Lawyers for five former Blackwater guards charged with voluntary manslaughter are seeking a government security detail when they travel to Iraq to conduct their own investigation. The Justice Department is pushing back, calling the request “radical” and unnecessary, reports The National Law Journal.

The stakes are high for the government, as more foreign-based criminal allegations take root in federal district courts in the United States, according to The NLJ.

“The experiences of the prosecutors and the FBI in Iraq, and the substantial government resources devoted to their security, illustrate an obvious truth: American lawyers and investigators working in Baghdad face mortal danger,” wrote Steptoe & Johnson LLP partner Mark Hulkower in court papers filed earlier this month. “They require professional protection to assure their survival and to enable them to perform their work.”

The Justice Department responded in court papers filed last week, arguing that the lawyers should use one of the private security contractors working in Iraq.  The Justice lawyers said granting such a request would be an unprecedented and unwarranted exercise of judicial authority.

Judge Ricardo Urbina, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, spoke in court of his concern for the lawyers’ safety, but defense lawyers following the case told The NLJ that Urbina will likely side with the Justice Department.

“If they want armed bodyguards, by golly, there’s lot of folks who do that,” Puckett & Faraj military lawyer Neal Puckett of Alexandria, Va., told The NLJ.

Puckett, who has traveled to Iraq twice and owns his own body armor and Kevlar helmet, said he saw no basis for granting the request.

The government’s case against the Blackwater guards stems from a deadly shooting in Iraq in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed, after guards stopped in an crowded intersection and opened fire. Prosecutors say the guards were unprovoked.

The case is the first under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act to be filed against non-Defense Department private contractors.

Days before he resigned as New Jersey U.S. Attorney last year to run for governor,  Republican Chris Christie hired the inexperienced son of a friend and mentor as a prosecutor. At the time, Democrats criticized the hiring as political patronage.

Chris Christie (Christie for Governor)

Now, the Star-Ledger newspaper is reporting that Samuel Stern was hired over the objections of “nearly every assistant U.S. attorney who interviewed him.” Also, Christie took the “unusual step of changing the interview process” after prosecutors with whom Stern had interviewed declined to recommend him for the job, the newspaper said.

The hiring of Stern was politically controversial because he is the son of Herbert Stern, a former federal judge who supported Christie for appointment as U.S. Attorney in 2002 over objections about Christie lack of law enforcement experience.

Christie in 2005 awarded Stern’s law firm a $3 million court-monitoring contract. When Christie quit to run for governor, people associated with Stern’s law firm donated $23,800 to Christie’s campaign. Stern and his wife each contributed the maximum allowed, $3,400, the Star-Ledger said.

Christie is now in a close race against Gov. Jon Corzine (D).

Here’s the Star-Ledger’s description of Samuel Stern’s interview process:

Typically, candidates are subject to several rounds of interviews, meeting first with three rank-and-file prosecutors. If that goes well, they meet with three division supervisors. The final interview is typically with the U.S. attorney or a top deputy.

In Stern’s case, he performed poorly in his first round, and none of the rank-and-file assistants who interviewed him recommended that he be hired, the officials said. He was given the unusual opportunity for a second chance with three different rank-and-file assistants, but again received negative reviews, the officials said.

Then on Friday, Nov. 14 — after Stern had met with just two supervisors — Christie offered him the job, the officials said. The following Monday, Christie announced his own resignation.

Two weeks ago Richard Zabel, the new criminal chief of the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney’s office, recused himself from the Bernard Madoff investigation because his father represented an investor accused of being the biggest beneficiary of the $65 billion fraud.

Richard B. Zabel (Akin Gump)

On Sunday, William D. Zabel’s client was found dead at the bottom of his pool at his mansion in Palm Beach, Fla. Investor Jeffry Picower, who was 67, drowned after suffering a massive heart attack, the Florida medical examiner who conducted the autopsy said. Dr. Michael Bell told ABC News he is still awaiting the results of a toxicology report, which is expected to take 10 weeks.

Barbara and Jeffry Picower (Getty Images)

The sudden death of this alleged key figure in the Madoff scheme underscores some potentially thorny management issues for the new U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara. Bharara named Zabel his criminal chief on Oct. 6, calling the former Akin Gump criminal defense attorney a “legal All-Star.� Zabel also served eight years as an SDNY prosecutor in the 1990s.

Although Bharara’s pick for criminal chief quickly recused himself from all Madoff-related matters, line prosecutors now may have little choice but to attempt to seek information from his father, insofar as attorney-client privilege allows.

That’s because the elder Zabel wasn’t just Picower’s representative in the Madoff matter. An estate attorney and name partner in the New York firm Schulte, Roth & Zabel, William Zabel helped set up and oversee the Picower Foundation, a closely held charity accused in a civil complaint of reporting tens of millions of dollars in fabricated and backdated gains from its Madoff accounts.

The complaint, filed by Irving Picard of Baker & Hostetler, the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee seeking to recover money for the victims, said that Picower “knew, or should have known,� his gains in his Madoff-managed accounts were fraudulent. The Wall Street Journal reported in May that Picower was under criminal investigation by the SDNY in the Madoff scheme.

William Zabel is also listed in Securities and Exchange Commission records as the administrative contact for a Picower business accused in the fraud. And he served alongside Picower and Madoff on the board of the now-defunct Picower Institute for Medical Research, another charity accused in the civil lawsuit of having benefited from the Ponzi scheme.

In an interview before Picower’s death, Zabel told Main Justice he wasn’t aware of any fraud involving his client. “I had no knowledge of any of the allegations until after� the trustee’s complaint was filed, Zabel said.

Picower controlled businesses, trusts and charities that received $7.2 billion from the Madoff Ponzi scheme, according to the bankruptcy trustee’s complaint.

Through William Zabel, Picower issued statements and court filings denying the allegations.

“Rather than recognizing Mr. Picower and the other Defendants as victims of Madoff’s fraud, the Trustee instead casts them as villains in history’s largest Ponzi scheme,� a July court filing by Zabel said. Madoff had “callously betrayed� Picower’s trust, the filing said.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,� the Baker & Hostetler lawyers countered in a Sept. 30 court filing. “Many investors were damaged by the [Madoff] fraud, but Picower was not one of them. Based upon the Trustee’s investigation to date, Picower was instead the biggest beneficiary of Madoff’s scheme.�

“We will pursue the litigation with the same vigor irrespective of Mr. Picower’s passing,” David Sheehan, a Baker & Hostetler attorney working with Picard, said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. Jerry Reisman, an attorney representing about 26 victims, told The Associated Press that Picower’s death means, “We won’t be able to hear from his own words whether he was complicit.”

Rich Zabel did not return a phone call placed two weeks ago seeking comment. A spokeswoman for the SDNY, Rebekah Carmichael, said two weeks ago the office would have no comment. William Zabel is not accused of any wrongdoing, and the elder Zabel said in an interview before Picower’s death that he had no knowledge of any alleged fraud.

‘They’re in a mess’

On Dec. 1, 2008, shortly after Democrat Barack Obama was elected president, Republican-appointee Michael Garcia resigned as the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan. On Dec. 11, Madoff was arrested and charged in a giant Ponzi scheme that collapsed as clients panicked by the financial industry meltdown tried to pull their money out, exposing the $65 billion fraud.

The Madoff case mesmerized the public and came to symbolize, in some part, the idea that rampant greed and fraud on Wall Street had risked plunging the economy into depression.

But for the first nine months of the probe, there was no Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney in Manhattan to oversee it. (Bharara was confirmed on Aug. 7). And in that time period — during which Madoff pleaded guilty, claiming to have acted alone — the Madoff prosecution seemed, outwardly at least, to be in some disarray.

The signs:

• The government initially negotiated a bail package, allowing Madoff to remain under house arrest in his luxurious Manhattan apartment. The fact that Madoff wasn’t immediately thrown in the slammer outraged victims.
• Then, Madoff on Christmas Eve mailed $1 million worth of jewelry to his sons in what victim’s lawyers said was evidence he was trying to distribute frozen assets to his family. The revelation sparked more public outrage, and the government went to court to try to revoke Madoff’s bail, but couldn’t convince the Magistrate Judge Richard Ellis he was a flight risk.
• On Aug. 10, Madoff accountant Frank DiPascali pleaded guilty to 10 felony counts, including conspiracy and tax evasion. He’s apparently a cooperating witness now, and prosecutors pushed hard for his release on bail – but U.S. District Judge Richard J. Sullivan refused the government request.
• On Aug. 16, Lucinda Franks in The Daily Beast reported that more indictments, possibly of Madoff family members, were expected soon after Labor Day. But Labor Day passed with no indictments. “They’re in a mess over there. They really don’t know what they’re doing,â€� Franks quoted an “FBI sourceâ€� about the SDNY prosecutors.

It’s logical that Zabel’s marching orders included getting a handle on the Madoff investigation and fixing the reported “mess.� But a week later, Zabel recused himself from all matters related to the Madoff investigation.

In Madoff’s orbit

While the SDNY won’t discuss Zabel’s recusal, public records show his father had deep ties to Picower and other charities caught up in the Madoff fraud.

In 1989, William Zabel submitted to the Internal Revenue Service the application for tax exemption for the Picower Foundation. View the document here and here. Then, he served for the next 20 years as a trustee of the Picower Foundation while it allegedly reported phantom gains from the Madoff scheme.

The Picower Foundation board was a friends and family affair. There were usually not more than six trustees reported on the foundation’s tax returns – including both Jeffry Picower and his wife, Barbara, who was president of the foundation.

Zabel is also listed in Securities and Exchange Commission records as an administrative contact for Picower’s main investment vehicle, a company called Decisions Incorporated. The SEC records also list a Picower employee named April Freilich as president of Decisions Incorporated.

And Freilich, according to the bankruptcy trustee, worked closely with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities to falsify and back-date trading records that reported phantom gains for Picower. (Freilich was not named as a defendant in the civil suit, possibly suggesting that she is a cooperating witness).

The civil complaint describes Freilich’s participation in one alleged fraud involving Picower Foundation accounts:

On May 18, 2007, Freilich indicated the Foundation needed “$20 mil in gains� for January and February and “want[ed] 18% for year[] 07 appreciation,� but that she had to check the numbers “with Jeff.� On information and belief, “Jeff� is Defendant Jeffry Picower. Five days later, on May 23, Freilich told BLMIS that the numbers she had provided earlier were wrong, and the Foundation “needs only $12.3 mil [in gains] for� January and February 2007

Accordingly, the Picower Foundation’s May 2007 statement reflected millions of dollars in securities transactions for the months of January and February 2007 that collectively resulted in a purported gain to the account of $12.6 million.

But those transactions had never appeared on the foundation’s January or February 2007 statements, the complaint says. The result was an apparent $54.6 million increase in Picower Foundation assets, to $765.9 million in May 2007 “because the May 2007 statement was (and subsequent statements were) based on an entirely different account history: one in which various trades had taken place more than 15 months earlier, resulting in entirely different positions and values,� the complaint says.

(Click here to see an example of one of the allegedly fradulent “portfolio appraisals” the Picower Foundation filed to the IRS with its tax return).

The complaint adds:

The mysterious appearance of securities transactions months after the purported trades settled … was not credible and would have raised questions by an account holder who was not complicit in the manipulation.

Zabel said in an interview he did not set up Decisions Incorporated. He said he is likely listed in SEC records as the company’s administrative contact because he was Picower’s “personal lawyer.� But he said Picower had other lawyers who handled his corporate matters.

“I am his personal lawyer for his personal matters and foundations matters,� Zabel said, speaking before Picower’s death.

But Zabel, through his work for Picower, was in Madoff’s close orbit. The trustee’s complaint said “Picower has been closely associated with Madoff on both a business and social level for the last 30 years.�

Zabel, Madoff and Picower served together on the board of the Picower Institute for Medical Research, which closed in 2002 after I published this story in the St. Petersburg Times questioning whether money from Picower’s charitable entities had been used to help him gain personal control of a pharmaceutical company. See a copy of the Picower Institute board membership here.

(Zabel said the IRS investigated and cleared the Picower Foundation in the matter.)

‘In Pursuit of Justice’

William Zabel is the trustee and legal advisor for another charity caught up in the Madoff fraud. Last Dec. 15, the JEHT Foundation – a major funder of liberal causes, especially involving reform of the juvenile justice system and human rights — announced it would close its doors. Its founders’ money had been managed by Madoff, and they had lost everything.

William Zabel (left) and his son, Richard Zabel, at Human Rights First's 30th anniversary dinner last year. (Human Rights First)

The JEHT Foundation was run by Jeanne Levy-Church, whose father – a New York real estate magnate named Norman Levy – had been Madoff’s close friend. Norman Levy died in 2005, and Madoff became the executor of his estate, according to Vanity Fair magazine.

Public records show that after Levy’s death, $217 million from a Levy trust was donated to The Betty and Norman F. Levy Foundation, whose money was managed by Madoff. The Levy Foundation, in turn, donated heavily to the JEHT Foundation, for which Zabel served as a trustee.

The JEHT Foundation is not accused of any fraud. But it – along with the Picower Foundation – made contributions that totaled about 10 percent of the annual budget of an advocacy group called Human Rights First, whose board director is William Zabel.

Human Rights First also published a report last year co-authored by Rich Zabel called “In Pursuit of Justice, Prosecuting Terrorism Cases in the Federal Courts.�

The report, widely cited by news organizations and other non-profit groups, helped burnish Rich Zabel’s national security credentials after a decade in private practice.

In May 2008, Rich Zabel and his co-author held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington to discuss the report’s findings. And last November, William and Rich Zabel appeared on stage at Human Rights First’s 30th anniversary celebration in New York to discuss the report. The gala dinner was hosted by actress Sigourney Weaver and featured entertainment from country-folk star Mary Chapin Carpenter.

Eric Holder (DOJ)

Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday announced nine appointees to the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of U.S. Attorneys.

In August, Holder tapped Minnesota U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones to chair the committee, an influential policy-making and advisory body that serves as the voice of the U.S. Attorneys at Main Justice.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, of Illinois’ Northern District, served as interim chairman before Jones was confirmed. Chicago’s top prosecutor, a Republican appointee who has been recommended for a second tour of duty, will remain on the committee.

The nine new members are listed below. Click on their names for a summary of their Senate questionnaires.

• Preet Bharara, of the Southern District of New York
• Dennis Burke, of Arizona
• Jenny Durkan, of the Western District of Washington
• Paul Fishman, of New Jersey
• Neil MacBride, of the Eastern District of Virginia
• Peter Neronha, of Rhode Island
• Joyce Vance, of the Northern District of Alabama
• Channing Phillips, acting U.S attorney in the District of Columbia
• John Davis, chief of the criminal division of the federal prosecutors’ office in Alexandria, will represent the views of Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

They will each serve two-year terms.

The Senate so far has confirmed 18 of 93 U.S. Attorneys. One nominee is waiting for approval by the full Senate, and 11 more await a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Holder, in a statement, said he would rely heavily on the the AGAC as the department works to curb violent crime and gang violence, promote civil rights, police the marketplace and protect national security.

The AGAC’s other members, who were appointed during the Bush administration, include U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, of  Middle District of Alabama; Rod Rosenstein, of Maryland; Brett Tolman, of Utah; and Gretchen Witt, the civil chief in the District of New Hampshire.

Regulations require only that the committee have an “appropriate” number of members.

U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in Pittsburgh is rejecting criticism from a federal public defender that her office didn’t respond with a sense of urgency to the inadvertent taping at the Allegheny County Jail of phone conversations between prisoners and their lawyers.

“If counsel walks away dissatisfied, I can’t do anything about it if she doesn’t call,” Buchanan told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for an article published Saturday. “It was incumbent upon the public defender to pick up the phone and call me. And unfortunately, that didn’t happen.”

Lisa Freeland, the local federal public defender, learned on Oct. 8 that the jail accidentally had passed audio recordings of the attorney-client conversations to the Western District of Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney Office, the newspaper reported.

Freeland said she contacted First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert S. Cessar and the office’s criminal chief to discuss the matter. She later sent an email to members of the local defense bar to inform them of the situation. Freeland added in the email she didn’t believe the Western District office was taking the problem seriously.

She told the  Post-Gazette she was puzzled by Buchanan’s response. “There was never a moment in my conversations with either [the first assistant U.S. attorney or chief of the criminal division] that I thought for a second that Mary Beth had not been informed of what was going on and that she would have been in on those calls herself had she been available,” Freeland said.

The Allegheny jail, using standard practice, records all prisoner phone calls except those covered by attorney-client privilege. It is also standard practice for prosecutors assembling criminal cases to request recordings of phone calls a defendant or suspect makes from jail.

But when an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Buchanan’s office later realized he was hearing calls made by prisoners to the public defender’s office, he stopped listening, informed the jail, and consulted with Cessar, Buchanan told the newspaper..

“He didn’t call the public defender’s office because the public defender was not counsel of record for this defendant,” she told the Post-Gazette.

Buchanan also told the newspaper the inadvertent recordings were rare and she didn’t believe it necessary to assemble a “taint team” to identify and destroy the recordings.

A public defender is criticizing  U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan for failing to report privileged recordings that were inadvertently obtained by the Western District of Pennsylvania U.S. Attorney’s office, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today.

Mary Beth Buchanan (DOJ)

The Bush-appointed prosecutor ”begrudgingly” helping to address the Allegheny County Jail mistake, federal public defender Lisa Freeland said in a letter to the Allegheny County defense bar that was obtained by the Post-Gazette. The error resulted in taped calls between inmates and lawyers being sent to the Western District office, according to the newspaper. Jail policy prohibits prosecutors from listening to these conversations, the paper said.

The federal public defender said in the letter that Buchanan’s office did not properly inform her of the recordings and was not proactively working to fix the problem.

“The [Assistant U.S. attorneys], I am told, are well trained and know not to listen to attorney-client protected calls,” Freeland said in the letter. “My request for information is just another accusation that they are evil.”

Buchanan told the newspaper that the recordings were never reviewed by the U.S. Attorney’s office.

“The incidences in which these communications may have been inadvertently provided to this office are extremely rare,” said in a statement to the Post-Gazette. “We haven’t seen the public defender’s written allegations. Once we see those, we’ll investigate to determine what material was received and whether it was handled appropriately.”

Buchanan has served as the district’s top federal prosecutor since 2001. She also held simultaneous leadership positions at Justice Department headquarters in Washington during the Bush administration. From 2004 to 2005, she headed the Executive Office of United States Attorneys and came under scrutiny in the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation of events leading up to the 2006 U.S. Attorney firings. Democrats have also accused her of targeting Democrats for prosecution. Buchanan has denied those allegations.

Medical malpractice insurers are lobbying the Senate not to lump them in with health insurance companies as Congress moves to bring the industry under federal antitrust regulation.

The malpractice insurers are opposed to a proposal by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) that they say would restrict companies’ ability to gather and share data.

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday advanced a bill that strips health insurers of the immunity from federal antitrust prosecution they have enjoyed since 1945, but which provides protections for data sharing. But in the Senate, Democratic leaders held a news conference Wednesday, in which they supported a similar amendment, but one that lacks the data sharing protections.

Lobbyists for medical malpractice insurers say they are focused on defeating or reshaping the proposed Senate amendment. “We’re pushing that they just take out medical liability insurance completely,” Michael Stinson, director of government relations at the trade group Physician Insurers Association of America, said in an interview with Main Justice.

The industry group collects and analyzes data from its member companies about average defense costs, types of claims, and patient safety information. It then sends back aggregated data to its members in the form of national averages.

Such information sharing, Stinson says, might be in jeopardy if the Senate amendment goes through. “We have no guarantee that regulators won’t decide that patient safety information is used to to set rates, and [therefore] fall under a broad definition of price fixing,” he said.

Meanwhile, some experts have suggested the consumer benefits of subjecting health insurers to federal antitrust laws might be overblown.

Eric Holder at U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara's investiture in Manhattan on Oct. 13 (DOJ)

Attorneys General rarely venture out of Washington to attend swearing-in ceremonies for new U.S. Attorneys, according to former Justice Department officials. But Eric Holder has done so three times — deploying the power of his office to anoint rising stars or draw subtle contrasts with the Bush administration.

So far this year, Holder has attended the ceremonial investitures for U.S. Attorneys Joyce Vance in the Northern District of Alabama, B. Todd Jones in Minnesota and Preet Bharara in the Southern District of New York. Both Vance and Jones run offices that were in turmoil during the Bush administration, and Holder — who has said he wants to restore professionalism to the Justice Department — emphasized the department’s new direction by attending the ceremonies.

At the same time, Jones is also an old friend of Holder, while Vance is a respected veteran who is considered an up-and-comer in the department.

And in Manhattan, Bharara heads the largest and most prestigious U.S. Attorney office outside Washington, which prosecutes high-profile financial fraud and national security cases. Bharara is also close to an important Democratic ally on the Hill, Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Bharara was Schumer’s chief counsel before he was confirmed as U.S. Attorney.

Holder’s visits show his willingness to deploy the authority of his office for public relations purposes and to build internal morale. But it remains fairly unusual for an Attorney General to attend swearing-in ceremonies, according to ex-U.S. Attorneys.

The Justice Department doesn’t keep formal count, according to a DOJ spokesperson. It’s unclear how many — if any — ceremonies President George W. Bush’s first AG John Ashcroft attended. Ashcroft told Main Justice in that he couldn’t recall. Also, many of the federal prosecutors who were sworn in under Ashcroft arrived not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — not a time for pomp and circumstance. Still, Bush’s first AG commended Holder for attending investitures.

“The more you attend, the better,” Ashcroft said, adding that during his four years of service, he eventually visited about half of the U.S. Attorneys offices.

"The more you attend, the better," former AG John Ashcroft said of investitures. (doj)

Ron Woods, National Association of Former U.S. Attorneys executive director, told Main Justice that Attorneys General have attended investitures for the District of Columbia U.S. Attorney in the past. But he said their appearances at swearing-in ceremonies outside of Washington are “fairly rare.”

“Our members recall the Attorney General making office visits during their term, but not individual investitures,” said Woods, who served as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas from 1990 to 1993. “Keep in mind that there are 93 U. S. Attorneys and most of the investitures will occur within a few months of each other. That would be a significant commitment of time and travel by the Attorney General.”

Holder developed close relationships with the federal prosecutorial community while serving President Bill Clinton as District of Columbia U.S. Attorney and later as Deputy Attorney General, former prosecutors interviewed by Main Justice said. Only three of the last 10 Attorneys General worked as federal prosecutors before becoming the nation’s top cop.

One of the prosecutors Holder got to know was Jones, who was the Minnesota U.S. Attorney during the Clinton administration. Shortly after Jones returned as U.S. Attorney in August, Holder named him chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, an influential policy-making and advisory body that serves as the voice of the U.S. Attorneys in Washington.

But an Attorney General does not show up to an investiture just to say hello to an old friend, according to former DOJ officials. The nation’s top federal prosecutor also attends swearing-in ceremonies for political and public relations reasons.

B. Todd Jones (left) takes the oath of office last month. Eric Holder (right) gave remarks. (doj)

An official trip to a U.S. Attorney’s office by an Attorney General for an investiture or another event will often attract the media, which will draw attention to the office. It is also an opportunity to energize prosecutors in the field. ”When the Attorney General shows up, it shows the importance of the work being done,” Ashcroft told Main Justice.

A Justice Department spokesperson told Main Justice in August that Holder’s first trip to a U.S. Attorney investiture was part of ongoing effort by the Attorney General to reach out to the 94 U.S. Attorneys’ offices.

“The Attorney General is making it a priority to visit U.S. Attorneys’ offices around the country to personally meet with prosecutors and other staff to hear firsthand about the cases they’re working on, the issues they face, and ways in which he can help them do their jobs,� spokesperson Hannah August said this summer. “The visit to the Northern District of Alabama was made to coincide with U.S. Attorney Vance’s swearing-in.�

Regardless of the Attorney’s General reasons behind a trip to a U.S. Attorney’s office, former prosecutors told Main Justice that a visit by the nation’s top federal prosecutor has a major impact on the office. ”It is very meaningful when the Attorney General visits,” said John Richter, who served as the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma from 2005 to 2009.

Pat Leahy wants the Justice Department to stop blowing off Chuck Grassley.

The Vermont Democrat joined his Republican colleague from Iowa in writing this letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday asking the department  to finally respond to nearly 20  inquiries Grassley has made over the past three years.

The Iowa Republican is steamed about the DOJ's non-responsiveness. (Getty Images)

“I just feel very strongly that whether it is a Democrat or Republican administration, when they are asked appropriate questions by the members of this committee, they should be responding to them,” Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said at a panel meeting yesterday.

This is the second time in five months that Grassley has publicly called on the Justice Department to answer his questions. The Iowa senator said in June that he was not getting satisfactory answers to his inquiries. He threatened to hold DOJ nominees until he got answers from Holder.

“We appreciated your statement at your confirmation hearing before the Committee that if confirmed as Attorney General, you would ‘do all [you] can, and, to make sure that [you] respond fully…and in a timely fashion’ to Congressional oversight inquiries,” the senators wrote in their letter to Holder. “In that spirit, we ask that you work with Senator Grassley to address these outstanding requests expeditiously.”

Grassley’s office and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The chart of requests included in the letter to Holder is below.

Roxanne Conlin (Roxanne Conlin & Associates)

Roxanne Conlin (D), who served as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa from 1977 to 1981, on Thursday said she may run for the Democratic nomination to challenge Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) for his Senate seat next year, The Des Moines Register reported. Conlin has been in private practice since 1983. In 1982 she was the Democratic nominee for Iowa governor. Before serving as a U.S. Attorney, Conlin was an assistant attorney general in Iowa in the civil rights division from 1969 to 1976.

Conlin said her said is considering the run because of disappointment with Grassley and a desire to rejoin the public sector, The Register reported. “I never thought I’d run again,” Conlin told The Register, adding, “But in my lifetime, I don’t ever want to say, ‘If only I had followed my dream or followed my heart.’”

She told The Register, “It’s not the life I expected to have,” adding, “I expected to be in public office. I expected to run the state of Iowa. That is always what I thought would happen. Conlin continued, “So I kind of had to think through: What is my calling now? And so I feel like I’ve been able to make a contribution, not only to the lives of individuals that I represented, but to the people of Iowa in a number of ways.”

Conlin told The Register,”What has changed for me is Grassley.” She cited Grassley’s tone at last summer’s town hall meetings on health care and his criticism of against “Obama-care” in a fundraising brochure. “That’s not the Chuck Grassley I thought this state elected, and it really was a watershed moment for me,” she told The Register.

The candidates who have officially entered the race include three Democrats: former state Sen. Tom Fiegen, former state Rep. Bob Krause and frequent candidate Sal Mohamed.

According to The Register, a Conlin run could bring a fundraising challenge to Grassley, as she is well known and likely would receive significant financial support. In addition, Conlin could finance the campaign herself, as she received a considerable portion of $75 million in legal fees earned as one of the lead lawyers in a 2007 class-action lawsuit against Microsoft.