Jim Letten (USDOJ)

Add Sen. Mary Landrieu to the list of senators frustrated with the administration’s ambling pace on U.S. Attorney nominations.

The Louisiana Democrat’s office is seeking clarification from the White House on U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s status, nearly a year after President Barack Obama took office and eight months after Landrieu announced she wanted to keep the Republican-appointed prosecutor in place, reports The New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Earlier this month, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) also complained – for a second time – about lack of action on the North Dakota U.S. Attorney post.

The Obama administration has nominated or confirmed 42 U.S. Attorneys. By comparison, George W. Bush had nominated more than 60 U.S. Attorneys and Bill Clinton more than 70 by this point in their administrations.

The White House told Landrieu aides that Letten’s position is safe, the Times-Picayune reported on its blog:

Recently, Landrieu aides said they were told by the White House that Letten’s job is secure and that it’s unnecessary for the president to renominate him or the Senate to confirm him because he already holds the position.

“Jim Letten continues to serve as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana without being re-nominated by the President,” Justice Department spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz said in a statement to the newspaper.

In a blog posting, reporter Bruce Alpert said it was “unclear” what Schwartz meant and tried to provide an exegesis for readers.

“One possible explanation is that Landrieu staffers have been given misleading information and that the White House is considering replacing Letten,” Alpert wrote. Although Letten is a career prosecutor and not considered especially political, some Democrats in New Orleans are grumbling that “there are many qualified people not associated with the previous Republican administration who could do the job as effectively.”

The senator’s office said in a statement: ”Sen. Landrieu continues to stand behind Mr. Letten and is pleased that he continues to serve in the capacity of U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District.”

John Yoo (Berkeley)

In an interview featured in the upcoming edition of The New York Times Magazine, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo says that he never met former President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney and that he does not regret writing legal memos that said the administration was free to ignore laws prohibiting torture.

An excerpt from the interview is reprinted below; read the whole thing at the New York Times.

Your new book, “Crisis and Command,� is an eloquent, fact-laden history of audacious power grabs by American presidents going back to George Washington. Which president would you say most violated laws enacted by Congress?
I would say Lincoln. He sent the Army into offensive operations to try to stop the South from seceding. He didn’t call Congress into special session until July 4, 1861, well after this had all happened. He basically acted on his own for three months.

Are you implicitly comparing the Civil War with the war in Iraq, in order to justify President Bush’s expansion of executive power?
The idea is that the president’s power grows and changes based on circumstances, and that’s what the framers of the Constitution wanted. They wanted it to exist so the president could react to crises immediately.

Do you regret writing the so-called torture memos, which claimed that President Bush was legally entitled to ignore laws prohibiting torture?
No, I had to write them. It was my job. As a lawyer, I had a client. The client needed a legal question answered.

When you say you had “a client,� do you mean President Bush?
Yes, I mean the president, but also the U.S. government as a whole.

But isn’t a lawyer in the Department of Justice there to serve the people of this country?
Yes, I think you are quite right, when the government is executing the laws, but if there’s a conflict between the president and the Congress, then you have to pick one or the other.

Elousise Cobell (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

UPDATE: The deadline has been extended until Feb. 28, writes BLT. No other conditions of the settlement changed according to Cobell lawyer Keith Harper, who signed the agreement with the Justice Department Tuesday afternoon.

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Lawyers representing Elouise Cobell, the main plaintiff in the long-running Indian trust litigation, are in discussions with the government about possibly extending Thursday’s deadline to finalize a settlement agreement that required action from Congress.

The settlement reached earlier this month required Congress to pass legislation authorizing payment to the plaintiffs by Dec. 31. Congress did not take action before adjourning for its holiday break.

Keith Harper, one of the lawyers for Cobell, confirmed ongoing discussions to the Blog of Legal Times.

The settlement of the case, Cobell v. Salazar, was announced at a press conference at the Department of the Interior on Dec. 8, and was discussed before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee on Dec. 17.

Thomas Perrelli (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

“[T]he litigation has drained federal resources from Indian Country, and has created a poisonous atmosphere for the administration of the federal government’s trust responsibilities in Indian Country,” said Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli in testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs panel.

“Throughout our discussions with the plaintiffs, we have been guided by two principles,” said Perrelli. “First, we wanted true peace for the parties. We wanted to turn the page on history. The resolution of the accounting and trust administration pieces of this litigation will do that.”

Cobell v. Salazar was one of the largest class actions ever filed against the U.S. government. The lawsuit, originally filed in 1996, was brought by Cobell on behalf of more than 300,000 Native Americans holding individual Indian money accounts.

If approved and funded by Congress, the $3.4 billion settlement agreement includes $1.4 billion that would be distributed to class members to compensate them for their historic accounting claims and to resolve potential claims that prior U.S. officials mismanaged the administration of trust assets, according to the Justice Department.

The other $2 billion would go to establish a land consolidation program to provide individual Indians with an opportunity to obtain cash payments for divided land interests and free up the land for the benefit of tribal communities. The allegations of mismanagement went all the way back to 1887.

“What we’ve long thought was needed was leadership on the other side,” Harper told Main Justice earlier this month. “For people to recognize that we could litigate forever on both sides, but it’s far better to resolve the case and try to build a foundation upon which there can a more healthy and trusting relationship.”

“You have a president now who has committed to that and made very clear that this was one of his priorities, you have a secretary of the Interior who has made it one of his priorities,” said Harper.

“Trying to judge whether something will get through Congress is challenging,” said Harper earlier this month. “Would I be shocked if it didn’t? No, but that’s just the way this town works, but it’s just hard to predict with any precision, but I’m optimistic.”

View video from the Dec. 8 press conference below:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Salter will head a new appellate division in the South Dakota U.S. Attorney’s office.

U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson announced the appellate division on Monday. The U.S. Attorney’s office in South Dakota had previously lacked an appellate division.

“The importance of that division and that role has grown,” Johnson told the Argus Leader newspaper. “The cases we send to the 8th Circuit not only affect us but affect every district.”

The St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals also hears cases from  North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and Arkansas.

Salter is a 1990 graduate of South Dakota State University and a 1993 graduate of the University of South Dakota Law School, the Argus Leader reporter. He is based in Sioux Falls and has been with the U.S. Attorney’s office for five years.

The U.S. intelligence community is near completion of a major assessment of the national security threat posed by international organized crime, according to administration officials and experts.

The National Intelligence Estimate, which could be finished as soon as January, was conceived more than two years ago to address the dangers posed by Eurasian criminal groups’ suspected infiltration of energy and other strategic markets.

But its focus broadened over time to include a wide swath of criminal syndicates and issues, from drug-trafficking by Mexican cartels to the relationship between terrorism and organized crime, the officials and experts said.

“Globalization has done great things for organized commerce, but it’s also helped organized criminal groups to advance as well,” said one senior Justice Department official, who spoke in general terms about the threat.

The threat was underscored in recent weeks, as reports emerged of an FBI investigation into a major cyberattack on Citibank Inc., which Citibank denies. And the Justice Department announced drug charges in New York against alleged Al-Qaeda associates arrested in Ghana during a Drug Enforcement Administration sting.

NIEs are produced under a classified process and carry the full weight of the U.S. intelligence community’s judgment. The existence of the NIE on international organized crime has not been previously reported.

The assessments are compiled by the National Intelligence Council, a research arm of intelligence community that reports directly to Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. The NIC incorporates in its estimates expertise from inside and outside of the federal government.

The estimate’s focus expanded over time as more agencies sought to reap the benefits of inclusion, including increased funding and more say in policy direction. In this case, the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury contributed to the NIE, the officials said. The National Intelligence Council is expected to release a public overview of the threat assessment, increasing its visibility and impact, experts say.

“I think it’s going to open this field up to some serious academic research and funding,” said Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center at George Mason University. “We’re going to be focusing on a whole range of issues that we haven’t thought enough about, and connecting the dots on other issues.”

A sensitive subject: Russia

One effect of broadening the NIE is that it allows the Obama administration to sidestep the diplomatically sensitive issue of Russia, where authorities have long suspected that the tentacles of organized crime reach into the government.

In 2008, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave a speech that identified as the top security threat organized criminals who control significant positions in the global energy and strategic materials markets, threatening U.S. geopolitical interests.

He never mentioned Russia. But as an example, Mukasey pointed to Semion Mogilevich, who is thought to be at the pinnacle of Russian organized crime and is said to have influence over large portions of the natural gas industry in former Soviet-bloc states.  (Mogilevich is wanted in the U.S. on racketeering charges, and the FBI recently placed him on its Top Ten Most Wanted list.)

Russian control of energy supplies and transport networks is a security issue for the European Union, which relies heavily on Russian natural gas. But Russia controls the spigot for pipelines that service Central and Western Europe through the former Soviet state of Ukraine. Twice since 2006, Russia has cut off gas to Ukraine in payment disputes, affecting EU supplies.

Of further concern to intelligence analysts is the murky ownership of some middleman companies crucial to European energy supplies.

In 2006, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department’s organized crime unit was investigating the ownership of a Ukrainian energy trading company named Rosukrenergo AG, half owned by Russian state company OAO Gazprom.

In response to U.S. concerns about who ultimately controlled Rosukrenergo, company representatives met with the DOJ in Washington to disclose the ownership stake of a Ukrainian businessmen with ties to Mogilevich – the suspected organized crime figure on the FBI Most Wanted list, the Wall Street Journal reported.

There’s also the case of  William Browder, a U.S. native and British citizen who founded Hermitage Capital Management, once the largest foreign investment fund in Russia but now accused in Russian courts of tax evasion.

Hermitage has denied evading taxes. It has countered with allegations that a government-affiliated “criminal enterprise� siphoned off $230 million in taxes paid by Hermitage units. Browder has retained the law firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft to investigate.

Hermitage has filed an application for judicial assistance in the Southern District of New York federal court, asking the U.S. to compel access to information it says it needs to defend itself in Russia.

In a recent declaration filed in the case, Neil Mickelswaithe, a British solicitor and outside counsel to Hermitage, said the fund is the victim of a “criminal enterprise� in Russia spanning senior offices of the Russian Interior Ministry, the Russian Federal Security Service (the successor to the KGB), senior Russian tax officers, and certain Russian court judges and “numerous private individuals in Russia, some of whom have previous criminal convictions.�

U.S. authorities have long suspected billionaire Oleg Deripaska, one of Russia’s most powerful tycoons, of having ties to Russian organized crime. Deripaska, who made his fortune in the post-Soviet aluminum industry, is close to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, often traveling with him abroad. He presides over a business empire that spans metals, finance and construction.

Deripaska, who has denied any ties to organized crime, had been barred entry to the U.S. for years. But recently, the FBI made secret arrangements to allow him into the country to seek his assistance in an ongoing criminal probe, the Wall Street Journal reported. In two visits to the U.S. this year, Deripaska also met with executives of Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Co.

Putin and other Russian officials have raised the visa issue with their U.S. counterparts, and in the past Deripaska hired high-powered Washington lobbyists — including former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) — to make his case for entry into the U.S.

New approach more measured

The Obama administration, in contrast, has been careful not single out any country or group. Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, in a speech and in interviews given at the Interpol General Assembly in October, noted continuing threats posed by Mexican drug cartels, South Asian heroin-trafficking syndicates, and traditional crime families from Asia and Eastern Europe.

Ogden made no mention of strategic markets. The apparent shift in message is reflected in the intelligence estimate, officials said.

Under Mukasey, the Justice Department pushed for a finished product before President George W. Bush left office. After a draft NIE was circulated late in the Bush administration, officials in the departments of Homeland Security, State, Treasury advocated a broader sweep, officials said. The recommendations were ultimately passed on to the Obama administration.

“When the Justice Department first started working on the estimate, there was much more focus on energy issues,” said George Mason’s Shelley, who was first contacted in March by government officials involved in drafting the estimate.

“They asked me what I thought was wrong with it, and I told them they needed to broaden the scope and the geographical range. There’s a tendency to stovepipe too much. When you broaden the scope, you are able to see the diversity of the problem and the relationship among
the different aspects of transnational crime,” she said.

The Obama administration has been actively highlighting fronts in the battle against international organized crime.

In November, the State Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement co-hosted a symposium in Honolulu. The event drew attention to criminal networks that span East Asia, the Pacific and Latin America — and that engage in a broad range of criminal activity, including drug, gun and human trafficking, money laundering and corruption.

Earlier this month, officials from the departments of Commerce, Homeland Security and Justice, as well as the White House, met with entertainment industry executives to focus on intellectual property crimes. The connection between piracy and organized crime is
well-documented, particularly in Asian countries such as China.

At the event, billed as the first of its kind, Attorney General Eric Holder called on the international community to respond.

“This is a problem that the United States cannot solve by itself,� said Holder. “We want to confront these nations, quite frankly, where too much of this occurs.�

Narco-trafficking also a danger

Violent Mexican cartels, responsible for thousands of killings south of the border, have emerged as a singular threat. Their vast drug-trafficking networks reach deep into the U.S., and law enforcement officials fear a scenario in which the cartels rent their smuggling routes to terrorists.

“If you were to ask me what is the biggest organized crime threat, I would say it’s more the cartels in general and other organized crime syndicates engaged in narco-trafficking and other illicit activities,” said David Luna, director for anti-crime programs at the State Department’s Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. “They’re not just in our backyard, they’re actually in the U.S.”

The link between terrorism and crime is also of growing concern, officials said. The case of the three alleged Al-Qaeda associates charged in New York, who are believed to be in their 30s and originally from Mali, appears to show a direct link between the terror group and drug traffickers. Authorities long maintained that Al Qaeda and the Taliban profit from the heroin trade in Afghanistan. Michael Braun, who retired as DEA’s chief of operations last year, told The Associated Press the case was “the tip of the iceberg.”

Decade-long focus

The intelligence community’s interest in international organized crime dates back more than a decade. In the mid-1990s, intelligence officials began work on a separate estimate, with the help of the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, said Jim Moody, a former FBI Deputy Assistant Director who oversaw organized crime investigations.

The estimate, he said, “helped get rid of a lot of barriers to sharing information” between the intelligence and law enforcement communities and set priorities for developing intelligence on international criminal groups.

But its impact was curtailed by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “Given the trauma that the country faced after the 9/11 attacks, international organized crime was relegated understandably to a second-tier national security priority” as the Bush administration redistributed resources to deal with terrorist threats, the State Department’s Luna said.

Officials said they hoped the estimate would cement international organized crime as top national security priority, motivate agencies to develop stronger policies and make an argument for increased funding.

Jay Albanese, former chief of the International Center at the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, was cautiously optimistic.

“Estimates are a mixed bag,” he said, adding that international organized crime is neither easily quantified, nor easily defined.

“This puts those of us in the crime businsess at a severe disadvantage,” said Albanese, a criminologist and professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. “It’s very diffcult to say with any degree of accuracy how much we should be focusing on human-trafficking versus arms-trafficking.”

Mary Jacoby contributed to this report.

Veteran Civil Rights Division attorney Christopher Coates has stepped down as chief of the Voting Section, according to the division’s Web site.

There was no official announcement of the personnel change in the long-troubled section, which most recently has been embroiled in the controversy over the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case. Main Justice noticed the change on the Voting Section Web site.

Taking over for Coates in an acting role is Chris Herren, a deputy chief of the section, according to the Web site.

Coates did not respond to an email seeking comment. Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said Coates requested an 18-month detail to the U.S. Attorney’s office in South Carolina, where he’ll start in January.

“His new role is the result of conversations Mr. Coates initiated with the division leadership earlier this year,” said Schmaler.

Coates signed off on the controversial voter intimidation complaint against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members, filed in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. The Obama DOJ’s decision to dismiss most of the charges in May has become a political controversy for the administration.

Coates also supervised J. Christian Adams, the career Voting Section attorney who compiled the Black Panther case. Adams, who has a history of conservative advocacy, was hired in 2005 by then-Civil Rights Division official Bradley Scholzman, a Bush political appointee who improperly politicized the hiring process in the division, the department’s Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility found in a joint investigation.

Coates had been listed on the Web site as chief of the Voting Section as late as Dec. 20.

Coates and Adams were subpoenaed last month by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which is investigating the Justice Department’s decision to dismiss most charges against members of the anti-white fringe group, two of whom stood in military-style garb outside a Philadelphia polling place in November 2008, one of them holding a nightstick.

A person familiar with the civil rights commission’s investigation told Main Justice that Coates immediately notified his superiors upon learning he had been subpoenaed.

The Justice Department has resisted complying with the conservative-dominated commission’s subpoenas. But Adams has argued to department lawyers that he is obligated to comply.

Coates had been Voting Section chief since January 2008. He replaced John Tanner, who resigned in December 2007  following comments he made about voter identification laws that some lawmakers perceived as racist.

Tanner rebutted liberal criticism of voter ID laws by saying they affected the elderly more than minorities, and that because African-Americans tended to die younger, the ID requirements didn’t have a disproportionate effect on them.

Tanner’s comments led then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) to call for his removal. Upon taking over the Voting Section, Coates demoted two of Tanner’s deputy chiefs.

This article was updated to include a response from Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler.

Two political opposites – the conservative Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist and the liberal Firedoglake editor Jane Hamsher – have co-authored a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder that calls for a Department of Justice investigation of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Norquist and Hamsher want the DOJ to look into Emanuel’s role on the board of Freddie Mac, where he served from 2000-2001 when he resigned to successfully run for Congress. They allege that the White House has blocked an investigation of the government-sponsored mortgage lender, reports The Atlantic.

Via The Atlantic, their letter is reprinted below:

Attorney General of the United States of America

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001

Dear Attorney General Holder:

We write to demand an immediate investigation into the activities of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. We believe there is an abundant public record which establishes that the actions of the White House have blocked any investigation into his activities while on the board of Freddie Mac from 2000-2001, and facilitated the cover up of potentially malfeasance until the 10-year statute of limitations has run out.

The purpose of this letter is to connect the dots to establish both the conduct of Mr. Emanuel and those working with him to thwart inquiry, and to support your acting speedily so that the statute of limitations does not run out before the Justice Department is able to empanel a grand jury.

The New York Times reports that the administration is negotiating to double the commitments to Fannie and Freddie for a total of $800 billion by December 31, in order to avoid the congressional approval that would be needed after that date. But there currently is no Inspector General exercising independent oversight of these entities. Acting Inspector General Ed Kelly was stripped of his authority earlier this year by the Justice Department, relying on a loophole in a bill Mr. Emanuel cosponsored and pushed through Congress shortly before he left for the White House. This effectively ended Mr. Kelly’s investigation into what happened at Fannie and Freddie.

Since that time, despite multiple warnings by Congress that having no independent Inspector General for a federal agency that oversees $6 trillion in mortgages is a serious oversight, the White House has not appointed one.

We recognize that these are extremely serious accusations, but the stonewalling by Mr. Emanuel and the White House has left us with no other redress. A 2003 report by Freddie Mac’s regulator indicated that Freddie Mac executives had informed the board of their intention to misstate the earnings to insure their own bonuses during the time Mr. Emanuel was a director. But the White House refused to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request from the Chicago Tribune for those board minutes on the grounds that Freddie Mac was a “commercial” entity, even though it was wholly owned by the government at the time the request was made.

If the Treasury approves the $800 billion commitment to Fannie and Freddie by the end of the year, it will mean that under the influence of Rahm Emanuel, the White House is moving a trillion-dollar slush fund into corruption-riddled companies with no oversight in place. This will allow Fannie and Freddie to continue to purchase more toxic assets from banks, acting as a back-door increase of the TARP without congressional approval.

Before the White House commits any more money to Fannie and Freddie, we call on the Public Integrity Section in the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the cause of Fannie and Freddie’s conservatorship, into Rahm Emanuel’s activities on the board of Freddie Mac (including any violations of his fiduciary duties to shareholders), into the decision-making behind the continued vacancy of Fannie and Freddie’s Inspector General post, and into potential public corruption by Rahm Emanuel in connection with his time in Congress, in the White House, and on the board of Freddie Mac.

We also call for the immediate appointment of an Inspector General with a complete remit to go after this information.

We both come from differing political ideologies. One of us is the conservative head of a transparency foundation, and the other is the publisher of a liberal political blog. But we make common cause today out of grave concern for the future of our country in the wake of corruption-riddled bailouts. These bailouts continue to rob Main Street to benefit Wall Street, and because that, we together demand the resignation of Mr. Emanuel, a man who has steadfastly worked to obstruct both oversight and inquiry into the matter. Rahm Emanuel’s conflicts of interest render him far too compromised to serve as gatekeeper to the President of the United States.

We will lay out the details further below, and are available at your earliest convenience to meet with you directly.

Sincerely,

Jane Hamsher Grover Norquist

Firedoglake.com Americans for Tax Reform

Dentist-attorney Orly Taitz, one of the leaders of the “birther” movement that insists President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore cannot be president of the United States, has written two Assistant U.S. Attorneys to request that a dismissed civil case in California be transferred to court in D.C.

According to Taitz’s Web site, she e-mailed two Assistant U.S. Attorneys, Roger West and David DeJute, on Wednesday to schedule “a short phone meet and confer conference” request that her case be transferred to D.C.

Taitz filed the motion on Thursday, which is scheduled to be heard on Jan. 25 in court in the Central District of California.

Back in September, the two Justice Department lawyers, representing Obama, argued that the case should be dismissed because it was inherently flawed. The case was thrown out, and now Taitz is arguing that the merits of the case weren’t heard because the suit was thrown out simply because it did not take place in the right venue.

In a separate Georgia case Taitz filed, the judge ordered the U.S. Attorney to attempt to collect $20,000 from Taitz because she filed frivolous lawsuits. That order came after U.S. District Judge Clay Land belittled Taitz in a widely circulated order that accused Taitz of not understanding legal principles grasped by “any middle school civics student.” He added: “Unlike in Alice in Wonderland, simply saying something is so does not make it so.”

Acting U.S. Attorney G.F. Peterman for the Middle District of Georgia told TPMmuckraker last week that his office is waiting on Taitz’s appeal before it attempts to collect the fine. TPM has a rundown of Taitz’s suits and media appearances in 2009 in this post.

Via Taitz’s Web site, here is her e-mail to West and DeJutte. The motion filed in California on Thursday is embedded below.

This was e-mailed to assistant US attorneys Roger West and David DeJutte : Dr. Orly Taitz Esquire.

Gentlemen

I would like to schedule a short phone meet and confer conference for today at 4pm regarding filing a motion to transfer of this case to DC.

thank you,

Dr. Orly Taitz ESQ

KEYES|BARNETT v OBAMA – 105 – NOTICE OF MOTION AND First MOTION to Transfer Case to District of Columbia – …

The Main Justice staff is taking a break for the holidays. We’ll be back in force on Monday, Jan. 4. We’d like to thank all our devoted readers for their support, tips and story ideas. We look forward to a great 2010.

With warm regards,

Mary Jacoby
Kenny Day
Joe Palazzolo
Andrew Ramonas
Aruna Viswanatha
Ryan J. Reilly
Brian Nutting
Stephanie Woodrow
Chris Matthews

President Barack Obama will need to re-nominate three nominees for top Justice Department posts if he wants the Senate to consider them again.

Dawn Johnsen (Indiana University)

The Senate approved a unanimous consent request today to hold over several nominees for the second session of the 111th Congress, which begins in January.

But nominees to head three DOJ offices: Dawn Johnsen, for the Office of Legal Counsel, Mary L. Smith, for the Tax Division, and Christopher Schroeder, for the Office of Legal Policy, were returned to the White House before the Senate recessed for the holidays.

Johnsen, who was nominated in February, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in March on a party line vote.

Mary L. Smith (Schoeman, Updike & Kaufman)

Several Senate Republicans, joined by Democratic Sens. Arlen Specter (Pa.) and Ben Nelson (Neb.), have voiced concerns about Johnsen’s vocal opposition to the Bush administration’s national security policies and her past work for an abortion rights group.

Republicans have also raised concerns about Smith, who was nominated in April. She did not receive a single Republican vote when she was reported out of committee in June. GOP lawmakers said Smith, a Chicago lawyer who served in the Clinton White House counsel’s office, lacked tax law experience.

Christopher Schroeder (Duke University)

It is unclear what objections have been raised about Schroeder, who was approved by the Judiciary panel in July by voice vote. He was nominated in June.

But Schroeder, like Johnsen, had been a critic of Bush’s national security policies. Read his June 2008 testimony before Congress about interrogation policies at Guantanamo Bay here.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) had been pushing for the Senate to confirm the nominees before the Senate recessed today.

A White House spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.