Jason Weinstein at a House subcommittee hearing on intellectual property rights last week (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Ahead of a White House round-table meeting between entertainment executives and high level government officials earlier this week, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jason Weinstein testified before a House subcommittee on the Justice Department’s efforts to protect intellectual property.

Weinstein reported that the Justice Department was working with foreign government agency partners in Europe and Asia. The “cornerstone” of the department’s efforts, said Weinstein, is the Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordinator (IPLEC) program. Working with the State Department, DOJ “deployed two experienced federal prosecutors to serve as coordinators in Bangkok, Thailand, for Southeast Asia and Sofia, Bulgaria, for Eastern Europe.”

One of the major problem areas for intellectual property right enforcement has been China, Weinstein told lawmakers. Diane Watson (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Oversight and Government Reform panel’s subcommittee on Government Management, Organization and Procurement, said China is the expert on stealing intellectual property.

Weinstein said China “had been a significant source of counterfeit and pirated products imported into the United States and presents an especially greater challenge to U.S. law enforcement.” He said the department has “prioritized developing strong working relationships with Chinese law enforcement officials.” One of the projects that came out of the cooperation between U.S. and Chinese law enforcement was Operation Summer Solstice, the largest-ever joint criminal enforcement operation between the FBI and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security. That effort resulted in the arrest of 25 people. Eleven Summer Solstice defendants have been convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from one-and-a-half to six-and-a-half years, Weinstein said.

Most recently, reports the New York Times, the Chinese government is clamping down on Internet file-sharing sites:

Under the new controls, more than 700 Web sites have been shut down, including many that offered free movies, television dramas and music downloads. BT China, which recorded at least 250,000 visits daily, was among them. China’s largest file-sharing site, Very CD, must obtain a new license or face possible shutdown as well, according to news media reports.

Weinstein’s full testimony before the subcommittee is embedded below.

DAAG Weinstein Testimony

Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent speeches exhorting black men to be responsible fathers stem from a little-noticed  policy initiative of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

Eric Holder and his wife, Dr. Sharon Malone. (Getty Images)

On Sunday, the nation’s top law enforcement officer told worshipers at a Queens, N.Y., church that it was “unacceptable” for men to be absent from their children’s lives. On Tuesday at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, he told a town hall meeting that  ”real” men own up to their responsibilities as parents, and that strong family ties reduce crime.

“If we are truly to call ourselves ‘men,’ we must recognize that a defining characteristic of that word is the care and nurturing of those we bring into this world,” Holder said in Atlanta, according to his prepared remarks.”You simply cannot be a real man if you don’t do all that you can to care for those who have the greatest right to depend on you.”

He added: “People sometimes make bad choices. As a result, they end up in prison or jail. But we can’t permit incarceration of a parent to punish an entire family.”

The Atlanta town hall meeting was part of a series of Barack Obama administration-sponsored forums on fatherhood, beginning with an event at the White House this past Father’s Day.

The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (FBNP) has also co-sponsored forums in Chicago and Manchester, N.H. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, FBNP Director Joshua DuBois and Michael Strautmanis, chief of staff to Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, participated in the events, along with several members of Congress and state and local community leaders.

Obama said in June that the initiative was meant to launch a national conversation “about fatherhood and personal responsibility — about how fathers across America are meeting the challenges in their families and communities, and what government can do to support those who are having a difficult time.”

The discussion about black fathers has a long political and social history. In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Lyndon Johnson administration, published a report on the social consequences of unwed black mothers called “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” The statistic-heavy report by the future Democratic senator from New York fueled an often polarizing debate about poverty, race and government assistance that lasted decades.

President Bill Clinton, who campaigned for president as a limited government “New Democrat,” enacted welfare reform legislation in 1996 over the objections of many liberals in his party. In 2004, comedian Bill Cosby gave a speech on fatherhood before the NAACP in 2004 that, in sometimes harsh language, criticized black parents who aren’t involved in their children’s lives or set bad personal examples.

Now the country’s first black president and first black attorney general are both striking the same themes, but to little public controversy or even notice.

President Obama is closer to nominating the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, the Daily Business Review reported, according to the Southern District of Florida blog.

The White House is vetting Wifredo “Willy” Ferrer for the Miami-based post. He is an assistant Dade County, Fla., attorney. Read Ferrer’s full bio here.

He would succeed R. Alexander Acosta, who resigned last summer to become the dean of Miami’s Florida International University law school. Jeffrey Sloman is the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District.

Ferrer came out of a pool of three finalists who were submitted to the White House for consideration last summer. We reported last month that Dade County judge Daryl Trawick and former Assistant U.S. Attorney David Buckner were also receiving special scrutiny in Florida.

Trawick once helped put phony court documents in the public docket at the request of state prosecutors, which could be a violation of state law. As for Buckner, he played a role in a controversial terrorism case.

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has put in place new hiring rules that division leaders say will prevent the type of politicized hiring that an Inspector General’s report concluded took place during the Bush administration.

“It really is based on the following very simple premise, which is to hire the best qualified people, plain and simple,” said Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, in a briefing with reporters yesterday. “We have put in place systems that will ensure that career staff are involved — hiring committees in each section — so that we get the input of career staff.”

The hiring rules, which career staffers helped write, are not permanent and could be changed by future administrations.

Perez said that the Justice Department funding bill signed by President Obama this week will allow the Civil Rights Division to hire 102 new people, the majority of them lawyers, which Perez said will be an important part of the division’s “restoration and revitalization efforts.”

In a January report, the department’s internal watchdogs concluded that Bradley Schlozman, who was a deputy and acting head of the division during the Bush administration, violated federal law in his quest to stock the division with his political allies. During his tenure, Schlozman hired 99 lawyers, according to the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility. Sixty-three of them had Republican affiliations, two of them were Democrats, and 34 were labeled as “unknown,� according to the report.

One of those lawyers hired by Schlozman in the Voting Section, J. Christian Adams, brought a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in the last days of the Bush administration. His lawyer has been arguing with the Justice Department that Adams has an obligation to follow the directive of a subpoena from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about the handling of the case.

The Obama transition team’s confidential report on the division, obtained by The New York Times and since cited by Perez in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, showed that 236 civil rights lawyers left from 2003 to 2007. The division has about 350 lawyers, which will increase to more than 400 under the Justice Department’s new budget for fiscal 2010.

A memo describing the new hiring rules posted on the Civil Rights Division Web site is embedded below.

Attorney Hiring Experienced

Joe Palazzolo contributed to this story.

Ace investigative reporter Michael Isikoff of Newsweek used his minute with Eric Holder at the Justice Department’s crowded holiday party last night to interrogate the Attorney General about the number of candles in the Hanukkah menorah.

Michael Isikoff (Newsweek)

According to Isikoff, there should have been six, not five, candles in the menorah that was on display in the Attorney General’s conference room, along with other symbols of religious faiths. We were unable to hear Holder’s answer and may have to file a Freedom of Information Act request to get to the bottom of this issue.

In the Justice Department’s defense, there appears to be some disagreement about how many candles should have been lit.

Our friend Al Lengel, author of the law enforcement Web site Tickle the Wire, emailed us: “There were supposed to be 8 candles last night. 7 regular and one is called the shammus candles.. the first night you start out with 2.. the shammus candle is the one high candle. the rest are usually on the same level.�

We consulted Wikipedia, which describes two menorah-lighting traditions:

The Hanukkah menorah has a ninth branch for an auxiliary candle, the shamash, that, by shedding its own light, keeps the other candles from inadvertently serving any purpose other than their ritual one. The shamash is also used to light the other candles. The holder for the shamash candle is generally distinguished in some way from the other eight, traditionally being placed higher than the others, and often in the center, with four of the other candles on each side.

In addition to the shamash, on the first night one candle is placed in the holder on the far right, and is lit using the shamash. Each night afterwards for the next seven nights, one more candle than the night before is kindled. The shamash is used to light the other candles present from left to right. This is the teaching of the House of Hillel. The House of Shammai teaches to light eight candles the first night, seven the second night, six the third night, and so on all eight nights.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) introduced a resolution this week that would direct Attorney General Eric Holder to provide Congress with “all information” relating to the Justice Department’s dismissal of a case against members of the New Black Panther Party.

The measure was referred to the House Judiciary Committee. Because the measure is a resolution of inquiry, dealing with information that the House needs to perform its work, it has a special parliamentary status, and must be dealt with within 14 legislative days, according to House rules. The most likely action is a Judiciary Committee markup.

Here is Rep. Wolf’s statement as he introduced the resolution on Wednesday:

“I rise today to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry directing the attorney general to transmit to the House all information relating to the decision to dismiss an important voter intimidation case, United States v. New Black Panther Party. The case sought to enforce Voting Rights Act statutes against members of the New Black Panther Party that threatened Philadelphia voters — both verbally and physically — last year.

“This case was inexplicably dismissed earlier this year — over the ardent objections of the career attorneys overseeing the case as well as the department’s own appeal office.

“I regret that Congress must resort to oversight resolutions as a means to receive information about the dismissal of this case, but the Congress and the American people have a right to know why this case was not prosecuted.

“As ranking Republican member of the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee that funds the Justice Department, I take oversight of the department very seriously.

“I also strongly support voting rights protections. In 1981, I was the only member — Republican or Democrat — of the Virginia delegation in the House to vote for the Voting Rights Act and was harshly criticized by the editorial page of the Richmond Times Dispatch, and when I supported its reauthorization in 2006, I was criticized again by editorial pages.

“Time and again over the last year, the department has stonewalled any effort to learn about the decision to dismiss this case. I have written Attorney General Holder on six occasions asking for an explanation for the dismissal of this case. To date, I have received no response from him.

“I wrote the DOJ inspector general to request a review of this decision. He deferred to the Office of Professional Responsibility – which reports directly to the attorney general. I have written the Office of Professional Responsibility seeking information on its investigation. The office has refused to share any information.

“In fact, the only response I have received — from a legislative affairs staffer -– was woefully incomplete and -– in places -– inaccurate.

“Two months ago, I met with House Judiciary Chairman Conyers to ask for his assistance in obtaining this information, but he has yet to take any action. This is a shameful failure to provide necessary congressional oversight.

“It is not only Congress that is being stonewalled by the attorney general. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has repeatedly sought this same information, in fulfillment of its statutory responsibility to ensure the enforcement of civil rights law.

“After being similarly rebuffed, the commission filed subpoenas with the department for this information as well as to interview the career attorneys that handled the case.

“However, we understand that the attorney general has instructed his department to ignore these subpoenas. The nation’s chief law enforcement officer is forcing these career attorneys to choose between complying with the law and complying with the attorney general’s obstruction.

“At least one of the attorneys has been compelled to obtain private counsel.

“I urge the House Judiciary Committee to report this resolution out favorably and to demand that the attorney general answer the questions surrounding this case. The career attorneys and Appellate Division within the department sought to demonstrate the federal government’s commitment to protecting voting rights by vigorously prosecuting any individual or group that seeks to undermine this right.

“This House must not turn a blind eye to the attorney general’s obstruction. He has an obligation to answer the legitimate questions of the House and the Civil Rights Commission. It is imperative that we protect the right of all Americans to vote — the sacrosanct and inalienable right of any democracy.â€�

In other developments related to the New Black Panther matter, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the Civil Rights Division, confirmed to reporters on Thursday that several current and former employees of the division had been subpoenaed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) (photo courtesy of Bobby Scott)

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) has introduced legislation that would make it illegal for government lawyers to request a waiver of attorney-client privilege as a measure of cooperation in civil and criminal investigations.

The Justice Department’s corporate charging guidelines prohibit prosecutors from considering waivers as a litmus test for whether a company has been cooperative.

But the policy does not extend to other agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The bill, like the guidelines, also bars government lawyers from penalizing corporations for paying employees’ legal fees, or for entering into joint defense agreements with employees.

The 2008 guidelines, known as the Filip memo, after former Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, are not enforceable under law, and the Justice Department has opposed previous attempts to render them so.

The history of the guidelines begins with Attorney General Eric Holder, who as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton administration signed a memo authorizing that a corporation’s waiver of attorney-client and work product privileges could be considered when assessing cooperation in a criminal investigation.

Holder has said he intended for prosecutors to ask for waivers in instances where a corporation was already cooperating with the government. But the memo became a tool of coercion, in some cases, with prosecutors demanding waivers as a condition of cooperation.

Scott’s bill, which was introduced on Wednesday, is identical to one passed by the House in the 2007. Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) introduced similar legislation in February.

White & Case LLP partner Carolyn Lamm, president of the American Bar Association, welcomed the legislation, saying it would create “a sensible, uniform standard of conduct for all federal agencies.”

See Lamm’s full statement below:

The American Bar Association applauds the introduction in the U.S. House of Representatives of legislation, H.R. 4326, designed to roll back federal agency policies that continue to erode fundamental attorney-client privilege, work product and employee legal protections.

The Attorney-Client Privilege Protection Act, introduced yesterday by Rep. Bobby Scott and cosponsored by numerous House Judiciary Committee members from both parties, recognizes the importance of the attorney-client privilege to our legal system, our nation’s economic health and our society as a whole.  Protecting confidential attorney-client communications from government-compelled disclosure fosters voluntary compliance with the law, and that benefits everyone.  Government tactics that coerce disclosure, on the other hand, undermine these benefits and our adversarial system of justice, and can unfairly threaten the very survival of organizations, including even the largest, most robust corporations.  In addition, government policies that pressure companies to refuse to provide employees with legal assistance while investigations are pending, or to fire them for asserting their Fifth Amendment rights, weaken the constitutional presumption of innocence and undermine principles of sound corporate governance.  The ripple effect harms employees, investors and all of society.

While the ABA supports the revised corporate charging guidelines issued by the Justice Department in August 2008 that expressly bar prosecutors from forcing organizations and their employees to waive fundamental protections during investigations, those guidelines do not have the assurance of permanence and do nothing to change the similar policies still in effect at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and other agencies.  Such policies, like the Justice Department’s previous policy, pressure organizations to waive their privileges and violate their employees’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel and Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to receive cooperation credit during investigations.

H.R. 4326 — like the similar Senate bill, S. 445, introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter in February — would make the Justice Department’s reforms permanent, give them the full force of law and apply them to all federal agencies.  The legislation would create a sensible, uniform standard of conduct for all federal agencies and strike the proper balance between the legitimate needs of prosecutors and regulators, and the constitutional and fundamental legal rights of individuals and organizations.

The American Bar Association strongly urges Congress to approve this critical legislation as soon as possible.

Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West (Photo by Lonnie Tague/DOJ)

In the third False Claims Act settlement announced this week, three New York home health care companies have agreed to pay $24 million to resolve allegations they billed the government for unqualified aides and services that were never performed, the Justice Department said Thursday.

The government alleged that one of the companies, Nursing Personnel Home Care, provided two other companies with caregivers who had phony training certificates.

The companies, Extended Home Care and Excellent Home Care, knew the certificates were fake but billed the New York Medicaid program for their services, according to the Justice Department. Extended and Excellent were also accused of billing Medicare for services that the caregivers never rendered.

“Our nation’s Medicare and Medicaid patients deserve nothing less than quality health care they can depend on,� Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, said in a statement. “When home health agencies cut corners to avoid compliance with legal training standards, they seriously undermine the integrity of the care they provide.�

The federal government will receive about $9.7 million and about $14.3 million will go to the state of New York. The settlements stemmed from whistleblower suits filed by Maurice Keshner, who will receive $251,107 from the government’s recovery from Nursing Personnel, and Deborah Yannicelli, who will receive  about $1.7 million from the government’s recovery from Extended and Excellent.

The settlement comes two days after the department announced that the University of Phoenix would pay $67.5 million to settle a whistleblower suit brought by two former employees who accused the school of failing to abide by certain recruitment provisions.

Whistleblowers Mary Hendow and Julie Behn filed suit in the Eastern District of California accusing the school of accepting federal student financial aid while violating regulations and laws that prohibit colleges from paying admissions counselors some forms of incentive pay based on the number of students they recruit.

The federal government did not intervene in the case but provided support to the two whistleblowers, who will receive $19 million in the settlement. The U.S. Department of Education assisted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California with the case. The case marks the second-largest settlement for a FCA suit in which the government did not intervene, the Arizona Republic reported.

Also on Tuesday, the department announced that Our Lady of Lourdes Health Care Services Inc., the parent company of two New Jersey hospitals, agreed to pay about $8 million to resolve allegations that the hospitals defrauded Medicare.

In cases in which health care costs are unusually high, Medicare offers additional reimbursements, called “outlier payments.” The lawsuit, initiated by whistleblower Tony Kite, alleged that the hospital inflated its charges to obtain “outlier payments” for cases that didn’t warrant them.

Kite will receive $356,000, plus interest.

In total, the federal government recovered about $85 million through FCA settlements announced this week, but we’re including the $14.3 million recovered by New York state because it was the product of a joint investigation. The Justice Department recovered $2.4 billion in settlements and judgments from False Claims Act cases in fiscal 2009, the second largest haul since the statute was reformed more than 20 years ago to make it easier for private citizens to sue on the government’s behalf.

Data released by Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez Thursday showed a dramatic drop-off in federal hate crimes prosecutions during the George W. Bush administration.

Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, highlighted the Obama administration’s stepped-up prosecutions of hate crimes in a briefing with reporters Thursday.

Perez said the number of hate crimes have been on the rise and that his division will aggressively investigate such cases.

He cited data from the Hate Crimes Statistics Act and the Southern Poverty Law Center, and also said the division’s own experience showed “dramatic up-ticks” in hate crimes.

Yet during the last eight years, hate crimes convictions were down by nearly 60 percent. An average of 25 people per year were convicted of federal hate crimes each year during the Bush administration, less than half of the average of 62 people convicted per year during the Clinton administration (comparison between fiscal years 1994-2000 and 2002-2008).

“Frankly, I expected to see down-ticks in the employment area, in the voting area, in the lending area, over the course of the last eight years. I was at a shock to see the down-tick in the prosecution of hate crimes, because the data has clearly shown that hate crimes went up but prosecutions went down,” said Perez. “The numbers speak for themselves.”

Earlier this week, the Justice Department unsealed multiple grand jury indictments related to an alleged cover-up by law enforcement officers of a allegedly racially motivated murder.

In July 2008, a Latino male was fatally beaten on a street in Shenondoah, Pa., by multiple defendants who allegedly yelled racial slurs. Two defendants have been charged in his death. Three officers in the Shenondoah Police Department, including the chief of the department, are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice during an FBI investigation into the man’s death.

“I really believe that hate crimes should be in our history books and not on the front pages of newspapers,” said Perez. “We have many what I often call equal-opportunity bigots who will target a mosque, target a synagogue, target a person who is African-American, target a person who is Jewish, target a person who is Latino, target a person who is gay, target a person who is lesbian, they will go after anyone who is different.”

John Walsh (Hill & Robbins, P.C.)

The Republican former U.S. Attorney in Colorado is pushing Denver lawyer John Walsh for the state’s top federal prosecuting job, The Denver Post reports.

Troy Eid, who served as U.S. Attorney during the Bush administration, wrote Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) that Walsh is “ethical and a person of unimpeachable character and integrity.”

Walsh, a white-collar criminal and civil attorney with the Hill & Robbins law firm, has re-emerged as a candidate for U.S. Attorney after President Barack Obama’s original nominee, Stephanie Villafuerte, withdrew on Monday, citing “political attacks” by Republicans.

Walsh and Villafuerte were recommended to the White House earlier this year by Udall and then-Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who is now Interior secretary. Their other recommendation was Bill Thiebaut, a district attorney for Pueblo, Colo.

Stephanie Villafuerte (handout via Denver Post)

In his letter to the senator, Eid said: “I know from my own experience that United States Attorneys are entrusted with tremendous power over life and property,” adding, “Colorado’s chief law enforcement leader must act in an ethical and nonpartisan way that’s beyond reproach. Our civil rights and community safety are at stake.”

Walsh also had worked previously for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Former state Sen. Norma Anderson (R) also reached out to Udall on Walsh’s behalf. Anderson told The Post she has known Walsh for a number of years and believes he is “unbiased (and) open- minded and works well with both parties.” She added, “We’re not going to get a Republican appointed, so why not take the best of the Democrats?”

In a Wednesday email to The Post, Walsh wrote, “I was deeply honored to be on the list sent by Sen. Udall and then-Sen. Salazar to the President in January to be considered for nomination as U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado,” adding,  “I am deeply honored to be considered now.”

Bill Thiebaut (gov)

Thiebaut, also in a Wednesday email to The Post, wrote that “everyone has a reason to support or to not support their favorite candidate.” He added, “I am sure that the President will make the right decision in selecting a new nominee after vetting potential candidates.”

Udall spokeswoman Tara Trujillo told The Post she does not expect that anyone other than Walsh and Thiebaut will be recommended to Obama.

Villafuerte, a longtime aide to Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D), was nominated Sept. 30. She withdrew from consideration following a controversy about whether she accessed a law enforcement database in connection with Ritter’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Villafuerte has denied the allegations.