U.S. Attorney of Maryland Rod Rosenstein, a Bush holdover, has lost his best prosecutors to Main Justice, reports the Washington Post.
The new deputy assistant attorney general for the criminal division Jason Weinstein had previously been working in the federal prosecutor’s Baltimore office as the chief of violent crimes. Another loss has been Mythili Raman, who left her job as Rosenstein’s appellate chief to become chief of staff for Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer. Raman’s successor is Michael Leotta, a prosecutor in the fraud and corruption unit in Baltimore; Leotta is one of the prosecutors in the case of former lobbyist and John Abramoff associate Kevin Ring. The final loss was James Trusty, now deputy chief of the national gang unit at Main Justice. Trusty had previously been the deputy chief of Rosenstein’s Greenbelt office and overseen the prosecution of the MS-13 gang and has been succeeded by Michael Pauzé, who was a prosecutor in the case of former Prince George’s schools chief Andre Hornsby.
But it seems that while Rosenstein’s best prosecutors have left, Rosenstein will stay, for good.
In the process of tapping members of Rosenstein’s staff to move up to Main Justice, Breuer expressed his confidence in Rosenstein, “Rod has cultivated an incredible roster of attorneys, and, knowing Rod, I expect he’ll continue to do just that.”
Most importantly, Maryland’s Democratic Senators Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin have expressed support for Rosenstein in his current post. But they did not support the 2007 nomination of Rosenstein for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The Senators have finally found someone to fill the seat, which has been vacant for almost nine years, Andre Davis. Davis has already been nominated by President Obama, but as we reported last week, his nomination has been delayed for the time being.
