Attorney General Eric Holder receives an award from former Solicitor General Paul Clement (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
Attorney General Eric Holder received the Chesterfield Smith Award at the Street Law Awards Dinner on Wednesday night.
The award, named for Chesterfield Smith, the founding partner of Holland & Knight LLP, is presented to a recipient each year for his or her contributions to the law and public service.
The 2009 recipient Paul Clement, a former Solicitor General from June 2005 through June 2008 and now a partner at King & Spalding, presented Holder with the award. Past recipients include former Attorney General Janet Reno and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Eric Holder speaks at the Street Law Awards Dinner on Wednesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
Clement said Holder had one of the most important and most difficult jobs in Washington, particularly on national security issues. Clement pointed to the recently announced Access to Justice program, which seeks to provide legal representation to the poor, as one of the noteworthy initiatives of the Justice Department since Holder took over.
Holder’s commitment to the D.C. area, especially during his time at U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia was also an important factor in his selection for the award, said Clement.
“General Holder’s dedication to the District of Columbia is so extreme that at one point he even tried to buy the Nationals,” joked Clement, referring to Holder’s membership in an investment group that placed an unsuccessful bid for the Washington, D.C. baseball team.
“I’ve never heard an introduction that included my ill-fated attempt to buy the Nationals,” Holder responded. “This is why this man was Solicitor General of the United States, that’s impressive research.”
In his speech, Holder touted the Access to Justice program, which the department recruited Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe to run.
“Just as many of you have pro bono programs at your firms and corporations, I wanted to be sure that in our house, too, there was a permanent effort to provide access to justice and to work to continuously enhance the fairness and integrity of our legal system,” said Holder.
Street Law is a nonprofit that supports education about law, democracy and human rights. It is the recipient of a Justice Department grant for educating students about intellectual property.
Holder’s remarks are available on the Justice Department website.
President Barack Obama nominated three former federal prosecutors Wednesday for positions on the U.S. district courts.
Denise Casper (Boston Bar Association)
Denise Jefferson Casper is the nominee for U.S. district judge for the District of Massachusetts. A deputy district attorney in Cambridge, Mass., Casper served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston from 1999 to 2005. In 2004, she became Deputy Chief of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, she worked as a civil litigator for Bingham McCutchen LLP and clerked for two state judges on the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
Paul K. Holmes III (Warner Smith)
Obama nominated Paul K. Holmes III to be a U.S. district judge for the Western District of Arkansas. Holmes is of counsel at Warner, Smith & Harris PLC in Fort Smith, Ark. From 1993 to 2001, he was the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Arkansas and served for two years on the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee. Before joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, Holmes also worked at Warner, Smith & Harris.
Carlton W. Reeves (Pigott Reeves Johnston)
Obama also nominated Carlton W. Reeves to be a U.S. district judge for the Southern District of Mississippi. Reeves, a partner at Pigott Reeves Johnson PA, in Jackson, Miss., previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the district 1995 to 2001, rising to the position of Chief of the Civil Division. Prior to joining the U.S. Attorney’s office, Reeves clerked for the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Patti B. Saris (Harvard)
Dabney Friedrich (White House)
Also on Thursday, the White House announced nominations for the U.S. Sentencing Commission: Patti B. Saris and Dabney Langhorne Friedrich. Saris, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts since 1994, previously served as an associate justice on the Massachusetts Superior Court and as an attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Division from 1982 to 1986. Friedrich is currently a commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Prior to her appointment in 2006, she was an associate counsel at the White House and served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of California and in the Eastern District of Virginia from 1995 to 2002.
Barry R. Grissom (Law Office of Barry R. Grissom)
President Barack Obama tapped a sole practitioner to be the U.S. Attorney for Kansas, the White House announced Wednesday.
Barry R. Grissom, who has been in private practice since 1983, handles civil litigation, focusing on employment discrimination. He was a legal adviser to Rep. Dennis Moore (D-Kan.) during his first two congressional races. Moore recommended Grissom to Obama for the nomination. Read more about Grissom here.
He would succeed Eric Melgren, who stepped down as U.S. Attorney in 2008.
Obama has now made 68 U.S. Attorney nominations, 41 of whom have won Senate confirmation.
Dwight Holton (DOJ)
Dwight C. Holton is putting a new spin on a law intended to eliminate crack houses.
Holton, the interim U.S. Attorney for Oregon, last week summoned the president of Reed College to the federal courthouse and told him to rein in drug use on campus or face potential charges under a federal intended to close crack houses, the New York Times reported. The meeting came one month after a Reed College student died of a heroin overdose, the second student drug-related death in two years.
Under federal law, anyone who knowingly operates premises where drugs are used can be subjected to criminal and civil penalties. According to Inside Higher Ed, the college also could lose its federal funding, including student loans if prosecutors determine the school has not taken adequate steps to combat illegal drug activity on campus. (The president of Reed later clarified that the U.S. Attorney never specifically mentioned the loss of student loans.)
Holton along with the the county district attorney and the county’s deputy D.A. told Reed College president Colin Diver that undercover agents will attend the college spring festival this weekend that is known for the availability of illegal drugs.
“It’s a complicated issue, but two drug deaths in two years on a campus of 1,300 students, something has to change,” Holton told the New York Times.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) speaks at a press conference outside the Justice Department on Wednesday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) delivered a petition to the Justice Department building on Wednesday afternoon calling for a criminal investigation into investment firm Goldman Sachs.
Rep. Marcy Kaptur delivers the petition to public affairs specialist Alisa Finelli (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
The petition from the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, signed by 140,000 people, urges the DOJ to investigate the firm’s actions leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Kaptur also wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, asking him to open a probe.
“While the SEC lacks the authority to act beyond civil actions, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has the power to file criminal actions against those who commit financial fraud,” Kaptur wrote. “We ask assurance from you that the U.S. Department of Justice is closely looking at this case and similar cases to further investigate and prosecute the criminals involved in this, and other financially fraudulent acts.”
Alisa Finelli from the Office of Public Affairs accepted the petition on behalf of DOJ after Kaptur held a news conference outside the department’s headquarters.
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Merrick Garland (Smithsonian Institution)
Judge Merrick Garland’s career has largly been shaped by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, friends and colleagues told the New York Times in a profile of the judge published Tuesday.
Garland is a U.S. Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit who has served in a number of DOJ roles and is reportedly one of the possible names the White House is considering to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. At the time of the bombing, he was the highest-ranking Justice Department official dispatched to Oklahoma City and spent weeks helping prosecutors prepare their case.
In 1995, Garland was the Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General, the highest position he attained at DOJ before he was nominated to the bench in 1997. He first joined DOJ in the late 1970s and served as a special assistant to the Attorney General from1979 to 1981. After a stint at Arnold & Porter LLP, Garland returned to DOJ as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia from 1989 to 1992 and then moved to Main Justice as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division from 1993 to 1994.
According to the Times, Garland’s experiences involving Oklahoma City helped shape his centrist, moderate approach to the law, though he is considered “center-right” on criminal law issues.
Read the full Times story here.
The Justice Department has received a record number of clemency petitions since President Barack Obama took office, USA Today reported Wednesday.
According to DOJ, the administration has received 2,361 clemency petitions and another 2,173 old requests have yet to be considered. Obama has not yet approved any clemency petitions. By comparison, President Gerald Ford approved 150 petitions in his first year, the newspaper said, though most presidents since then have approved fewer than 10 in their first year.
As Main Justice reported last week, Justice Department and White House officials have been considering changes to the pardon system since the start of the Obama administration, though the White House appears to have scaled back its ambitions since the departures of Former White House Counsel Greg Craig and Deputy Attorney General David Ogden.
Read the full USA Today story here and the Main Justice piece here.
Ignacia Moreno in the courtyard of the Robert F. Kennedy Building (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
When she sat down to her first staff meeting with the Environment and Natural Resources Division, Assistant Attorney General Ignacia Moreo says she knew every face in the room from her seven-year stint at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration.
Moreno was sworn in before the ENRD’s 100th anniversary celebration in November and had her formal installation ceremony in March. She has oversight over ENRD’s work, which covers a variety of environmental issues from the impact of the border fence to the effect of sonar on whales to prosecuting violations of environmental regulations. ENRD was also named the most popular place to work in the federal government.
In an interview with Main Justice Moreno spoke about ENRD’s work with the EPA, the division’s 2010 budget, building relationships with environmental groups, and the “cracker jack” team which helps her manage the division’s case load. Below is an edited transcript of the interview.
Main Justice: Just to start out, could you talk a little bit about what your average day is like? How do you manage such a large portfolio of issues?
Ignacia Moreno: First of all my days could not be more interesting. I really have had the opportunity to work on issues that cut across all of the federal agencies and a lot of U.S. government interests that affect people’s lives. I can tell you that I never ever have a boring day. The way to manage such a broad scope is of course with a great team, and I have the good fortune to have both an amazing career team with a very deep bench, and I’ve also been able to bring in a cracker-jack political team to compliment the career team.
I have one career deputy who has been here for a long time, John Cruden I call him ‘Mr. Enforcement,’ Patrice Simms, Bob Dreher and Ethan Shenkman and together they really bring a broad scope of government experience, academia, public interest group [experience]. Ethan Shenkman was here before, Bob Dreher was at EPA, Patrice Simms was at EPA. All of these folks have been in really all of the different places where you’d want to look to for a political team. So it’s a great team, of course my chief of staff [Natalia Sorgente] who was an environmental defense lawyer with the division, and we’ve really been able to hit the ground running.
The first day I sat in this conference room at the head of the table and looked around and I knew everybody, and worked with the section chiefs for seven years when I was here during the Clinton administration, so it was really a wonderful moment to see that I was back home.
MJ: You had been here for seven years during the Clinton administration. What has changed between the year you left and when you came back?
IM: We do have a new and growing set of issues that really weren’t a focal point when I was here before, and one of those areas is we’re doing a lot more work on behalf of our client agencies in the area of military preparedness. We’re working with the Department of Homeland Security to defend some strategic border initiatives. There are lots of issues regarding the same disposal of obsolete chemical weapons. We’re very, very much focused on national security issues, homeland, defense, and I expect that we’re going to be doing an increasing amount of that work.
Another area that we had started doing work when I was here [before] is international issues. As you know, pollution doesn’t respect borders. There are a number of global issues — global pollution issues — that do have impact back here in the U.S. So we are partnering a lot more with our neighbors and our partners abroad. We are also focusing on new Lacey Act criminal enforcement actions to stop the illegal trafficking in protected species and in timber that comes to the United States in products. Increasingly, we’re going to be working with the government in China, our counterparts there, and in Brazil. The Attorney General recently visited Brazil and I’m going to be going later this summer to follow up on some cooperative enforcement initiatives.
The other area were we would like to meet is just a really large number of tribal trust cases. We have about 98 lawsuits which involve about 114 tribes, and the tribes allege mismanagement of trust funds and resources by the Department of the Interior. It is a priority of mine, and of Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli and [Interior Department] Solicitor General Hilary Tomkins, for us to work with tribal leaders to come up with a fair and expeditious solution in these cases. Those are three new areas that are different from when I was here. And then there’s a lot that is the same, we still have some of the cases from when I was last here.
Moreno, Attorney General Eric Holder and Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli at Moreno's installation ceremony (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
MJ: You mentioned there’s more of a national security aspect to your job than there was during the Clinton administration. How do those issues effect environmental law?
IM: It comes up in a number of ways, for example, some strategic border initiatives such as the construction of the border fence. Our division would be involved in the element of the land acquisition and in the defense of takings cases. In fact, this year we have several trials. We are the component — we used to be called the Public Lands Division — that is involved in the acquisition of the land for the construction of the border fence. Our defense of challenges under the National Environmental Policy Act — NEPA — for example the Navy is doing exercises. …They have to prepare for conditions in the oceans, and to the extent that their exercises impact protected species such as whales. We have a case in the Supreme Court in which we defended the Navy’s use of mid-range, mid-frequency SONAR in its military preparedness exercises. There was a claim that we shouldn’t do that because of the impact on whales that had not been litigated. So it comes up, and NEPA is a statute that is 40-years-old this year that I do a lot of work under.
MJ: Your office defends the work of the government and also prosecutes and litigates environmental crimes. Is there a way to work proactively to make sure that the government is complying with environmental standards?
IM: I hope that one of the hallmarks of my tenure here is going to be that I am very proactive in having early consultations and often consulting with our client agencies to make sure that as they are taking significant federal actions that they are complying, for example, with NEPA. NEPA requires the agencies to take a hard look to make sure there are not going to be significant environmental effects and that the agency work to mitigate those effects. We could sit and wait for those complaints to come. But we really are engaged in working with our agencies, especially in this time of great growth and innovation so that they are complying with the law, complying with procedures [so] that [if] the agency decisions get challenged, the agencies will be in a more defensible position. We [can] say, ‘Yes, they took all the steps that were necessary.’
We also have agencies like the Defense Department or the Department of Energy which have historic or legacy pollution problems, they are a member of Superfund sites. So we work with them and we work with the EPA to make sure that to the extent that they must address their pollution issues, that they do so. We have a very vigorous Superfund enforcement program, and we will make sure that the polluter will pay, and when it’s the government, we work with our agencies to make sure that they meet their obligations as well.
But you bring up an important point – we have a whole side of our work that is defense, both on the pollution and natural resource side, and then we have a whole side of our work that’s the affirmative agenda, where I feel like we wear the white hat, and we do prosecute criminal cases and civil cases under a multiple number of statutes.
Moreno at her installation ceremony (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
MJ: Do you think it is possible for there to be a shift in the balance — obviously it’s tough to anticipate how many cases you’ll have to defend — but will there be a more aggressive prosecutions that will shift the weight of what that division does?
IM: The way it works is that the defense cases come to us. We have an administration that is engaged in a lot of important issues, and EPA has any number of rules that are going to be coming out and we are already preparing to defend — because somebody will challenge some of these rules. So the cases come to us. We have about 7,500 cases on our docket right now, and it is almost an equal mix of defense and enforcement cases. We have plans to have vigorous and renewed enforcement. …Our folks are going to be working even harder than they work, because we’re not going to minimize our enforcement agenda given the defense challenges. We just balance it.
MJ: You had mentioned at your installation ceremony that you had met with some environmental groups who hadn’t been here [the Justice Department Building] in a number of years. Could you talk a bit about building relationships with these groups?
IM: Sure, my specific reference was to environmental justice leaders, and I was struck by what they said, that they hadn’t been in this building in nine years. It is important to me that I hear not only from the environmental justice community, but the environmental groups, I’ve had them here as well. In fact, it was one of the first things I did hear, reach out to environmental groups, environmentalists and the environmental justice community. I’ve had multiple meetings with my counterparts at client agencies to hear what it is they’re doing, what it is we can do to help.
And I will be meeting with some industry groups as well, as well as counterparts abroad. I’ve done this so that I can hear from these different interests ideas that they have for how we might focus our priorities, to hear what’s worked, and what hasn’t worked. I think we do our best in service of the American people when we hear from the American people and all of these different interests.
The pollution burdens that effect certain communities are very important to me. A lot of people call it environmental justice, that’s what I call it too, and the president and the Attorney General have also spoken about this. I am very focused with the team here, both the career team and the political team, to see how we can make environmental justice a reality in this country. I personally worked on environmental justice guidelines the last time that I was here and I came back thinking I really want to work on cases. So with EPA, we’ve been engaged in a dialogue to see how we focus the resources, what cases we bring, to match up with the priorities that EPA has articulated.
Ignacia Moreno (file photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
MJ: One of the early criticisms that environmental groups brought up during the nomination process was your work with GE [General Electric], but there hasn’t been much criticism since. Do you think your time at GE brought you experience that helps in your role here?
IM: I will say that all of my experience has helped me. It’s really amazing how at some point in the day I’ll think ‘I’m glad I did that.’ There’s no question the seven years I spent here were invaluable to me, and the time that I spent at GE as well as in the private sector, again, I consider those assets. I really do have a 360-degree view that is very helpful in my thinking about how things will play out and how best to meet some of the challenges. I couldn’t be more committed, and I intend to have a very strong enforcement program.
MJ: Under the budget request for next year, the division requests money for tribal trust litigation and criminal and civil enforcement. What are some of the things you hope to do in those areas?
IM: Well in the tribal trust cases, we do have as I mentioned earlier a very large docket of cases and it’s not just the number, the cases are highly, highly complex. We do have a need for resources to meet the litigation demands that are brought by those cases. I’m hoping that we will be able to, in parallel, engage in a settlement process with tribal leaders. We have already done some outreach to begin that process. These cases will take some time, even in an expedited process to resolve, so the additional resources are going to help us be on both of those tracks.
On the other side of the house, we are looking at opportunities to bring affirmative cases. We also litigate to protect tribal sovereignty and tribal resources and to resolve some of the cases through settlement or litigation if we can’t settle, than we can rededicate some of those resources. But right now, we are thinking that we are going to need to just engage at that additional level on those cases.
On the criminal level and on the civil enforcement side, we have very large cases under the new source of review provisions of the Clean Air Act. Again, very complex cases, but if you’ve seen some of our more recent press, we are achieving some settlements, and those settlements come from vigorous enforcement efforts, they’re born from those activities. EPA is looking to expand into new sectors, from the coal fire power plant sector where a lot of the litigation has been to the cement industry and glass manufacturing…. There are going to be any number of — already ongoing but more — Clean Water Act enforcement, including to address treasured waters like the Chesapeake Bay right in our backyard.
On the criminal side, I mentioned earlier the Lacey Act, illegal trafficking in wildlife, flora and fauna, we are doing a lot more work in that regard. I’ve started meeting with U.S. Attorneys across the country, and I’m smiling because I’ve been doing a lot of traveling and will be doing a lot more to partner with them and help establish some important task forces. These are local, federal, state law enforcement officers investigators and some of the lawyers. We launched the task force, and I learned that we got five referrals coming out of that meeting. Important referrals, they’ll address really egregious problems in those communities that we need to protect. So I’m excited about those efforts. We get the cases from EPA and EPA is raring to go.
MJ: Any cases that you are especially proud of or any trends you see emerging?
IM: I’m very excited about what we’re going to do in environmental justice and in the international program and the tribal issues. These are things that are already in the works, you’ve already been seeing some of them. Our criminal program as well, I think you’re going to be seeing more of that. I guess the thing that I see as most exciting every day is that I have this opportunity to come here and do this work.
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Ted Olson
Theodore Olson, former Solicitor General under President George W. Bush, has signed onto Mississippi lawyer Paul Minor’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
On Tuesday, Olson, of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, filed a motion for a 60-day extension to file a petition for certiorari. He said more time was necessary because that the “honest services” law, to which Minor’s convictions are tied, is under review by the Supreme Court in three cases this term.
Minor’s convictions on honest-services-based mail and wire fraud charges stem from a major judicial bribery investigation. A well-known plaintiffs lawyer, Minor was accused of making campaign loans to two state judges in return for favorable treatment in his cases before their courts.
The court’s decisions in the three honest services cases under review, Olson wrote, will affect the validity of the Minor’s convictions and his request for relief.
Olson said a Supreme Court review was necessary to answer whether federal prosecutors were required to prove a quid pro quo in Minor’s case because the alleged bribes were in the form of “constitutionally protected campaign contributions.” A federal district court, as well as the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, found that government need only prove the existence of a “corrupt agreement” under the honest-services statute.
The motion noted that Olson was “retained recently” to prepare the petition. If the court grants the extension, the cert petition would have to be filed by July 26.
The motion is embedded below.
Two of the world’s leading drug makers have this in common: They both made the mistake of hiring James Wetta as a sales representative.
Their misfortune has been taxpayers’ gain. A two-time whistleblower, Wetta, 46, played a key role in the Justice Department’s eye-popping settlement agreements with Eli Lilly & Co in January 2009 and AstraZeneca PLC on Tuesday.
Combined, the companies agreed to pay a total of $1.9 billion after investigations into their promotion of drugs for off-label uses, or uses not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Wetta, 46, left both companies under a cloud, after complaining of shady sales tactics. He filed a complaint against Eli Lily after resigning in 2002 and was hired by AstraZeneca in a matter of months. He later filed a complaint against the U.K.-based drug maker in 2004, while the investigation of Eli Lilly unfolded behind the scenes.
One of his lawyers, Stephen Sheller, remembers getting a call from Wetta after he had moved to AstraZeneca. “He said, ‘Steve, I can’t believe it. It’s going on here, too.’”
Sheller admitted he was dubious. “We went round and round, and I finally said, ‘Let me get more information.’ It turned out he was right.”
For a time after Wetta was fired from AstraZeneca in 2005, he and his family lived hand-to-mouth as he tried to find work. Now he’s a millionaire, living in Reno, Nev.
Eli Lilly pleaded guilty to criminal charge of misbranding its antipsychotic Zyprexa and paid a criminal fine of $515 million, the largest ever imposed. The company paid an additional $800 million as part of a civil settlement with states and the federal government.
Under the False Claims Act’s quit tam provision, Wetta shared a $100 million cut with five other whistleblowers. (His lawyers declined to disclose his share.)
On Tuesday, the Justice Department announced that AstraZeneca PLC would pay $520 million to resolve allegations it improperly marketed the antipsychotic Seroquel. (The company denies the allegations.) Wetta stands to earn $45 million, though an undisclosed amount will go to the another whistleblower.
His lawyers at Duane Morris LLP and Sheller, Ludwig & Badey PC in Philadelphia, where the qui tam actions were filed, declined requests to interview Wetta.
Dow Jones has more on Wetta here.
