A distant member of Chris Christie’s (R) family has ties to the Genovese crime family, The New York Times reported today. The connection is with Tino Fiumara who has been convicted twice on racketeering charges and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Fiumara also has been linked by investigators to several grisly murders, The Times reported.
The relationship between the New Jersey gubernatorial candidate and Fiumara is a little complicated. Fiumara is the brother of Christie’s aunt’s second husband. Told ya. The former U.S. Attorney’s direct contact with Fiumara appears to be limited, with the two having two interactions over the past 30 years, The Times reported.
Fiumara has spent the better portion of the past three decades in prison. In 1980 he began serving a 15 years of a 25-year sentence for labor racketeering and federal extortion. After being released, Fiumara returned to his organized crime ways, which were barely slowed while in prison, The Times reported. He returned to prison in 1999 for associating with known criminals.
Although he was scheduled to be released in June 2002, two month earlier he was indicted for conspiracy to commit misprision of felony by not informing law enforcement officials about his contact with reputed organized crime figure Michael Coppola as Coppola fled to avoid prosecution for the 1977 murder of John Lardieere. Fiumara received an extended sentence and was released in January 2005.
Tino Fiumara (FBI)
Fiumara apparently didn’t learn his lesson because last year, federal investigators named him as the person they believe ordered the slaying of an associate who was on trial for fraud in October 2005. The Times reported a senior law enforcement official said Fiumara currently sits on a three-person ruling panel that oversees the Genovese family.
Christie told The Times he learned of Fiumara’s involvement in organized crime in 1977, when Christie was 15 and Fiumara was 36, by reading The Star-Ledger of New Jersey. The limited interaction between Christie and Fiumara over the past 30 years included the two bumping into each other once in the mid-1990s at a restaurant and a scheduled encounter in 1991. Both encounters occurred before Christie became New Jersey’s top prosecutor in 2002.
The restaurant meeting occurred when Fiumara was out on parole. The scheduled encounter occurred when Christie visited Fiumara, at the request of Christie’s uncle, in a Texas prison, Christie told The Times. “My best recollection is we updated each other on what was going on with the family,” Christie told The Times. “It was not a very long visit.”
However problems arose once Christie became a U.S. Attorney on Jan. 17, 2002. Although the New Jersey office had been investigating Fiumara before Christie took office, the new prosecutor recused himself from the case. In April of that year, the U.S. Attorney’s office indicted Fiumara. He was sentenced to eight months and ordered to pay a $40,000 fine. The Times reported prosecutors and defense lawyers said Christie was never involved in the case in any way.
However, Christie also never revealed his family connection, The Times reported.
“My view at the time was, I had had nothing to do with the case, I’d had no involvement with it, and I didn’t think it was of any import to anyone why I’d recused,” Christie told The Times. “It was a personal matter; it was not a professional matter.”
He also told The Times his familial connection with Fiumara never came up during his Federal Bureau of Investigation background check for his job as a U.S. Attorney. And he never brought it up because he assumed investigators were aware of his connection to Fiumara, Christie told The Times.
During an interview with The Times, Christie said during his tenure as a U.S. Attorney he was tough on organized crime. However, it was not as much of a priority for him as public corruption, terrorism, violent street gangs or human trafficking. He added that he stands by a 2007 comment he made that “the Mafia is much more prominent on HBO than in New Jersey.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee endorsed five Justice Department nominees today by unanimous consent.
They are:
Ignacia Moreno
Jenny Durkan (Law Offices of Jenny A. Durkan)
-Ignacia Moreno (Environment and Natural Resources Division Assistant Attorney General): The General Electric Co. counsel was nominated June 8. She would succeed Ronald Tenpas, who resigned in January. Read more about the nominee here.
-Jenny Durkan (Western District of Washington U.S. Attorney): The Seattle lawyer was nominated June 4. She would replace Jeffrey C. Sullivan, who has been the interim U.S. Attorney since John McKay was forced out in the 2006 U.S. Attorney purge. Read more about the nominee here.
Paul Fishman (Friedman, Kaplan, Seiler & Adelman)
-Paul Fishman (New Jersey U.S. Attorney): The New York lawyer was nominated June 4. He would replace Ralph Marra, who became acting U.S. Attorney after Chris Christie resigned in December 2008 to run for New Jersey governor. Read more about Fishman here.
-Florence Nakakuni (Hawaii U.S. Attorney): The Hawaii Assistant U.S. Attorney was nominated July 14. She would replace Bush holdover Edward H. Kubo Jr., who has been U.S. Attorney since 2001. Read more about Nakakuni here.
Deborah Gilg (Gilg, Kruger & Troia)
-Deborah Gilg (Nebraska U.S. Attorney): The Omaha lawyer was nominated July 31. She would replace Bush holdover Joe Stecher, who has been U.S. Attorney since 2007. Read more about the nominee here.
Durkan and Fishman were held over from last week at the request of Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) Read our report here.
The panel has now endorsed a total of 15 U.S. Attorney nominees. The Senate has confirmed 11 U.S. Attorneys that have been reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel has yet to consider eight U.S. Attorney nominees.
Moreno joins four Assistant Attorney General nominees, who were reported out of committee and are waiting for votes in the full Senate. Dawn Johnsen (Office of Legal Counsel), Thomas Perez (Civil Rights Division), Christopher Schroeder (Office of Legal Policy) and Mary L. Smith (Tax Division) were endorsed by the panel months ago. Read our report on the stalled nominees here. The panel still has to consider one more Assistant Attorney General nominee, Laurie O. Robinson, who was nominated Sept. 14 to lead the Office of Justice Programs.
We drove two hours to the federal courthouse in Richmond, Va., yesterday, hoping for a glimmer of sunlight in a long-running, largely secret court battle between the government and a cluster of Islamic organizations that came under investigation in a terrorism-financing probe after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Nancy Luque has represented figures in a terrorism-financing probe that became public in 2002. (Getty Images)
It was our understanding that the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals hearings in Richmond were open to the public; after all, this New York Sun report described the proceedings from a related March 2008 hearing in detail.
To its credit, the panel — composed of JudgeJ. Harvie Wilkinson III, Chief JudgeWilliam B. Traxler, Jr., and JudgeMargaret Seymour, who is on loan from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of South Carolina –planned on hearing arguments in open court. The organizations would be identified as entity No.1, entity No. 2, etc., and counsel would use pronouns rather than individuals’ names.
So, imagine our surprise when the panel of judges abruptly announced that defense lawyers Nancy Luque and Steven Barentzen had asked to close the proceedings, citing the need to preserve grand jury secrecy.
We know, from the previous New York Sun report, that the issue before the 4th Circuit revolves at least in part around a civil contempt of court ruling against the now-defunct SAAR Foundation in Herndon, Va. The Sun reporter, Joe Goldstein, described in his report how he had to fight to keep that 2008 hearing open. But his success last year yielded the information that the SAAR Foundation had paid $500,000 to the government in connection with the contempt finding.
Founded by a Saudi banker to spread the harsh interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism, the SAAR Foundation, its officers, and a network of related Islamic organizations and businesses were at the center of the aforementioned major post-9/11 terrorism financing investigation, once dubbed Operation Green Quest, news reports have said.
That probe wielded a treasure trove of public information over the years about what government investigators believe were the operations of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States and related organizations, including Hamas. After winning several related convictions, it appears to have petered out. We’ll try to delve more into what happened to Green Quest in later reports.
But back to our story.
After taking a vote behind closed doors, the judges granted the motion from the defense attorneys. We scrawled a thoroughly inadequate objection on our legal pad and passed it to the courtroom deputy, who fed it to the judges. They took our note under advisement. When the panel reconvened, Chief Judge Traxler said the secrecy of the grand jury proceedings had won the day. We had been ejected.
There are many reasons to view the 4th Circuit’s decision to keep its proceedings secret as somewhat farcical, not the least of which is that we already know who Luque’s clients are. She’s on the public record as an attorney for Mar-Jac Poultry, a Georgia chicken-processing plant that was under investigation in the Green Quest probe. One of the Mar-Jac officers was M. Yaqub Mirza, another of Luque’s clients. Mirza was an officer of the SAAR Foundation, and a board member of a company called Ptech. An indictment unsealed in July charged Ptech officers with making false statements on a loan application to the Small Business Administration to conceal the ownership interest of a Saudi national named Yassin Qadi, designated by the U.S. government as a financier of terrorism.
We wish we could tell you what happened in Richmond on Wednesday. Maybe another day.
A former U.S. Attorney is representing Jaycee Dugard, the California woman who disappeared when she was 11 years old, allegedly kidnapped and held for 18 years by a convicted sex offender who fathered her two children.
McGregor Scott (Orrick)
McGregor Scottwas the top federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of California from 2003 until January. He is representing Dugard on a pro bono basis, he told Main Justice in an interview. Dugard, now 29, has told authorities she was held captive by Phillip and Nancy Garrido in a secret backyard structure, where she cared for her children.
Dugard was found this summer after she and her daughters accompanied Phillip Garrido, who’d previously been convicted of kidnapping and rape charges in Nevada, to a meeting with his parole officer. The couple pleaded not guilty to all charges.
The ex-U.S. Attorney previously acted as a spokesperson on the Dugard case for the El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office in California, which is investigating the Garridos. Scott, a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe in their Sacramento office, said he agreed last week to represent the Dugard and her daughters at the request of her family.
“These are people who will need good legal advice and counsel going forward,” Scott said.
Senate Democrats joined their House counterparts today in questioning the Obama administration’s broad support of three expiring Patriot Act provisions that expand the government’s powers in counter-terrorism investigations.
David Kris (Harvard Law)
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats pushed National Security Division Assistant Attorney General David Kris to comment today on proposed legislation that puts stipulations on the reauthorization of Patriot Act powers that sunset at the end of the year, The Associated Press reported. Panel Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced legislation yesterday that reapproves the provisions, but allows Congress and the public to better monitor the use of the powers.
Kris said the Justice Department does not have an official position on the bill beyond the administration’s support of reauthorizing the expiring provisions, according to The AP. The Assistant Attorney General said in his written testimony that the Justice Department is “ready and willing to work with members … to craft legislation that both provides effective investigative authorities and protects privacy and civil liberties.” National Security Division Deputy Assistant Attorney General Todd Hinnen also refused to take a position on possible changes to the provisions, which frustrated Democrats at a House Judiciary Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties subcommittee meeting yesterday.
Here’s a summary of the provisions:
Lone wolf: Allows government to track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power, such as an international terrorist group. The provision only applies only to non-U.S. persons. It has never been used in a FISA application.
Business records: Allows investigators to compel third parties, including financial services and travel and telephone companies, to provide them access to a suspect’s records without the suspect’s knowledge. From 2004 to 2007, the FISA court issued about 220 orders to produce business records.
Roving wiretaps: Allows the government to monitor phone lines or Internet accounts that a terrorism suspect may be using, whether or not others who are not suspects also regularly use them. The government must provide the FISA court with specific information showing the suspect is purposely switching means of communication to evade detection. The government has applied for roving wiretaps an average of 22 times a year since 2001.
Leahy said, according to The AP, that the administration’s position keeps “the cards … rather stacked” in favor of the government.
Kris responded, according to the news wire, “We’re willing to look to see if these tools can be sharpened.”
Like the House Republicans, Senate Republicans supported the Justice Department’s position on the provisions. Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said there is no indication that “there have been any abuses to date,” according to The AP.
Democrats have long been skeptical of whether the Bush administration abused the Patriot Act powers and national security letters, which the FBI uses to obtain evidence without a court order. The Leahy bill and legislation introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) would put more restrictions on the letters.
DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine said in his written testimony to the committee today that the Office of Inspector General found the FBI initially did not “take seriously enough its responsibility to ensure that these letters were used in accord with the law, Attorney General Guidelines, or FBI policies.” But the FBI has taken steps to correct it use of the letters, he said.
“We … believe that as Congress considers reauthorizing provisions of the Patriot Act, it must ensure through continual and aggressive oversight that the FBI uses these important and intrusive investigative authorities appropriately,” Fine wrote in his testimony.
The finance co-chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign today pleaded not guilty to charges that he defrauded banks of $292 million in loan proceeds, Reuters reported. If convicted, he faces up to 30 years in prison.
Hassan Nemazee, a major Democratic donor and fundraiser, is accused of using loan proceeds from one bank to pay off another over an 11-year period, from 1998 to 2009. The banks he allegedly defrauded are Bank of America, Citibank and HSBC Bank USA, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York .
Prosecutors allege Nemazee forged documents and signatures to obtain the loans. In the documents, Nemazee reportedly identified hundreds of millions of dollars worth of collateral, the Department of Justice said. He then allegedly used the money to make campaign contributions to Democratic candidates, to political action committees and charities and to purchase property.
During a court hearing in Manhattan, Nemazee’s attorney, Paul Schechtman, said his client’s bail conditions were “onerous.” Nemazee is under house arrest in his $20 million Manhattan apartment and wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet, Bloomberg reported. Schechtman said he may ask that the bail conditions be modified,The Associated Press reported.
A prosecutor from the SDNY told U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein the government would provide to the defense 15 boxes of material sezied under search warrant from Nemazee’s offices. Nemazee’s next court appearance is scheduled Nov. 4.
After the hearing, Schechtman said there was nothing illegal about the donations his client made to campaigns, The AP reported. “Mr. Nemazee’s campaign contributions were modest and lawful and this is not a case about funneling money to candidates,” Schechtman said, adding, “Anyone who for their own purposes tries to use it that way or interpret it that way grossly misstates what happened here.”
New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine (D) released a new ad Tuesday criticizing challenger Chris Christie (R) for using his power as a U.S. Attorney to avoid penalties for driving, income tax and ethics violations.
While he was New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney, Christie got lost while driving in 2002 and turned the wrong way down a one-way street and hit a motorcyclist, sending him to the hospital. Christie was not ticketed for the incident. He was then pulled over three years later for speeding and driving an unregistered vehicle without proof of insurance. Although Christie was ticketed, he said he was allowed to drive the vehicle home because his four kids were with him.
Christie also has come under fire for a $46,000 loan he made to then-Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown while he was her boss. Christie failed to disclose the loan on ethics forms and income tax returns.
The new Corzine ad takes aim at Christie for using his authority to “get away” with breaking laws.
Here’s the ad:
“If you drove the wrong way down a one-way street, causing an accident and putting the victim in a trauma center … would you get away without a ticket? Chris Christie did. If you were caught speeding in an unregistered car — would you get away without points? Chris Christie did. In both cases, Christie threw his weight around as US Attorney and got off easy. If you didn’t pay your taxes, ignored ethics laws- would you get away with it? Chris Christie. One set of rules for himself. Another for everyone else.”
President Obama on Tuesday nominated a former U.S. Attorney to head the Customs and Border Protection agency at the Department of Homeland Security, according to a DHS news release.
Alan Bersin, who is now DHS Assistant Secretary for International Affairs and Special Representative for Border Affairs, was the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California from 1993 to 1998.
The CBP commissioner is responsible for leading DHS efforts to secure America’s borders. In addition, the agency oversees the enforcement of immigration, customs and drug laws. Before joining the Obama administration, Bersin in December 2006 was chairman of the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority board. In 2005, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) appointed Bersin as California’s Secretary of Education, a job he held until 2006.
While serving as a U.S. Attorney, Bersin from 1995 to 1998 was the DOJ’s special representative for the southwest border. In this role, Bersin oversaw the coordination of border law enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border. He was appointed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano applauded Obama’s nomination of Bersin. “Under Alan’s leadership over the past several months, we have forged new international and domestic partnerships along our borders to strengthen security,” Napolitano said, adding, “I look forward to continuing to work with Alan in his new position, where he will lead the Department’s efforts to implement practical, innovative solutions to protect our country from threats to our national and economic security and facilitate legitimate travel and trade.”
A Justice Department official Tuesday gave the Obama administration’s case for reauthorizing three expiring Patriot Act provisions that expand the government’s powers in counter-terrorism investigations. But House Judiciary Committee Democrats weren’t entirely convinced.
Todd Hinnen (Main Justice)
Todd Hinnen, National Security Division Deputy Assistant Attorney General, told House Judiciary Committee members that roving wiretaps, the authority to access business records and the ability to track “lone-wolf” terrorists, or those without visible ties to a foreign terrorist organization, are still needed to probe suspected terrorists. The Justice Department said last week it supported the reauthorization of the three provisions that expire at the end of the year.
Here’s a little bit more about the provisions:
Lone wolf: Allows government to track a target without any discernible affiliation to a foreign power, such as an international terrorist group. The provision only applies only to non-U.S. persons. It has never been used in a FISA application.
Business records: Allows investigators to compel third parties, including financial services and travel and telephone companies, to provide them access to a suspect’s records without the suspect’s knowledge. From 2004 to 2007, the FISA court issued about 220 orders to produce business records.
Roving wiretaps: Allows the government to monitor phone lines or Internet accounts that a terrorism suspect may be using, whether or not others who are not suspects also regularly use them. The government must provide the FISA court with specific information showing the suspect is purposely switching means of communication to evade detection. The government has applied for roving wiretaps an average of 22 times a year since 2001.
Hinnen said, however, the administration is open to congressional amendments to the Patriot Act provisions, if they don’t hamper the ability of law enforcement authorities to be effective.
House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-Mich.) said he did not support reauthorizing the provisions without making some changes to them. He and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said they were particularly concerned with the “lone wolf” provision, which has never been used.
“Now is the time to consider improving the Patriot Act, not just extending the provisions,” Conyers said at the House Judiciary constitution, civil rights and civil liberties subcommittee hearing.
Republicans said they supported the Justice Department’s position. The subcommittee ranking member, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), even called Hinnen a “breath of fresh air.”
Conyers, however, was not as pleased with Hinnen, who has worked at the Justice Department since January.
“You know, you sound like a lot of people who come over here from DOJ, and yet you’ve been there for only a few months,” Conyers said at the hearing. “Do you think that’s a good thing or a bad thing?”
Hinnen reassured Democrats throughout his testimony that the Justice Department will be in close communication with Congress as it moves forward on Patriot Act legislation.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced a bill in March to reauthorize the provisions.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced legislation Tuesday that would also reauthorizes the provisions, but allows Congress and the public to better monitor the use of the powers.
“This hearing is only the beginning of a process working closely together to create legislation that will maintain the operational effectiveness of these important [provisions] and protect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people,” Hinnen said in his testimony before the panel.
The Governor of Maryland nominated a successor to a state official whose appointment to the Justice Department Civil Rights Division remains stalled in the Senate, according to a news release from the governor’s office.
Tom Perez (maryland.gov)
Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) tapped Alex Sanchez, a senior vice president at United Way of America, to replace DOJ nominee Thomas Perez as the secretary of labor, licensing and regulation. President Obama nominated Perez on March 31 to lead the Civil Rights Division.
Senate leaders have yet to schedule a vote on the Perez nomination. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) told Main Justice last week that he has put a hold on the nominee. The Senate Judiciary Committee member said he has questions for the Justice Department that have not been answered yet.
Coburn said in June that Perez, former director of the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has supported providing translators to illegal immigrants who are receiving medical care. The Oklahoma senator, a medical doctor who operated on people without U.S. citizenship, said providing illegal immigrants with interpreters would “wreck health care.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) in June questioned Perez’s prior work on the board of CASA de Maryland, an influential immigrant advocacy group that has come under fire by anti-immigration groups.
Perez was reported out of committee June 4 by a 17-2 vote. Coburn and Sessions were the only senators to oppose the Civil Rights Division nominee in committee.
House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Lamar Smith (R-Texas) has also asked Senate Republicans to hold up Perez until DOJ gives the House member more information about the dismissal of voter-intimidation charges against members of the militant New Black Panthers.
MARRYING INTERNATIONAL EMPLOYMENT LAW AND THE FOREIGN CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT. Shanghai-based Lesli Ligorner, a partner with Paul Hastings LLP, speaks with Main Justice Editor-in-Chief Mary Jacoby about the overlap between employment law and FCPA compliance in China.
