Assistant Attorney General  Thomas Perez addressed the importance of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division on Thursday at the Howard University School of Law.

“I get asked the following question and with great regularity: why do we need a civil rights division in the year 2011?” Perez said. “When I was asked that question the seventh or eighth time by people of good faith, I recognized that I needed to take a step back and that I needed to make it part of our job not simply to enforce the laws which we do and we do so with pride, and independence and evenhandedness, but we need to explain why we are enforcing laws.”

Speaking to an audience of primarily students, Perez acknowledged past progress in making society more equal. But he said there was a long way to go toward reinvigorating the division that Attorney General Eric Holder once deemed the department’s “crown jewel.”

During the George W. Bush administration, conservative political appointees who were hostile to a traditional focus on protecting minority rights ran the division, driving out more liberal veteran career attorneys. A Government Accountability Office report released numbers that confirmed the mass exodus of the division’s career attorneys from 2001 to 2007 and showed several areas where enforcement of civil rights law declined.

“We are here to ensure that the fundamental infrastructure of democracy remains robust,” Perez said.

The foreclosure crisis had a disproportionate effect on communities of color, according to Perez, resulting in the largest monetary settlement in the division’s history in a fair lending case last year. The $6.1 million settlement involved two subsidiaries of American International Group Inc. that affected 2,500 African-Americans, with each borrower receiving about $2,300.

“The two subsidiaries were gouging African Americans and transforming the American dream into the American nightmare, using the corrosive power of fine print to send people into a downward financial spiral,” he told the audience at the historically black university.

Perez hailed what he called other accomplishments, including an Americans with Disabilities Act settlement in Georgia reinforcing the 1999 Olmstead vs. L.C. Supreme Court decision that made it illegal to segregate in institutions people with disabilities who could receive the same services in a community setting. He also cited what he called progress for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community with the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009.

The division also now uses disparate impact theory to strengthen its work, a tool the division uses to pursue discrimination cases where there is no intent to discriminate but a difference in results from it, which wasn’t allowed in the Bush administration, according to Perez.

“There are too many people across this nation, people with disabilities; people of color; people who are LGBT,people who are Muslim; people who need our help,” he said. “We will continue to fight that battle for equal opportunity.”

Democrats are challenging House conservatives who are calling for deep federal budget cuts to imagine what the reductions would do to parts of the Justice Department.

Rolling back federal discretionary spending to 2006 levels would mean firing 4,000 FBI agents, 1,500 Drug Enforcement Administration agents and 5,700 correctional officers from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to Democratic estimates reported by the Washington Post.

Members of a group of House conservatives called the Republican Study Committee on Thursday said Republicans must keep their campaign pledge to immediately cut at least $100 billion from non-defense spending, which would return spending to 2008 levels. They also are demanding additional cuts to 2006 levels.

Bipartisan Senate Judiciary Committee leaders said they will introduce legislation next Tuesday to provide the most significant updates to the U.S. patent system in almost six decades.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and incoming Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), will offer changes to the patent system they say are intended to streamline the patent process, improve patent quality and better protect inventors.

The Patent Reform Act of 2011 will resemble legislation the panel worked on in the last Congress — which itself was based on a patent reform bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in 2006.

“Patent reform is a commonsense, bipartisan effort to protect jobs and bolster the economy,� Leahy said in a statement. “The Patent Reform Act of 2011 is the product of years of careful consideration and compromise. Promoting economic growth continues to be a top priority for both Democrats and Republicans, and patent reform is part of that effort.�

Leahy is looking to move quickly on the bill. The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman placed the bill on his panel’s agenda for its meeting next Thursday.

The bill modified by the Senate Judiciary Committee last year received the backing of the Barack Obama administration and others, including the United Steelworkers, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Association of Universities and the National Venture Capital Association. But the Patent Reform Act of 2011 will likely face opposition, as its predecessor did.

“We will reserve judgment until we see the final bill, but if it’s anything like the last one, we will oppose it,” Mark Isakowitz, who runs the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which includes companies including Intel Corporation, Oracle Corporation and Google Inc., told the National Journal’s Tech Daily Dose blog Thursday prior to the release of the bill’s text.

The prosecutor who led the case in the destruction of CIA videotapes may get a call from U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York on how to resolve litigation over the recordings, the New York Law Journal reported Tuesday.

At a hearing before Hellerstein, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara LaMorte told him that a career federal prosecutor in Connecticut, John Durham, could speak with him over the case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU first filed the Freedom of Information Act suit in 2003 to obtain the records. But CIA officials destroyed the tapes in 2005, violating Hellerstein’s order from 2004 to preserve the evidence.

In 2008, then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey chose Durham to lead the Justice Department’s investigation into the destruction of the 92 videotapes, two of which showed accused al-Qaeda detainees Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri being subjected to waterboarding. Al-Nashiri is accused of planning the 2000 USS Cole bombing in Yemen.

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have both called waterboarding torture. In 2009, Holder asked Durham to also probe the alleged abuse of about a dozen prisoners whom CIA personnel or contractors interrogated. Former Vice President Dick Cheney had said that Holder’s decision to expand the investigation was “political.”

Durham found no criminal wrongdoing in the investigation and did not recommend that the DOJ bring charges over the destruction of the tapes.

Hellerstein wants the ACLU lawyers and prosecutors to submit briefs on what steps should be taken to resolve the case. “This kind of destruction never should have occurred,” Hellerstein said, according to the New York Law Journal. “It tells the court the CIA does not trust the judges to have proper regard for the security interests of the United States.”

Solicitor General Elena Kagan on the third day of her confirmation hearings. (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan was seen on Thursday waiting in the jury lounge at the D.C. Superior Court, The Washington Post reported.

Kagan sat with numerous other potential jurors waiting to see if her juror badge number would be called.

President Barack Obama nominated the former Solicitor General in May for the high court. She was confirmed easily by the Senate.

Attorney General Eric Holder also reported to jury duty in November at the D.C. Superior Court, but wasn’t picked as a juror.

Attorney General Eric Holder spoke during a press conference to announce a large-scale takedown of organized crime. (L to R) Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge, FBI’s New York Division; Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer; Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor Daniel R. Petrole; New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly; U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta E. Lynch; and Holder)

More than 100 people were arrested by the FBI, the New York Police Department and other agencies on Thursday on charges that included murder, labor racketeering and other deadly and shady enterprises linked to mob families throughout New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

At last count, 127 individuals, not all of whom have been brought into custody, were charged with murder, murder conspiracy, loansharking, arson, narcotics trafficking, extortion, robbery, gambling and labor racketeering and extortion, with some of the crimes dating back to the 1980s.

The series of early-morning raids were described by the Justice Department as one of the biggest anti-mob sweeps in decades, and it was clear from the array of agencies involved that the operation had been planned for many months.

According to 16 indictments, the seven-family crime network has regularly used violence and threats of violence to extort money from victims, eliminate rivals, settle vendettas, obstruct justice and engage in other wrongdoing long familiar to people who saw “The Godfather” and other mob-inspired movies.

“Some believe organized crime is a thing of the past; unfortunately, there are still people who extort, intimidate, and victimize innocent Americans. The costs legitimate businesses are forced to pay are ultimately borne by American consumers nationwide,” said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Even though Mueller said the mob is very much alive and well in the 21st Century, the charging documents included allusions to Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, Decavalcante and other names that have been part of mob legend since thick-muscled men in double-breasted suits wielded tommy guns from the running boards of cars.

Attorney General Eric Holder and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Division, discussed the arrests and the law enforcement actions taken against crime members and associates in a press conference in Brooklyn today. “This is one of the largest single-day operations against the mafia in the FBI’s history, both in terms of the number of defendants arrested and charged, and the scope of the criminal activity alleged,” Holder said.

The authorities said the arrests were based, at least in part, on information provided by an insider who violated the sacred mob code of “omerta” to help tape-record scores of conversations among the targets of the investigation that culminated in Thursday’s arrests. Those charged ranged from small-time bookies to mob “soldiers” to people suspected of being high up in the crime families.

A few of those charged were accused of notorious long-ago crimes, like a double slaying in a bar in Queens in 1981 and another old slaying in which a man was found dead in his car — a bullet wound in his head.

Joining Holder at the press conference were Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division; the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Loretta E. Lynch; the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara; New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman; Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha; the Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor, Daniel R. Petrole, and New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

Chris Christie was one of only two governors who attended the White House state dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao Wednesday night, the Bergen Record reported. But the New Jersey governor and former U.S. Attorney wasn’t the only potential Republican challenger to President Barack Obama in attendance.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and his wife Mary Pat Christie arrive at the White House for a state dinner. (Getty)

Obama’s ambassador to China, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), was at the dinner in his role as envoy to China. Huntsman recently refused to rule out a bid for the GOP nomination to challenge Obama in 2012, telling Newsweek when asked about his presidential ambitions: “I think we may have one final run left in our bones.”

Christie served as New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney from 2002 to 2008 in a tenure marked by various high-profile controversies, including his office’s steering of a compliance monitoring contract worth up to $52 million to the firm of former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Although he is frequently mentioned as a potential 2012 candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, Christie recently said he didn’t think he was ready to run.

The dinner honoring China’s president was the third official state dinner hosted by President Barack Obama since he took office. Christie told McClatchy newspapers: “It’s a great night for our country,” adding, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat.”

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______________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 2011
WWW.JUSTICE.GOV

REMARKS AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY BY ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER AT THE PRESS CONFERENCE ON ORGANIZED CRIME ARRESTS

BROOKLYN, N.Y.

Good morning, and thank you all for being here.

Today I’m joined by several key leaders, and partners, in our work to combat organized crime – Janice Fedarcyk, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Division; Daniel Petrole, Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Labor; Lanny Breuer, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Loretta Lynch, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York; Preet Bharara, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York; Paul Fishman, United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey; Peter F. Neronha, United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island; and Ray Kelly, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department.

We are pleased to announce an important step forward in our nation’s ongoing fight against the organized crime families of La Cosa Nostra – the mafia.

Today, more than 800 federal, state and local law enforcement officials have arrested over 110 individuals, including dozens of La Cosa Nostra members and associates. In total, 127 people have been charged in 16 indictments unsealed today in four districts in New York, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

This is one of the largest single-day operations against the mafia in the FBI’s history, both in terms of the number of defendants arrested and charged, and the scope of the criminal activity alleged. Defendants from numerous La Cosa Nostra families have been charged, including defendants from all five New York-based families: the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Luchese families.

We have charged mob associates and mob bosses alike, including the former boss of La Cosa Nostra operations in New England; the Street Boss, Acting Underboss, and Consigliere of the Colombo family; and the Gambino family Consigliere and a member of that family’s ruling panel.

Their alleged crimes include numerous violent and illegal acts – from murder and narcotics trafficking to extortion, illegal gambling, arson, loan sharking, and labor racketeering.

Some allegations involve classic mob hits to eliminate perceived rivals. Others involve senseless murders. In one instance, a victim allegedly was shot and killed during a botched robbery attempt. And two other murder victims allegedly were shot dead in a public bar, because of a dispute over a spilled drink.

Other charged criminal activity reflects the mafia’s continued influence in various economic sectors, and its alleged schemes to steal money by preying on vulnerable Americans. One fraud scheme carried out by the Colombo crime family allegedly defrauded consumers with poor credit histories out of one-time payments that the consumers believed they were making to secure loans. Other charges allege that the crime families’ extorted money from various labor union members, including some belonging to the International Longshoremen’s Association, and a concrete union in New York.

Today’s arrests mark an important, and encouraging, step forward in disrupting La Cosa Nostra’s operations. But our battle against organized crime enterprises is far from over. This is an ongoing effort and it must, and will, remain a top priority. Members and associates of La Cosa Nostra are among the most dangerous criminals in our country. The very oath of allegiance sworn by these mafia members during their initiation ceremony binds them to a life of crime.

As we’ve seen for decades, criminal mafia operations can negatively impact our economy – not only through a wide array of fraud schemes but also through the illegal imposition of mob “taxes� at our ports, in our construction industries, and on our small businesses. In some cases, La Cosa Nostra members and associates allegedly seek to corrupt legitimate businesses and those who have sworn to uphold the public trust. And many of them are lethal. Time and again, they have shown a willingness to kill – to make money, to eliminate rivals, and to silence witnesses.

Today’s successful arrests – across multiple cities and involving multiple mafia families – send a clear message that, in our fight against organized crime, the Justice Department is targeting federal resources and working with our state and local law enforcement partners like never before. We are committed – and determined – to eradicate these criminal enterprises once and for all and to bring their members to justice.

As part of our commitment to battling organized crime, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division has announced that it is working to merge its historic Organized Crime and Racketeering Section with its Gang Unit – a move that will bring together an elite group of prosecutors with extensive knowledge and experience in combating criminal enterprises.

In addition, due to the continued threat that these criminal organizations pose, in September of last year I issued an order directing the Department’s Criminal Division, our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, and the FBI to ensure that sufficient resources are allocated to effectively combat these domestic organized crime groups, as well as international criminal organizations that threaten our nation’s security. I want to thank my colleagues in the Criminal Division, in our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, and in the FBI for their outstanding efforts – and their commitment to collaboration.

Today’s actions are a reflection – and a direct result – of that renewed commitment. I am grateful to, and proud of, all of the investigators, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, and agency partners involved in today’s take-down. This investigation and prosecution reflects unprecedented collaboration among four U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the Department’s Criminal Division, and the FBI. Thank you all, and congratulations on a job well done.

And, now, I’d like to turn things over to Assistant Director Fedarcyk.

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Danielle Chiesi, a former trader with New Castle Funds LLC in New York, pleaded guilty to three counts of conspiracy to commit securities fraud before U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell today. She was part of an alleged insider trading network around the Galleon hedge fund and its founder, Raj Rajaratnam.

For a copy of her plea agreement, please click in the box in the upper right corner of this page.