Solicitor General Elena Kagan on the third day of her confirmation hearings. (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)
Senate Judiciary Committee members on Wednesday tried to get an in-depth look inside the Solicitor General’s office and a better understanding of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan during her third and final day before the panel. But Kagan’s remarks left some senators unsatisfied.
Senators pressed Kagan during a seven-hour back-and-forth to discuss matters connected to her office and disclose internal deliberations among her colleagues, including discussions about two cases that had political implications.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) asked the nominee to say whether her office spoke with the White House about the U.S. Chamber of Commerce v. Candelaria or Lopez-Rodriguez v. Holder cases. The Solicitor General’s office urged the Supreme Court to take up the U.S. Chamber of Commerce case, which questions the legality of an Arizona law that would penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. But her office advised the court not to consider the Lopez-Rodriguez case decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which ruled that information given to immigration officials without a warrant or invitation could not be used in a civil immigration hearing.
Kagan said her office made the “correct decision on the law” on the two cases. But she declined to say whether her office and the White House discussed the cases.
“The Solicitor General’s office does from time to time – and I think this is true in every administration – have some communications with members of the White House with respect to particular cases,” Kagan said. “That is not a surprising thing and I think is true in every administration. But I don’t think it would be right to talk about internal deliberations in any particular case.”
Kyl was unsatisfied with Kagan’s answer.
While Kyl said he wouldn’t be shocked if the White House had a political interest in the cases, he said he would be surprised if the Solicitor General’s office made its decisions based on the “political advice or efforts” of the White House.
“I think that there wouldn’t be anything wrong with the committee understanding whether or not your decision was based on considerations other than purely legal especially if it came in the form of requests by the White House or people within the White House because of the rather political nature of these two cases,” Kyl said.
The nominee also declined to tell a testy Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) whether she would vote to hear several cases that may come before the court because she is still a party in the cases as Solicitor General. She added that she didn’t “want to count [her] chickens before” confirmation.
“You are counting your chickens right now,” Specter said. “I am one of your chickens. Potentially.”
But Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking panel Republican, tried to make the most of Kagan’s refusal to speak openly on issues that may involve her office by bringing up a Republican cause de célèbre.
The senator invoked Miguel Estrada, who befriended Kagan while they attended Harvard Law School and was President George W. Bush’s nominee for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Estrada’s nomination was filibustered by Democrats who wanted internal memos he authored during his time in the Solicitor General’s office under President George H.W. Bush.
Every living Solicitor General – including Kagan — supported the George W. Bush administration’s refusal to turn over the memos. Kagan, who said she supported Estrada’s nomination, said they understand “how important confidentiality within the office is to effective decision making.”
“I do think the Office of Solicitor General is a very special kind of office where candor and internal, really truly thorough deliberation is the norm and that it would very much inhibit that kind of appropriate deliberation about legal questions if internal documents had the potential to be made public generally in that way,” Kagan said.
The hearing on Kagan will continue tomorrow afternoon with testimony from witnesses chosen by the senators to speak about issues related to the nominee. Former Solicitor General Gregory Garre, now of Latham & Watkins LLP, is scheduled to testify as is former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, who Kagan hired as a professor at Harvard Law School during her tenure as dean. Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ed Whelan, a former OLC official in the George W. Bush administration, will also testify.
Attorney General Eric Holder wasn’t the only Justice Department employee in Afghanistan on Wednesday. Joining the Attorney General on his one-day trip were Kevin Ohlson, Holder’s chief of staff; Bruce Swartz, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division; and Brian Tomney, Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General for Afghanistan Rule of Law matters.
Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at a press conference at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Getty)
Holder’s trip was kept tightly under wraps, all the way up until a news release announcing his arrival in Afghanistan hit reporters’ e-mail inboxes just after midnight Wednesday morning — the standard practice when high-ranking U.S. officials visit Afghanistan. No officials from the Office for Public Affairs accompanied Holder on the trip.
Justice Department officials could not immediately provide details about when Holder’s trip was planned, but under normal circumstances a trip like Holder’s would be arranged ahead of time to allow for security precautions. Officials said he departed the country late Wednesday.
Holder arrived at Bagram Air Base on Wednesday and traveled by helicopter to Kabul, the country’s capital. There he met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Minister of Justice Habibullah Ghalib and Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko.
The Attorney General held a news conference in Afghanistan but did not take questions from reporters.
Holder’s trip came the same day as militants allegedly associated with the Taliban set off a suicide car bomb and shot rocket-propelled grenades at the gate of the NATO air base in eastern Afghanistan. The attack was not believed to be related to Holder’s trip.
As Holder said in a statement, those on the trip aren’t the only Justice Department employees in the country.
“We have sent some of our most experienced federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents – from our Criminal Division, the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI, the DEA and the U.S. Marshals Service – to work here with their Afghan law enforcement counterparts,” Holder said in a written statement.
DOJ employees typically serve on one-year deployments to the region, which are funded by the State Department, according to a recent presentation by Tomney, one of the top Justice Department officials focused of DOJ activities in Afghanistan.
Some Justice Department lawyers work in the International Criminal Investigative Training and Assistance Program to provide training to Afghan prosecutors and police investigators. DOJ attorneys also advise the Afghan Attorney General’s Anti-Corruption Unit and Major Crimes Task Force, according to a Justice Department news release.
Drug Enforcement Administration agents are helping establish drug enforcement institutions in the country and combating drug trafficking organization that work for the insurgency, the news release said. A DEA spokesman said the agency does not typically reveal how many of its employees are stationed in a particular country.
FBI agents in the country do counterterrorism work and support investigations by Afghanistan’s Major Crimes Task Force, while the U.S. Marshals Service has boots on the ground advising and training Afghanistan’s Judicial Security Unit on witness and judicial security.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also trains canine teams that deploy to Afghanistan with U.S. military forces.
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Like an unwanted house guest, the Cobell settlement may require another deadline extension after being taken out of the Senate’s pending jobs bill.
The settlement between American Indians and the federal government — already on its fifth deadline extension set for July 9 — was recently attached to an unrelated jobs and tax package, which the House passed just before Memorial Day recess.
However, Republican senators have blocked the bill and Democrats were unable to win a procedural vote last Thursday, falling just three votes short of the 60 required.
Senate staffers subsequently removed the settlement from their version of the bill because they viewed it as an obstacle to passage, Indian Country Today reported Wednesday.
“It is Congress’ responsibility, not the Justice Department’s,” Dennis Gingold, lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in an interview last week. “They could put us on any legislation, but they put us on this bill for obvious reasons — because everybody thought it was going to pass.”
Now lawmakers have removed the Cobell settlement from the jobs bill, Gingold told Indian Country Today. He will continue to look for other must-pass bills and may seek another extension from the courts, he said.
There’s no reason to think there couldn’t be an extension, Gingold said in the interview, especially “knowing how difficult it was to get to the settlement agreement, and there were times when both sides I’m sure wanted to walk away.
“Those problems seemed to get mitigated when you come back to the table,” he added. “It’s still early in the year.”
The settlement, named for Elouise Cobell, the lead plaintiff in the suit, was filed in 1996 on behalf of more than 300,000 American Indians.
Last December, the government and plaintiffs reached a $1.4 billion deal to settle the case, Cobell v. Salazar. However, the settlement requires congressional approval, and the original deadline, set for Dec. 31, 2009, has already been extended nearly seven months.
Jim Manley, a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), said in an e-mail on Friday that there was “no path forward right now” on the jobs bill to which the Cobell settlement had been attached. “We have done everything we could and Republicans objected every time,” Manley said.
As of Friday, he said there were no plans to attach the settlement to any other piece of legislation.
The Justice Department may need to rethink its plan to expedite approval through including the statement’s language in an unrelated tax bill if a new host bill cannot be found.
“We are committed to passing this legislation and will continue to work with congressional leadership to pass it,” said Melissa Schwartz, a Justice Department spokeswoman.
A recent Government Accountability Office report found that 32 politically appointed Justice Department employees had transitioned to career DOJ positions during the last years of the Bush administration, a process known as “burrowing in.” In two instances involving DOJ appointees, proper protocol was not followed in the transition process, the GAO found.
The GAO report, released Tuesday, looked at cases across the federal government from May 1, 2005 through May 30, 2009. The report found that 139 political appointees transitioned to career jobs during that time period, with the largest number of cases occurring at the DOJ.
(iStock)
Burrowing in, sometimes also called “digging in,” is not unique to the George W. Bush administration. The practice has gone on for years and is tolerated by both political parties. It can represent an effort by political appointees to move to a safer career track in order to keep a government job leading up to or after a new president is elected.
In a 2000 report on the same topic, the GAO found that 57 political appointees in the Clinton administration converted to career positions from October 1998 to June 2000, with 13 — the most of any agency — transitioning at the Justice Department.
Tuesday’s report did not condemn the practice, noting that political appointees “can bring valuable skills and experience to the federal workforce, and the merit-based conversion of political appointees to career positions can be a useful means to achieving a highly qualified workforce.”
Most of the DOJ cases examined in the report occurred while Bush was in office, including some just a few days before President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Some of the employees may have switched at the beginning of Obama’s term and may have been approved by Obama’s Justice Department appointees.
According to the report, in January 2007 an unnamed special assistant to the Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division was allegedly improperly converted into an Assistant U.S. Attorney position in the Southern District of Florida.
The GAO report said that most of the officials conducting interviews for the position recommended against the hire, and one official noted that they had interviewed at least two superior candidates. The officials “noted the eventual selectee’s lack of experience, that he did not appear to stay in any job for an extended period of time, and observed that his writing sample did not contain much original writing, but was boilerplate,” according to the report.
Even though the former special assistant was viewed as a weak candidate, he was hired as a career Assistant U.S. Attorney position after serving on a six-month detail. “This action appears to violate the prohibition against granting unauthorized advantages to individuals in the hiring process,” the report concluded.
In another instance, the U.S. Marshal for the Middle District of Georgia authorized a vacancy announcement for a career position for which she later applied and was selected to fill. “Although there is no evidence to suggest that the eventual selectee was involved in the actual selection process, this appearance of a violation of ethical standards calls this conversion action into question,” the report said, adding that it was a potential violation of ethical standards.
The Justice Department told the GAO that the agency’s ethics officer “is gathering information on this conversion and, based on the information she receives, her office will take the appropriate next steps.”
While the individual is not named in the report, the GAO noted that the individual was appointed U.S. Marshal in August 2002 — a description that fits Theresa Rodgers who was appointed U.S. Marshal for the Middle District of Georgia at that time.
U.S. Marshals spokesman Jeff Carter confirmed that Rodgers is still with the U.S. Marshals service but declined to comment on the report.
“It would be inappropriate for the U.S. Marshals Service to comment on the GAO report since, as is indicated in the report, the agency is conducting an ethical standards inquiry for potential departmental review,” Carter said in a statement.
In the majority of cases examined, DOJ used proper protocol, according to the report. Some of those cases include:
- The Director of the Justice Department’s Community Relations Service became the Director of the Office of Self-Governance in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs in January 2007.
- In another instance, the Director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics became the Deputy Director for Planning in the Planning Office of the Director’s office of the Bureau of Justice Assistance in 2006 and received a $10,000 boost in salary.
- A Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of the Assistant Attorney General became the Deputy Associate Solicitor for Mineral Resources in the Office of the Solicitor in July 2007 and received a $9,000 salary boost.
- The U.S. Marshall for the District of Nebraska took the position of Criminal Investigator in the Judicial Security Division of the Office of Protective Operations of the United States Marshals Service, along with a $10,000 cut in salary in July 2008.
- The Supervisory Criminal Investigator in Superior Court for the United States Marshals Service became a Criminal Investigator in the Human Resources Division of the Training Academy of the United States Marshals Service in 2008.
- The U.S. Attorney at Charlotte Headquarters of the Department of Justice became an Attorney Adviser in Western Charlotte Headquarters in March 2009, keeping the same salary.
- The Chief Of Staff in the Office of the General Counsel, became an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the United States Attorney’s Office in Cheyenne, Wyo., just before the end of the Bush administration.
- A Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Chief of Staff in the Office of Legal Policy became an Attorney Adviser in the Office of Legal Policy in December 2007.
- A Deputy Administrator in the Office of Justice Programs became an Assistant U.S. Attorney for The District of Columbia in the Executive Office for United States Attorneys in November 2006.
- An Attorney Adviser in the Drug Enforcement Task Force became an Attorney-Adviser in the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys General Counsel Office in March 2009, keeping the same salary.
Additional reporting by David Johnston.
The full report is embedded below.
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(House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science)
The Obama administration may have wanted to cut down on the number of earmarks in the Justice Department’s fiscal 2011 funding bill, but House appropriators don’t seem ready to play along and instead upped the funding levels for two DOJ sections that are a favorite for earmark requests.
In February, the Justice Department requested less funding for the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) — two divisions in the DOJ that administer grants to state and local law enforcement and are very popular among members of Congress — than those offices received in fiscal 2010. In its request for fiscal 2011, the DOJ asked for $160 million less for the two division, saying their funding in the fiscal 2010 appropriations bill passed by Congress was “heavily earmarked.”
But the bill that emerged from the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and science Tuesday would include $697.5 million more than requested for OJP and $39 million more than requested for the COPS office. That’s nearly $2.8 billion total for OJP and $729 million for COPS.
Those numbers come from a summary provided by the subcommittee; the panel has not yet publicly released the full text of the funding measure.
According to the summary, the subcommittee allocated less funding than requested for several other DOJ sections including for general administration — which includes the office of the Attorney General and senior DOJ policy officials — legal activities, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The DOJ also requested $279.4 million for Grant Office Salaries and Expenses, but the subcommittee included no money for it in the bill.
Other agencies would receive their requested funding under the bill including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; the U.S. Marshals Service; the U.S. Parole Commission; Interagency Law Enforcement, the Justice Department’s National Security Division, Office of the Inspector General and the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee .
According to the subcommittee, DOJ agencies would receive:
- General Administration — $526.6 million ($128.8 million less than requested)
- Administrative Review and Appeals — $315.4 million
- Detention Trustee — $1.5 billion
- Office of Inspector General — $88.8 million
- U.S. Parole Commission — $13.6 million
- Legal Activities — $3.4 billion ($7.9 million less than requested)
- U.S. Marshals Service — $1.2 billion
- National Security Division — $99.5 million
- Interagency Law Enforcement — $579.3 million
- Federal Bureau of Investigation — $8.2 billion (nearly $61.5 million less than requested)
- Drug Enforcement Administration — $2.12 billion ($5.8 million less than requested)
- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives — $1.16 billion
- Federal Prison System — $6.82 billion
- Office of Violence Against Women — $459.77 million
- Office of Justice Programs — $2.76 billion
- Office of Community Oriented Policing Services — $729 million
- Grant Offices Salaries and Expenses — $0
Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at a press conference at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. (Getty)
As allegations of high-level corruption in Afghanistan continued to kick up dusk, Attorney General Eric Holder made his first trip to the country on Wednesday for meetings with U.S. and Afghan officials.
During his day-long trip, Holder met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Minister of Justice Habibullah Ghalib and Attorney General Mohammad Ishaq Aloko, as well as U.S. Justice Department officials stationed there, to size up efforts to buttress the Afghan justice system.
Holder’s visit comes at a precarious time for both the U.S. and Afghanistan. A change in military leadership in Afghanistan — Gen. David Petraeus will take over for Gen. Stanley McChrystal who resigned under pressure – has underscored tensions within the Obama administration over the direction of the war, and patience in Congress is waning.
Meanwhile, U.S. appropriators have threatened to cut foreign aid to Afghanistan until Karzai’s government, with the help of the U.S. Justice and State departments, among others, show progress in battling widespread corruption.
It has been an uneasy partnership. In the latest spat, Alako, the Afghan attorney general, refuted an article that appeared Monday in The Washington Post that described corruption in Karzai’s government. The article quoted unidentified U.S. officials as saying Alako had bowed to pressure from senior Afghan officials to scuttle investigations of members of Karzai’s government and businessmen close to it.
“Investigating the cases of corruption is not an easy task,” Alako said, according to The New York Times. “We have to coordinate with many offices, here and in the provinces. The claim that we delay these cases intentionally is a baseless claim.”
After his meetings Wednesday, Holder offered reassurances that U.S. and Afghan law enforcement officials would continue to collaborate, even after the conclusion of military operations, and he praised efforts by Karzai’s government to enforce the rule of law.
“We are proud to be standing with Afghanistan in the fight against corruption, narcotics trafficking and terrorism,” Holder said. ”The law enforcement partnerships we have established will endure.”
The U.S. Justice Department has committed significant resources to propping up the criminal justice system in Afghanistan.
Department lawyers train Afghan prosecutors and police officers to investigate and prosecute major narcotics and narcotics-related corruption cases and to ferret out other corruption.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI are also working closely with their Afghan counterparts to dismantle drug trafficking groups and other organized criminal groups that operate with impunity in some parts of the country.
Holder’s full remarks are below.
I am pleased to be in Kabul today and to have had the opportunity to meet with President Karzai, Minister of Justice Ghalib, Attorney General Aloko and other distinguished Afghan officials.
The United States is committed to succeeding in Afghanistan and breaking the Taliban’s momentum. As we heard President Obama say on June 23, the United States will “persist and persevere” and “we will not tolerate a safe haven for terrorists who want to destroy Afghan security from within, and launch attacks against innocent men, women and children in our country and around the world.”
There is no clearer sign of our commitment to Afghanistan than President Obama’s appointment of General David Petraeus as Commander of the International Security Assistance Force. General Petraeus fully participated in the U.S. policy review last fall, and he both supported and helped design the strategy that we have in place today.
We have watched with interest from Washington the positive steps President Karzai and his Cabinet have taken to help improve governance and enforce the rule of law. We applaud President Karzai for his actions and encourage him to continue his efforts as much work remains to be done.
The long-term stability of Afghanistan lies in the hands of the Afghan people. A key pillar of achieving stability is adherence to the rule of law. The United States is committed to partnering with Afghanistan to ensure that all Afghan citizens have access to a fair, efficient and transparent justice system. Rule of law should be an important dimension of the long-term U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership.
The support and commitment of the United States to improving the lives of the Afghan people and establishing the rule of law will outlast any military presence in the country. The Strategic Partnership that will be signed by our two Presidents by the end of this year will codify this long-term commitment.
And I personally commit that we will continue the partnerships that the U.S. Department of Justice has developed here in Afghanistan. We have sent some of our most experienced federal prosecutors and law enforcement agents – from our Criminal Division, the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the FBI, the DEA and the U.S. Marshals Service – to work here with their Afghan law enforcement counterparts. I am glad to have had the opportunity to meet with them today and to thank them for their service to the United States and to Afghanistan. We are proud to be standing with Afghanistan in the fight against corruption, narcotics trafficking and terrorism. The law enforcement partnerships we have established will endure.
Remember: fireworks are explosives. (Main Justice)
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a message for Americans purchasing fireworks on the July 4th holiday: make sure to buy legal fireworks or you might just blow your head off.
“The message on illegal fireworks is crystal clear: don’t make them; don’t purchase them and don’t go near them,” said Chairwoman Inez Tenebaum of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission at a news conference Tuesday.
According to the ATF, illegal explosive devices — sometimes called M-80s, quarter sticks, or cherry bombs — are not tested for safety and quality and can lead to serious bodily harm when lit. So stick to reputable vendors, or you may end up like this watermelon.
(For the explosions, fast-forward to the 0:32 mark.)
Video by Ryan J. Reilly
News Conference on Fireworks Safety from Main Justice on Vimeo.
A House Appropriations panel approved an amendment to the Justice Department’s annual funding bill Tuesday that would prohibit the DOJ from incarcerating terrorism suspects currently held at Guantanamo Bay in an Illinois prison.
Thomson Correctional Center (Getty Images)
The subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, science and related agencies approved the $30 billion dollar bill — which would provide funding for programs in the Department to Justice in fiscal 2011 — by voice vote. The measure would include $170 million for the Justice Department to acquire Thomson Correctional Facility in Thomson, Ill., but the subcommittee adopted an amendment at the markup Tuesday that is intended to prevent the DOJ from moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to the site.
The panel’s ranking Republican Frank Wolf of Virginia offered an amendment that would prohibit the DOJ from using any of the funds in the bill to construct, acquire or modify a facility in the U.S. to hold Guantanamo Bay detainees. The panel adopted the amendment by voice vote.
Wolf said the amendment would still allow the DOJ to purchase the Thomson facility so long as it didn’t hold Guantanamo detainees. The DOJ’s Bureau of Prisons has said it intends to acquire the prison — even if the Guantanamo prisoners cannot stay there — to help alleviate crowding in the federal prison system.
The opposition to housing Guantanamo detainees in the U.S. is not new. The House Armed Services Committee also included a provision in the fiscal 2011 defense authorization measure that would prohibit the Department of Defense from using its funding to pay for the prisoner transfer.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) offered several amendments — all of which failed — including one that would have banned the Justice Department from filing a lawsuit against the Arizona immigration law.
I Spy: Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich (second row by the TV) and Associate Attorney General Thomas Perelli (third row) at the Kagan confirmation hearings Tuesday. White House counsel Robert Bauer (floating head, bottom left) has been a constant figure at the hearings. (Getty)
Several current and former Justice Department staffers have popped by the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Solicitor General Elena Kagan.
Kagan’s no. 2 in the Solicitor General’s office — Neal Katyal, now the acting Solicitor General — attended the hearings the first day, as did former acting Solicitor General Walter Dellinger, now with O’Melveny & Myers.
Ronald Weich, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs, sat through questioning Tuesday, as did Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli for part of the time, according to the Blog of the Legal Times.
Several White House officials are also present at the hearings including White House Staff secretary Lisa Brown and White House Counsel Robert Bauer, who were both intimately involved in the process of selecting Kagan for the vacancy.
As the Washington Post noted early this week, some former DOJers are helping out behind the dias. Brian Benczkowski, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, is a top staffer for the panel’s ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions of Alabama. Orin Kerr, a former trial attorney in the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section of the Criminal Division and a special Assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, is worked for GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas during the confirmation hearings.
Early in the day Tuesday, Kagan also recognized one of her former students, Jeremy Paris, who now works for committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the Blog of the Legal Times reported.
Paris, Leahy’s Chief Counsel for Nominations and Oversight, has assisted the chairman with preparations for other Supreme Court nominations, assists with oversight of the Justice Department and was involved in the investigation into the firing of U.S. Attorneys during the Bush administration
Central District of California U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte delivers remarks during his investiture. (DOJ)
Central District of California U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte was formally sworn in to his position at a ceremony Friday.
About 700 friends, family and law enforcement officials attended the ceremonial investiture in Los Angeles, which was presided over by U.S. District Chief Judge Audrey B. Collins.
Birotte, the former inspector general of the Los Angeles Police Department, was confirmed by the Senate in late February and took office in early March. But U.S. Attorneys often have a ceremonial investiture later on, with local, state and federal leaders in attendance.
U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter Jr. administers the oath of office to Central District of California U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte. (DOJ)
U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter, Jr. administered the oath of office to Birotte, and California Court of Appeal Justice Nora M. Manella, a former U.S. Attorney who hired Birotte as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in 1995, spoke at the event.
In remarks after the swearing-in, Birotte said becoming U.S. Attorney was the “opportunity of a lifetime….an incredible gift that comes with awesome responsibility.”
Birotte highlighted several priorities for the office — including white-collar crime, public corruption, cybercrime, violent crime and terrorism — but said above all the office must focused on being “justice-driven.”
“Justice-driven means that we must maintain the highest standards of integrity, fairness and excellence that comes with working for the Department of Justice,” Birotte said. “Justice-driven means having an impeccable reputation for integrity and fairness That means making sure our AUSAs continue to receive the best training possible to make them the best litigators on behalf of the United States. It means that our charging decisions and negotiations are always principled and in good faith. It also means learning from our mistakes taking swift steps to avoid repeating them.”
“We are representatives of the Department of Justice and we come into the job with a reservoir of trust – a reservoir that we draw strength from, but also a reservoir that at all times we must preserve,” he added.
Several former U.S. Attorneys for the district attended including Thomas P. O’Brien, now with Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker LLP; Debra W. Yang of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP; Robert C. Bonner, a senior principal with strategic consulting firm The Sentinel HS Group LLC; and Los Angeles County Counsel Andrea Sheridan Ordin.
