By: Byron York Chief Political Correspondent August 6, 2010 Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez addresses the Department of Justice's commemoration of the 20th Anniversary of the American with Disabilities Act on July 23, 2010 in Washington, DC. "I love this job," said Thomas Perez, the hard-charging head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, in a speech last December to the liberal legal group American Constitution Society. "We have a very broad, a very ambitious vision. It's a very exciting vision, and I wake up every morning with...

Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal fraud probe of beleaguered Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs to determine if the company ripped off its customers during the subprimemortgage meltdown, it was reported last night. The Manhattan US Attorney’s Office is leading the investigation, which was sparked by a referral from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Wall Street Journal reported on its Web site. The SEC filed a civil securities-fraud case on April 16 against Goldman, charging that the firm duped investors into buying a tanking portfolio of subprime-mortgage securities created by a client betting on them to fail. The criminal...

I took Indian Law at ASU and one thing that surprised me was how much jurisdiction the federal government has in Indian Country--that means that the US Attorney (especially for Arizona) needs to have extensive experience in Indian Law. That's why there was widespread excitement in the ASU Indian Law Department when President Bush appointed ASU Indian Law Center graduate Diane Humetewa as US Attorney. Not only did Diane know Indian Law, but she was Native American, and some folks felt it was a nice touch to have a highly qualified native American woman working with Arizona's 23 Indian Tribes....

Georgia Rep. John Lewis, one of Washington's most prominent Democrats, called the White House earlier this year to try to block the appointment of a federal prosecutor who won convictions against more than a dozen public officials in Atlanta -- including former Mayor Bill Campbell, a longtime friend and ally of Mr. Lewis. After queries from The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lewis' contacted White House Counsel Greg Craig late last month to withdraw his objections to the nomination of the prosecutor, Sally Q. Yates, for U.S. Attorney in Atlanta. Two government officials with knowledge of the matter described the calls....

President Barack Obama plans to replace a "batch" of U.S. Attorneys in the next few weeks and more prosecutors thereafter, according to Attorney General Eric Holder. "I expect that we’ll have an announcement in the next couple of weeks with regard to our first batch of U.S attorneys," Holder said Thursday during a House Judiciary Committee hearing which stretched out over most of the day due to breaks for members' votes. "One of the things that we didn’t want to do was to disrupt the continuity of the offices and pull people out of positions where we thought there might...