Third time’s a charm.
John S. Pistole (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice)
The Senate confirmed John S. Pistole, the former Deputy Director of the FBI, to head the Transportation Security Administration Friday.
Pistole, who became the second-highest ranking official at the FBI in 2004, was the White House’s third pick to head the agency.
The Senate confirmed him by voice vote without debate. Pistole charmed senators at his confirmation hearing earlier this month, prompting praise from both Democrats and Republicans.
Before his nomination to head TSA, Pistole had worked for the FBI since 1983 in Minneapolis, New York, Boston, Indiana and Washington D.C.
President Barack Obama first nominated Erroll G. Southers, a former FBI agent and head of the Los Angeles Airport police, to lead the TSA. He withdrew in January after questions arose about whether Southers used a federal database to look into his ex-wife’s boyfriend.
The White House then nominated Maj. Gen. Robert A. Harding, a retired Army intelligence officer, but he withdrew in March amid a controversy over his previous work as a defense contractor.
Janice Fedarcyk (FBI)
Janice Fedarcyk has been named assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Division, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced Friday. Fedarcyk is the first woman to head the high-profile New York office.
She replaces Joseph Demarest, who in May was named Assistant Director of the International Operations Division at FBI headquarters. Demarest was placed on temporary assignment to FBI headquarters while the Office of Professional Responsibility conducted an investigation into statements he made about a relationship he allegedly had with a subordinate in the New York office.
Since 2007, Fedarcyk has headed the FBI’s Philadelphia Division, which was recently involved with the indictment against American-born alleged extremist “Jihad Jane.”
Mueller said in a statement that Fedarcyk is well-prepared to lead the FBI’s largest office.
“Jan Fedarcyk brings both a strong national security and criminal investigative background from her current assignment as head of the Philadelphia Division and from her work at FBI Headquarters, where she managed terrorist financing investigations, served at the National Counterterrorism Center, and oversaw investigations of online exploitation of children,” Mueller said.
Fedarcyk has been with the FBI since 1987. She started in the Los Angeles Division and has served at FBI headquarters, the Baltimore Division and most recently in Philadelphia. Her experience in counterterrorism includes her work as the FBI’s representative to the National Counterterrorism Center, Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning and as special agent in charge of the Counterterrorism Division of the Los Angeles Division.
Demarest had been brought in by Mueller in late 2008 to improve the relationship between the New York City Police Department and the FBI.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Fedarcyk’s appointment.
Kelly told reporters at a news conference in early May that the work between the FBI and NYPD had been “seamless” and that the two organizations were “working extremely well together.”
UPDATED:
Richard Kolko, a spokesman for the FBI’s New York Division, said Fedarcyk would take over in early August and was notified of her appointment late yesterday.
“Although she has not yet had the time to reach out to NYPD, she very much looks forward to continuing to build on the extremely strong relationship the FBI has with NYPD,” Kolko said.
The FBI’s full release on Fedarcyk’s appointment is below.
Director Robert S. Mueller, III has named Janice Fedarcyk as assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York Division. Ms. Fedarcyk is currently serving as special agent in charge (SAC) of the Philadelphia Division.
“Jan Fedarcyk brings both a strong national security and criminal investigative background from her current assignment as head of the Philadelphia Division and from her work at FBI Headquarters, where she managed terrorist financing investigations, served at the National Counterterrorism Center, and oversaw investigations of online exploitation of children,” said Director Mueller. “She is well prepared to lead our largest office.”
Ms. Fedarcyk entered on duty as a special agent of the FBI in 1987. Upon completion of training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, she was assigned to the Los Angeles Division, where she investigated organized crime, drugs, money laundering, and gang matters. In November 1996, Ms. Fedarcyk was promoted to FBI Headquarters (FBIHQ), where she coordinated FBI response to domestic and international crises and special events. In 1998, Ms. Fedarcyk was selected as the first FBI liaison assigned to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She transferred to the Baltimore Division in 1999, where she supervised an Innocent Images National Initiative squad investigating the online exploitation of children.
In 2001, Ms. Fedarcyk returned to FBIHQ as an assistant inspector team leader in the Inspection Division. In 2003, she was selected as the assistant section chief of the Terrorist Financing Operations Section within the Counterterrorism Division. Her subsequent promotion to assistant special agent in charge (ASAC) in the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group, National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime, included oversight of FBI components that furnished behavioral analysis and consultation on a variety of investigative matters.
Ms. Fedarcyk was promoted to serve as the FBI’s representative to the National Counterterrorism Center, Directorate of Strategic Operational Planning in March 2005. She was instrumental in leading the development of a classified national strategic operational plan in the war on terrorism. In September 2006, she was a group recipient of a Meritorious Unit Citation presented by the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center for contributions to the Interagency Counterterrorism Strategic Planning Community. In January 2006, Ms. Fedarcyk was promoted to the position of inspector at FBIHQ.
Shortly after, in February 2007, she was named SAC of the Counterterrorism Division of the Los Angeles Division. In this division, she oversaw executive management, supervisory and investigative personnel, and the associated investigative programs to which they were assigned.
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
David Barron, the top official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel since the start of the Obama administration, will leave next month, The New York Times reported.
Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel David J. Barron (Getty)
Jonathan Cedarbaum, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC, will replace Barron. It’s unclear whether Cedarbaum is being considered as a nominee to head the office, which has been without a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for six years.
The well-publicized nomination of Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen, President Barack Obama’s first nominee, ended in a deadlock, forcing her to withdrawal earlier this year.
Barron told the Times he was returning to Harvard Law School, which limits tenured professors to two years of leave. Barron, who has three young children, said he was leaving early because he wants to move back to Massachusetts before the start of the school year.
In his time as acting Assistant Attorney General, the office provided advice on range of questions including whether legislation to give Washington, D.C. a voting member of Congress was constitutional; whether President Barack Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize violated the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause; whether a domestic abuse law covered same-sex couples; and how much contact with al-Qaeda rendered a terrorism suspect eligible for detention without trial.
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Jonathan G. Cedarbaum (photo by Stephanie Woodrow / Main Justice)
The office took on responsibilities beyond advising the president and the executive branch on the legality of proposed measures. The OLC was heavily involved in determining the status of Guantanamo Bay detainees, and in defending the government’s position in detainee habeas cases.
Of course, the lion’s share of the office’s work under Barron was done in secret and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
“I don’t think I’ll ever have a better job again,” Barron told the Times. “If you like the law and you care about these issues, it’s just a tremendous opportunity to be able to have worked here.”
Cedarbaum, Barron’s successor, was a litigation partner at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP before joining the Justice Department. While at the firm, he signed onto a brief in case involving six Algerian detainees who were seeking a right to challenge their confinement in federal court.
A group led by Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard famously branded Cedarbaum a member of the “al-Qaeda Seven.” A bipartisan group of prominent lawyers accused the group of tactics verging on McCarthyism.
Four Republican Senators urged the Justice Department to turn over non-public reports prepared by Deputy Attorney General nominee James Cole during his time as an independent monitor to American International Group (AIG).
Cole, a former public corruption prosecutor and longtime friend of Attorney General Eric Holder, worked as an independent consultant for AIG from January 2005 until earlier this year as part of a deferred prosecution agreement between Justice Department and the insurance giant.
Deputy Attorney General nominee James Cole (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice).
In a letter to Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs Ronald Weich, Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Republican Jeff Sessions of Alabama along with GOP Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa, John Cornyn of Texas and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma requested copies of all reports submitted by Cole to DOJ while he worked for AIG.
“We understand the confidential treatment of Mr. Cole’s reports… and his recommendations to AIG stem from the deferred prosecution agreements between the Department and AIG,” the senators wrote. “The Judiciary Committee cannot, however, fully and properly evaluate Mr. Cole’s nomination without this documentation.”
A Justice Department spokeswoman defended Cole’s role at AIG and said he made “significant progress in implementing critically-needed reforms” in the areas he was charged with overseeing.
“Critics who suggest that Mr. Cole was somehow too close to AIG misunderstand his relationship with the company,” said spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler. “His presence was imposed on the company by a federal court. In fact, as the [Congressional Research Service] report notes, AIG executives tried to have him removed.”
“[Cole] was never a general overseer or monitor of AIG’s entire operation nor was he assigned to examine many of the issues involving AIG’s near collapse, such as credit-default swaps or retention bonuses,” Schmaler added.
Sessions only briefly brought up Cole’s work for AIG at a confirmation hearing last Tuesday and focused his questions mainly on a 2002 opinion piece written by Cole about the use of civilian trials for terrorism suspects. Grassley and Coburn did not attend the hearing.
In his opening statement at the hearing last week, Cole defended his work on AIG. “The company resisted some of my efforts, but I insisted on tough measures,” Cole said.
Cole’s reports on AIG were confidential, but the Justice Department sent the reports to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last year. The panel asked the Congressional Research Service to issue a report on Cole’s oversight of the company.
President Barack Obama nominated Cole to be Deputy Attorney General last month. He would replace acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, who has held the post since David Ogden stepped down in February.
The letter and the full statement from the DOJ is reprinted below.
June 23, 2010
Ronald Weich
Assistant Attorney General
Office of Legislative Affairs
Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20530Dear Mr. Weich:
We write regarding the nomination of James Cole to be Deputy Attorney General. Mr. Cole served as independent consultant to American International Group (AIG) for a number of years prior to that company’s near collapse and government-sponsored bailout in 2008. Numerous questions persist regarding Mr. Cole’s role in monitoring AIG in view of the company’s recent history. Such questions could not adequately be addressed at Mr. Cole’s June 15 hearing, however, because Mr. Cole appears to be prohibited from disclosing the nature of his work as an independent consultant and because the underlying documents apparently remain confidential. These documents include the deferred prosecution agreements, his recommendations to AIG, and his reports to the Department of Justice (Department), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the New York Attorney General’s Office (NYAG).
As a result of these claims of confidentiality, we have been unable to verify a number of reports that have questioned Mr. Cole’s activities as the independent consultant to AIG. For example, it has been reported that Mr. Cole “allowed AIG management to revise his quarterly reports to the SEC.” According to these same reports, Mr. Cole also made recommendations that there be independent review of all derivative transactions, but he expressly exempted derivative transactions made by the AIG-Financial Products group (AIG-FP). AIG-FP is the subsidiary of AIG that was responsible for the derivative transactions that ultimately led to a $182 billion taxpayer bailout. We understand Mr. Cole’s recommendation for derivative products by AIG-FP went even farther to state that “the appropriate independent review of the proposed derivative transactions or programs should be conducted by AIG-FP.” This recommendation raises serious questions about the thoroughness and independence of Mr. Cole’s review of these transactions. It was the devaluation of those high-risk transactions that led to AIG’s demise, and ultimately, the economic collapse.
If true, these reports about Mr. Cole’s deference to AIG and its subsidiaries would raise serious concerns regarding his performance as independent consultant. Due to the unknown nature of Mr. Cole’s work and the secrecy surrounding his recommendations and reports to the Department and the SEC, the Committee remains unable to verify or dismiss these reports.
We understand the confidential treatment of Mr. Cole’s reports to the Department, the SEC and the NYAG, and his recommendations to AIG stem from the deferred prosecution agreements between the Department and AIG. The Judiciary Committee cannot, however, fully and properly evaluate Mr. Cole’s nomination without this documentation. Accordingly, we request copies of all reports submitted by Mr. Cole in his role as independent consultant to the Department. To the extent the Department received such materials, we further request copies of Mr. Cole’s reports to the SEC and NYAG, as well as copies of all recommendations made to AIG by Mr. Cole. Finally, we request all responses submitted by AIG to the Department related to, or responding to, any report or recommendation issued by Mr. Cole as the independent consultant to AIG.
Thank you for your attention to this matter, which will help us to discharge our constitutional obligation to consider this nomination. To avoid any unnecessary delay, we respectfully ask you to provide this information as soon as possible so the Committee can consider Mr. Cole’s nomination.
Very truly yours,
Jeff Sessions
Chuck Grassley
John Cornyn
Tom Coburn
Statement from Tracy Schmaler, Justice Department spokeswoman:
“James Cole was assigned by a federal court order to serve as an outside independent consultant to AIG as the result of two specific lawsuits the company settled charging it with engaging in bid rigging, helping its clients to falsify their financial condition, and violating accounting rules. Mr. Cole was never a general overseer or monitor of AIG’s entire operation nor was he assigned to examine many of the issues involving AIG’s near collapse, such as credit-default swaps or retention bonuses.
“For those areas of the company that the court did give Mr. Cole authority to address – fraudulent transactions and the company’s compliance with applicable laws and regulations – Mr. Cole made significant progress in implementing critically-needed reforms by making sure the company improved its reporting lines and the independence of compliance staff so that they could not be pressured by the company’s business managers.
“Critics who suggest that Mr. Cole was somehow too close to AIG misunderstand his relationship with the company. His presence was imposed on the company by a federal court. In fact, as the CRS report notes, AIG executives tried to have him removed.”
David S. Krakoff (photo by Ryan Reilly / Main Justice)
A prominent Washington defense attorney representing a client in the Justice Department’s recent Foreign Corrupt Practices Act sting case will join BuckleySandler LLP as a partner.
David Krakoff, former co-leader of white collar litigation practice at Mayer Brown LLP, represents defendant John Mushriqui in the sting case — the largest single prosecution of individuals in the law’s history.
Krakoff is well known in FCPA circles and has played a key role in the case’s litigation. He spoke on behalf of all the defense lawyers in the case at a motions hearing in Washington’s U.S. District Court last Thursday.
Krakoff has represented individuals and corporate clients, focusing on FCPA compliance and litigation.
His new firm, BuckleySandler LLP, employs more than 90 lawyers in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York City and focuses primarily on financial and commercial law.
Read the firm’s news release here.
Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division Tony West. (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)
Tony West, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, fielded pointed questions from several Republicans on the department’s objectivity and transparency at a House oversight hearing Thursday.
Speaking before the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, West sought to highlight the Civil Division’s recent efforts to combat mortgage and Medicare fraud and deal with habeas corpus petitions from Guantanamo Bay detainees. Instead, two Republican members quizzed him on the department’s handling of lawsuits against the recently enacted health care law and potential litigation over Arizona’s controversial immigration law.
In his testimony, West described increased enforcement efforts to combat mortgage fraud and a steep increase in recoveries from mortgage fraud cases — $52 million in 2009 compared to only $15 million the previous year.
In particular, he cited the recently publicized “Operation Stolen Dreams,” a record-breaking enforcement action responsible for nearly 500 arrests, about 300 convictions and about $11 million in recoveries.
“Mortgage fraud is one of the most difficult challenge the country faces,” said West.
Rep. Trent Frank (R-Ariz.) questions Assistant Attorney General Tony West on the Justice Department's potential lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law. (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)
West also highlighted the recently created Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT), a collaboration between the Departments of Justice and Heath and Human Services that has recovered more than $3 billion in health care funds lost to fraud since January 2009, he said.
However, several Republicans focused instead on more elusive — and controversial — matters within the department.
Steve King (R-Iowa) expressed concern over the Civil Division’s role in defending the recently enacted health care law in multiple lawsuits. He questioned the use of the Commerce Clause in the pending litigation.
“If you prevail on the Commerce Clause, there will be nothing left [of it],” he said.
King and Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) also asked West to address the department’s actions on Arizona’s immigration law, SB 1070. King cited several news reports that reported a “draft civil complaint” against the law is circulating within the department and questioned a statement by Attorney General Eric Holder that the department was not politicizing the issue.
“It’s been discussed as far up as the Secretary of State,” King said. “It’s hard to accept that statement when there is a suit being brought against a state … which has a law that mirrors the federal law … [and] a decision could be made in the White House, directed to the Attorney General and acted upon by the department. I think we need to re-blindfold Lady Justice.”
King’s aide also handed West a letter mirroring one sent to Holder on May 28 requesting a copy of the draft civil complaint. King said he never received the draft.
West responded by saying he had no knowledge of the news reports on a draft civil complaint and defended the Attorney General’s statements.
“I know that [Holder] is committed in an unwavering way to a nonpartisan, non-politicized Department of Justice that acts to do what is in the best interest of the United States and the American people,” he said. “The Department of Justice is … one of the few places in this country where you can go and your overriding charge is to do not what is partisan or political but to do what is right.”
West’s full written testimony and a copy of the letter from Rep. King are embedded below.
The former Civil Rights Division lawyer who quit the Justice Department after he was denied permission to speak about his work on a controversial voter intimidation case will testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights next month.
J. Christian Adams at a Federalist Society meeting in Washington in November (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).
J. Christian Adams, the lead attorney on a voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, resigned from the Justice Department on June 4.
Adams’ lawyer said earlier this month that his client planned to cooperate with the commission.
The conservative-controlled commission chose July 6 over the objection of the panel’s two Democratic commissioners, who said they will not be able to attend.
Spokeswoman Lenore Ostrowsky said that the commission is “not privy to any communications between the Department of Justice and Mr. Adams” and did not know if there were still any restrictions on what he was allowed to say in his testimony.
A Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately reply to request for comment on restrictions the DOJ might seek on Adams’ testimony.
“To me the question is whether this is the commissions show or the Adams show,” Commissioner Michael Yaki, one of the Democratic board members who opposed the July 6 hearing, said in an interview. “These folks are desperate to create news items.”
A little over a week after he left the Justice Department, Adams started his own website, ElectionLawCenter.com with the slogan “more red than the ivory tower.” He has used the forum to criticize the Voting Section’s work and highlight lawsuits against Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which he wrote “is on the outer frontier of the permissible exercise of federal power over the states.”
Adams has not discussed the New Black Panther Party case on the website.
Posted in News | 2 Comments »
The Supreme Court placed new limits Thursday on prosecutors’ use of a federal fraud law to go after white-collar criminals and questioned the convictions of several high-profile defendants including former Enron chief Jeffrey Skilling and former Canadian newspaper mogul Conrad Black.
In a case watched closely by the Justice Department, the court said the “honest services fraud” law is limited to bribery and kickback schemes.
“Because Skilling’s alleged misconduct entailed no bribe or kickback,” the Court said in a majority opinion authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, “it does not fall within the Court’s” reading of the law.
Even though the court rejected prosecutors’ use of the law, it left a decision on whether or not to overturn Skilling’s conviction to the appeals court.
The ruling was a somewhat unexpected one, since white-collar lawyers had anticipated the Court would either throw out the statute all together, or adopt lower court rulings that narrowed it slightly.
“It’s a surprising decision in how narrow the court has drawn the boundaries,” said John Falvey, Jr., a former federal prosecutor in Massachusetts who is now a partner at Goodwin Procter LLP. “The court really trimmed the statute back in a way other courts hadn’t talked about doing.”
The ruling “said expressly to Congress: ‘If you want to criminalize more than that, write a better law’,” Falvey said.
Lawmakers took the bait, lashing out at the court and arguing the ruling both ignored Congress and undermined prosecutors.
“The Court has significantly narrowed the honest services fraud statute, a key tool for prosecutors to protect American taxpayers from fraud and corruption,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. ”In doing so, the Court has once again disregarded the will of Congress and undermined those efforts to protect Americans from abuses by powerful corporate and political interests.”
Watchdog groups also criticized the ruling. “Today’s decision deprives prosecutors of an important tool in their efforts to fight public corruption,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Skilling is serving a decades-long sentence after being convicted in 2006 on securities fraud and conspiracy charges for his role in Enron’s collapse.
In a separate opinions, the court vacated the convictions of former Canadian newspaper mogul Conrad Black and former Alaskan legislator Bruce Weyhrauch and remanded the cases for consideration by appeals courts.
According to Jeffrey Cramer, a former Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois, who worked on the Conrad Black case, prosecutors will have be cautious about how the use the law in the future. Cramer, who is now the head of the Chicago office of Kroll’s Business Intelligence and Investigations Practice, said the while the law still applied to bribes and kickbacks, it had been curtailed.
“The interesting thing is when it comes to public corruption cases where there is a conflict of interest,” Cramer said. “The opinion seems to say if there’s just a conflict interest, it’s not a crime.”
Elected officials who don’t accept bribes but engage in transactions where there is a conflict of interest could be exempt from honest services charges. In particular, Cramer said this could have an effect on prosecutors in Chicago, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York where there are a high number of public corruption cases.
As for the specific case considered by the court, Cramer said the ruling was ultimately unlikely to have an effect on Skilling and Black , but could impact the Weyhrauch case. The ruling also could affect ongoing cases, including the prosecution of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich.
Joshua Berman, a partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP and a former federal prosecutor, said that prosecutors would have to strive harder for precision in some cases, but that the ruling was far from cataclysmic.
“Prosecutors simply no longer can use this law as a ‘catch-all’ when they can’t or don’t want to find another law the has been violated, or don’t want to add more specificity to an indictment,” Berman said. “While certain prosecutors’ offices — most notably the Public Integrity Section — had fallen a bit in love with using the HSF over the past ten years, the section lawyers already had begun to ween themselves off using it in this past year.”
Read the Associated Press story here.
This post has been updated. Additional reporting by Christopher Matthews and Joe Palazzolo.
Energized by a ground-breaking foreign bribery sting, the FBI is bulking up the unit that investigates violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a bureau official said Wednesday.
The 12-member unit is enlarging its compliment of Supervisory Special Agents from three to seven, said Andrew Sekela, one of the unit’s current SSAs, at the marcus evans 4th FCPA & Anti-Corruption Compliance Conference in Washington, D.C.
The SSAs are expected to be in place by the end of August; each will be responsible for a geographic region, from South America to Eurasia, and will oversee investigations by Special Agents in the bureau’s legal attache offices.
The hiring spree comes as the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are marshaling resources for FCPA enforcement, and it points to an evolution of the FBI’s role in foreign bribery cases.
Just a few years ago, FCPA cases were a dull proposition for FBI agents. Most of the Justice Department’s investigations flowed from self-disclosures by companies, reducing agents’ role to taking notes in a room while prosecutors conducted interviews.
“We wanted to change that dynamic,” said Special Agent Sherri Queener, another member of the FCPA unit, who joined Sekela and other Justice Department and SEC officials for a panel discussion on recent foreign bribery cases and investigations.
About two and half years ago, agents started developing tips about widespread bribery in the military and law enforcement equipment industry. The FBI cobbled together the case with methods often associated with large-scale narcotics investigations, like Title III wiretaps and undercover agents.
“We had to figure out who these people were and put a stop to it,” Queener said.
The investigation reached a climax in January, when the FBI commenced “the Shot Show Takedown,” an operation that proved at least as sensational as its name.
Nearly two dozen industry members were arrested at a gun show in Las Vegas, the first-ever FCPA sting, and charged with participating in a scheme to bribe a sales agent who claimed to represent the defense minister of an unnamed African country. (The country, as Main Justice has reported, was Gabon; the sales agent was an undercover FBI agent.)
“What are we doing right now?” Queener said. “We are being aggressive.”
The momentum is also evident in the numbers: In 2004, the FBI had about 10 open FCPA investigations. By the end of 2009, the bureau was investigating more than 100 such matters. Sekela added that the unit is trying to farm out work to the field offices and has hosted FCPA training seminars.
Queener and Sekela said the unit’s growth was closely tied to the strength of its relationships with foreign law enforcement counterparts. In the FCPA sting investigation, for example, the City of London Police executed search warrants as FBI agents made arrests in Las Vegas.
The U.K. has been a strong partner because of existing relationships and legal treaties, but Sekela said the FBI was investing time and resources into forging new ties.
“This is just a starting point,” Sekela said, adding that the FBI hoped to host an international forum on the FCPA program.
Queener noted that the unit’s 12 agents were far flung — they’ve never been in the D.C. office at once — and were in frequent communication with Legats around the world.
“We’re everywhere, and we’re talking to people everywhere,” she said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved by voice vote two more of President Barack Obama’s U.S. Attorney nominees at its meeting Thursday.
They are:
Stephen Wigginton (Weilmuenster & Wigginton PC)
– Stephen R. Wigginton (Southern District of Illinois): Obama tapped the partner and co-owner of the Weilmuenster & Wigginton PC law firm in Belleville, Ill., on April 14 to replace George W. Bush holdover A. Courtney Cox, who has headed the Fairview Heights, Ill.-based office since November 2007. Read more about Wigginton here.
– Edward L. Stanton III (Western District of Tennessee): The president nominated the Federal Express senior counsel on April 14 to succeed David Kustoff, who stepped down as U.S. Attorney in 2008. Read more about Stanton here.
Tim Purdon (Vogel Law Firm)
The panel delayed consideration of North Dakota U.S. Attorney nominee Tim Purdon until its next meeting. Committee Republicans can request to hold over a nominee one time.
President Barack Obama nominated the partner at the Vogel Law Firm in Bismarck, N.D., on Feb. 4 to succeed Drew Wrigley, who stepped down as U.S. Attorney in Sept. 2009. Obama has been criticized for tapping Purdon, who was on the executive committee of the North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party and has no prosecutorial experience. Read more about Purdon here.
The panel has now approved 59 of Obama’s U.S. Attorney nominees, 57 of whom have won Senate confirmation. The committee has yet to schedule votes for another 12 would-be U.S. Attorneys. There are 93 U.S. Attorney posts.
Posted in News | Comments Off
