U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III announces the creation of the Civil Rights Unit in front of the Memphis hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. (DOJ)
The Memphis U.S. Attorney’s office has established a Civil Rights Unit, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Edward L. Stanton III of the Western District of Tennessee announced this week.
The new unit will prosecute cases involving hate crimes, discrimination, human trafficking, official misconduct and law enforcement public corruption. Perez and Stanton announced the establishment of the unit in front of the Memphis motel where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.
“The Justice Department is committed to enforcing our nation’s civil rights laws, and I am pleased that the Civil Rights Division has a strong partner here in Tennessee to help carry out this critical work,” Perez said, according to the DOJ.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Parker of the Western District of Tennessee will lead the unit. Western District of Tennessee Assistant U.S. Attorneys Brian Coleman and Jonathan Skrmetti, who came to Memphis this year from the DOJ Civil Rights Division in Washington, will serve with Parker in the unit.
This story has been corrected to reflect that Skrmetti is an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Memphis who previously served in the DOJ Civil Rights Division.
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Jose Padilla, an American citizen once suspected of wanting to explode a lethal radiological “dirty bomb” in the United States, does not have the right to sue U.S. officials for his treatment while he was held in a Charleston, S.C., brig, a federal judge has ruled.
Judge Richard Gergel of the District of South Carolina on Thursday dismissed Padilla’s suit against several figures in the executive branch, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others.
Jose Padilla
In a 32-page ruling, Gergel concluded that the officials were protected by “qualified immunity” from being sued for their official actions, which were taken while the country and its leaders were still reeling from the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Padilla was arrested in Chicago in 2002 as a material witness to what Ashcroft and other officials said was a “dirty bomb” plot. Thereafter, Padilla was designated an “enemy combatant” by President George W. Bush and held in the brig for more than three years, a time in which he was denied many of the rights American citizens generally have when they are accused of crimes.
“The designation of Padilla as an enemy combatant and his detention incommunicado were made in light of the most profound and sensitive issues of national security, foreign affairs and military affairs,” Gergel wrote. “It is not for this Court, sitting comfortably in a federal courthouse nearly nine years after these events, to assess whether the policy was wise or the intelligence was accurate.”
Padilla was eventually convicted of terrorism-related charges unrelated to the supposed bomb plot and was sentenced in 2007 to 17 years 4 months in prison. His conviction is being appealed.
As Josh Gerstein notes on Politico, “Gergel’s decision is at odds with a 2009 ruling from another federal judge in a separate lawsuit Padilla brought against former Justice Department attorney John Yoo. That judge, Jeffrey White of San Francisco, ruled that Padilla’s suit against Yoo could go forward. Yoo’s appeal of that ruling is currently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Lawyers said Gergel’s decision is certain to be appealed to the Fourth Circuit and that the dispute is likely to eventually wind up before the Supreme Court.”
The Ninth is widely regarded as the most liberal of the circuits, and the Fourth as the most conservative. So court-watchers may be tempted to speculate that the Ninth Circuit will uphold White’s decision and the Fourth Circuit will uphold Gergel’s decision. But, as Gerstein notes, judges’ decisions sometimes go against expectations: Gergel, who ruled against Padilla, was appointed by President Barack Obama. White, who ruled in favor of the prisoner, was appointed by Bush.
The full Senate is scheduled to consider sweeping patent reform legislation when it returns on Feb. 28.
The Patent Reform Act of 2011, introduced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) on Jan. 25, includes provisions that would make it more difficult for a plaintiff to prove that a defendant willfully infringed a patent and rein in improper venue shopping for patent cases. The legislation also has provisions that would make challenges to granted patents simpler and give an inventor who files an application with the Patent and Trademark Office the patent first, switching from a “first-to-invent” system to a “first-to-file” system.
The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month backed the legislation without opposition. The bill is based on legislation introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.), now the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) in the 109th Congress. Members of Congress have introduced patent reform legislation in the three Congresses since then.
“Reforming the nation’s antiquated patent system will promote American innovation, create American jobs, and grow America’s economy,” Leahy said in a statement. “I am pleased that the Senate will consider the Patent Reform Act after the recess.
The House currently doesn’t have a companion bill. But Smith said last week that he is drafting a bill for his panel that will modify patent reform legislation in the Senate.
The House Judiciary intellectual property, competition and the Internet subcommittee last week heard from members of the intellectual property law community about congressional patent reform proposals.
Carl Horton, chief intellectual property counsel of General Electric Corp., said issues with patent damages, willfulness and venue don’t really need to be addressed in legislation because the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Federal Circuit already has dealt with those matters. But Horton said he supports moving to a “first-to-file” system and the Senate bill’s provisions that would make challenges to granted patents simpler. He testified on behalf of The Coalition for 21st Century Patent Reform, which represents companies including 3M Co., Pfizer Inc. and Motorola Inc.
David Simon, associate general counsel of intellectual property policy for Intel Corp., said the Patent and Trademark Office is the proper vehicle for improvements to the patent system, not major patent reform legislation. He testified on behalf of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which counts Oracle Corp. and Google Inc. among its members. The organization is against the Senate bill.
Assistant Attorney General Tony West of the Justice Department Civil Division on Friday highlighted an often unpublicized part of his office’s portfolio: its work on national security matters.
Tony West (photo by Andrew Ramonas / Main Justice)
The Civil Division typically is noted for its efforts to combat fraud, enforce immigration laws and protect consumers. But the Civil Division deals with almost all parts of the Barack Obama administration’s national security policy priorities, West said. He was speaking at an American Bar Association Standing Committee on Law and National Security breakfast attended by dozens of lawyers, including Civil Division Senior Counsel Mary L. Smith, Obama’s former DOJ Tax Division nominee.
“And probably nothing we do in the Civil Division is as vital to the safety and security of the American people as our work on national security matters,” West said. “Indeed, there’s scarcely a week that goes by where there isn’t some significant, often controversial national security issue that crosses my desk.”
West said habeas corpus cases involving Guantanamo Bay detainees take up most of the time he devotes to national security matters. He said the Civil Division is handling about 140 habeas cases involving Guantanamo Bay detainees who are contesting the legality of their detention.
The Assistant Attorney General said it is important to defend the cases because the detentions have strong legal justifications, the trials have safeguards in place for fairness and evidence used in the trials is not obtained by torture.
“While, in doing our best, we may not always get it right, I can assure you that we always try to do what’s right,” West said. “And I think that is the critical difference.”
Handling terrorism cases was nothing new for West when he became the Civil Division chief in 2009.
West, a former partner at the law firm of Morrison & Foerster LLP in San Francisco, represented the so-called American Taliban, John Walker Lindh, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2002.
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter is urging New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to run for the Republican presidential nomination.
“I don’t care if [Chris Christie] wants to run, his country needs him, it appears,” Coulter told Fox News on Monday. “There are a few things he’s a little bit soft on… We have to run somebody and if we don’t run Chris Christie, it’s going to be Romney because Republican primary voters for some reason refuse to do any research before voting. They vote for the name of anyone they’ve ever heard before.”
Coulter, who is known for her harsh rhetoric against Democrats, said in a speech Saturday that President Barack Obama will be reelected in 2012 if Christie isn’t in the race.
“If we don’t run Chris Christie, Romney will be the nominee and we’ll lose,” Coulter said at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, referring to 2008 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.
Christie is a former U.S. Attorney for New Jersey.
Authorities have charged 111 defendants with Medicare fraud schemes in the largest federal health care-fraud sweep in U.S. history, Attorney General Eric Holder said Thursday.
Attorney General Eric Holder announces Medicare fraud takedown with Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry and HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson.
Doctors, nurses and other members of the health care industry charged in nine cities on Thursday are accused of bilking the Medicare program out of more than $225 million, Holder said. He was joined by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer of the Criminal Division and HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson for the announcement at Justice Department headquarters.
The takedown Thursday netted 17 more defendants than the previous record-breaking sweep last summer. The defendants charged in July 2010 allegedly swindled the Medicare program out of $251 million.
“With today’s arrests, we’re sending an important message: health care fraud is not easy money,” Holder said. “It is a serious crime – and, as we’ve shown today, we will make sure it has serious consequences.”
Court documents unsealed Thursday offer a window into the shady, and sometimes deplorable, tactics used by the alleged fraudsters. They also shed light on the increasingly aggressive investigative techniques being employed by law enforcement officials.
Employees of Alliance Healthcare Services LP, a home health care provider in Dallas, are accused of offering kickbacks to Medicare beneficiaries to convince them to allow the company to bill Medicare under their names. The company allegedly billed over $1 million on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries from 2008 to 2010.
The sole job of one of the defendants, Ollie Futrell, was to recruit beneficiaries, the authorities said. The indictment charging Futrell and the four other conspirators contains conversations of Futrell’s negotiations covertly recorded by law enforcement agents:
Beneficiary: Each person I refer to you is $200 or $250?
Futrell: I’m going to be honest with you. I will give you $150. Alright $250,
$200. (Expletive) I ain’t goin fifty ’cause I got to have something now, come on.”
Officials said that in one of the more egregious examples of fraud, Dr. Boris Sachakov, a proctologist in Brooklyn, received $4.4 million from Medicare and $5.8 million from private benefit programs through false billings for examinations and surgical procedures. From 2008 to 2010, Sachakov billed millions for hemorrhoidectomies, or the removal of hemorrhoids, he never actually performed.
The Attorney General credited the Medicare Fraud Strike Force Enforcement Action Teams with carrying out the takedown. The teams of federal, state and local law enforcement officials charged suspects Thursday in Miami, Los Angeles, Detroit, Houston, Tampa, Fla., Baton Rouge, La., and Brooklyn, N.Y.
The groups also brought charges in Chicago and Dallas. Holder announced Thursday that the cities were the newest locations for the teams.
Combating health care fraud is a top priority of President Barack Obama’s administration. The government has said it recovered $4 billion from individuals who tried to defraud Medicare and Medicaid in fiscal 2010. The recovery was the largest amount ever collected from Medicare and Medicaid fraudsters in one year.
In its fiscal year 2012 budget request, the DOJ requests $283.4 million to fight health care fraud, amounting to a 22 percent increase from the funding Congress approved through a continuing resolution for fiscal 2011.
Assistant Attorney General Tony West of the Civil Division was on Capitol Hill Tuesday to argue for a bigger budget to fight health care fraud in the coming years. He said current funding levels would limit DOJ efforts to combat the crime in the future.
The DOJ says it would use the extra funds in its fiscal 2012 request to beef up the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team, an initiative that brings together the Justice Department, Health and Human Services and other government agencies.
More money for HEAT would bring Medicare Fraud Strike Force Enforcement Action Teams to 20 locations, according to the DOJ.
Christopher M. Matthews contributed reporting.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has been getting good reviews for his speech on Wednesday in which he was not quite Shermanesque in denying his White House ambitions and chided leaders in both parties for not speaking more bluntly about the nation’s fiscal problems.
Appearing at the American Enterprise Institute, the first-term Republican and former U.S. Attorney for the Garden State said it was obvious that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid would have to be reined in if the country’s course is to be corrected. Tacitly acknowledging that Social Security, in particular, has long been regarded as a “third rail of politics” because the elderly are growing in numbers and they vote in droves, Christie said retirement ages would have to rise.
“I just said it, and I’m still standing here,” Christie said in mock wonder. “And I did not vaporize!”
Christie got plenty of coverage for his address, including write-ups in The New York Times and Washington Post, in which he said it’s high time for politicians to get serious about what they know to be true but are afraid to say.
“We have to reform Medicare because it costs too much and it is going to bankrupt us,” Christie told his audience, again feigning wonder that he was still standing. “Once again, lightning did not come through the windows and strike me dead!”
“Our country and our states are weighed down by an albatross of irresponsibility,” Mr. Christie said, “that we have foisted upon ourselves as leaders and that you as citizens have permitted us to get away with.”
“Chris Christie Isn’t Pretty and He Tells Ugly Truths,” the Post’s Dana Milbank declared after the speech.
Indeed, Christie is portly rather than pretty, but he seems quite comfortable with who he is, occasionally poking fun at his physique. And Tea Party devotees don’t seem to mind his girth. As to whether his tough talk can appeal to the masses and propel him to the White House one day, Christie was coy for a change.
“I’m not stupid. I see the opportunity. I see it,” he said, as an audience member asked him about the 2012 presidential election. “That’s not the reason to run. That’s not a reason to be president of the United States. You have to believe in your heart, in your soul and in your mind that you are ready. I don’t believe that right now.”
Raven Clabough of the New American, which says it stands for limited government under the Constitution, called Christie’s speech “captivating,” and the National Review Online recalled that Christie has stood up to the demands of public unions in New Jersey, daring to test the long-held theory that doing so is to invite political oblivion.
Nor is Christie worried about his “tough on crime” credentials, to judge from his website bio: “As the chief federal law enforcement officer in New Jersey, Chris earned praise from leaders in both parties and drew national attention for his efforts in battling political corruption, corporate crime, human trafficking, gangs, terrorism and polluters. Chris led a widely acclaimed charge against public corruption. Regardless of party affiliation or political influence, when laws were broken, Chris took action.”
It can be foolhardy to make long range predictions in politics. But it’s a safe bet that, in the short run, no one will dismiss what Christie said about entitlement programs and the national debt. Demographers and other people with math skills have been warning for years that a reckoning is coming.
“If nominated, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve,” Gen. William T. Sherman declared when there was talk of drafting him for president in 1884. At the time, the general was pretty popular, except in that part of the country south of the Mason-Dixon line.
Christie’s “denials” haven’t been nearly that categorical. If he does harbor presidential ambitions, he has time on his side: he is only 48. He can reflect on what happened to another politician, Walter F. Mondale, when he told the American people in 1984 that taxes would have to rise, despite what his opponent, President Ronald Reagan, was saying.
But if Wednesday’s speech is any signal, Christie doesn’t intend to soften his message.
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REMARKS AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY BY ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER AT THE
PRESS CONFERENCE ON MEDICARE FRAUD STRIKE FORCE ACTIONS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Good morning – and thank you all for being here.
Today, I’m joined by several key leaders and partners in the U.S. government’s fight against health care fraud: Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, FBI Executive Assistant Director Shawn Henry, Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division Lanny Breuer, and HHS Inspector General Daniel Levinson.
We are pleased to announce the largest federal health care fraud takedown in our nation’s history. Today, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, a joint initiative between the Departments of Justice and HHS, charged 111 defendants in nine cities – including doctors, nurses, and health care company owners and executives – for their alleged participation in Medicare fraud schemes involving more than $225 million in false billings.
We are also pleased to announce the expansion of the Medicare Fraud Strike Force – which currently operates in Baton Rogue, Brooklyn, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and Tampa – to two additional cities: Dallas and Chicago.
Through this operation, we have identified and shut down a variety of large-scale fraud offenses. We have safeguarded precious taxpayer dollars. And we have helped to protect our nation’s most essential health care programs – Medicare and Medicaid – which provide critical assistance to the most vulnerable among us: seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income Americans.
Today’s successful takedown is the result of extraordinary collaboration. More than 700 law enforcement agents from the FBI, HHS-Office of Inspector General, multiple Medicaid Fraud Control Units, and other federal, state and local law enforcement agencies participated. And I want to recognize and thank these agents for their outstanding work.
As today’s arrests prove, the federal government is working aggressively to pursue health care criminals around the country and to bring offenders to justice. With a case against 20 alleged offenders unsealed Tuesday in the Southern District of Florida, we have charged 131 defendants – for fraud schemes involving more than $425 million in billings – in the last 2 days alone.
Put simply, our Strike Force operations reflect an unprecedented commitment to eradicating health care fraud – a commitment that inspired the creation of the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team – known as HEAT – in May of 2009. Through HEAT, we’ve ensured that the fight against health care fraud is a Cabinet-level priority. And the President’s recent budget proposal reflects this fact. We will continue efforts to strengthen our capacity to fight health care fraud, especially through the enhanced use of our joint Medicare Fraud Strike Force.
This approach is working. In just less than four years, this initiative has resulted in the indictments of nearly 1,000 defendants. By improperly billing Medicare for more than $2 billion, these criminals have siphoned desperately needed public resources. Their actions have also helped to drive up health care costs nationwide.
Although today marks a critical step forward in combating and deterring illegal activity, our work is far from over. With today’s arrests, we’re sending an important message: health care fraud is not “easy money.” It is a serious crime – and, as we’ve shown today, we will make sure it has serious consequences.
Once again, I want to thank the dedicated agents, investigators, prosecutors, law enforcement officials, and many other partners involved in today’s takedown. They are the critical to winning the fight against health care fraud – as we must, and as we will.
I’d now like to turn things over to Secretary Sebelius.
Family ties and political connections matter a lot in a small state like Arkansas, as William Conner Eldridge Jr. must know. They helped make him the new top federal prosecutor for the Western District of Arkansas and, at age 33, apparently the youngest U.S. Attorney in the country.
A consummate networker, Eldridge — having already amassed a $15 million fortune working in his wife’s family businesses – seems bound for higher office. He even talks like a politician-in-waiting. “It’s very inspiring and rewarding and almost hard to describe what it means to serve in a position like this in your home state,” the former bank executive said in an interview with Main Justice, speaking about his new job as U.S. Attorney in Fort Smith.
William Conner Eldridge, Jr. (gov)
The U.S. Attorney’s office that Eldridge now runs is something of an outpost. It has the third lightest caseload of the 94 federal prosecuting offices in the country, after the Eastern District of Oklahoma and Guam, according to the Justice Department’s Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. The district is so small it hasn’t built a web site.
Eldridge got the job through his deep Arkansas ties and political connections – and some luck, when another candidate dropped out.
Timber magnate Ross Whipple is Eldridge’s father-in-law and one of the ingredients in his success. Not long after Eldridge graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Law (he got his undergraduate degree from Davidson College in North Carolina), he went to work as counsel both for Ross Whipple’s Horizon Timber Services and for the family’s banking interests.
In 2004, Whipple asked his son-in-law to work at Summit, a Whipple-owned local bank. Eldridge started out as vice president for credit administration and assistant general counsel, glided through various other positions and was chief executive of the bank from 2008 to 2010.
Ross Whipple is related to the late Jane Ross, a prominent philanthropist, who had extensive timber holdings in south Arkansas. Whipple sits on the board of the $88-million Ross Foundation, which gives generously to charities in Arkansas. Eldridge’s wife Mary Elizabeth — who is Whipple’s daughter — also works for the foundation.
After President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, Arkansas Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, both Democrats, announced their recommendations for the Western District U.S. Attorney position. Along with Eldridge, the senators recommended Shawn J. Johnson, an assistant attorney general in the Arkansas attorney general’s office; and Christopher D. Plumlee, then-chief of the criminal section in the Western District.
Eldridge seemed to have the inside track. He’d worked as Lincoln’s driver in her first Senate campaign in 1999, and his family had been selling tractors and farm implements in rural eastern Arkansas for four generations, alongside Lincoln’s rice-growing family. Eldridge had called seemingly every childhood and college friend he had, asking them to support his candidacy with the senators.
It also certainly didn’t hurt his prospects that Eldridge’s wife and her family donated a total of $18,000 to Lincoln’s re-election campaign in 2009 and 2010, when she was struggling in what would ultimately be an unsuccessful bid for re-election.
But in Washington, where Eldridge’s candidacy was vetted, he met a cool reception, according to people with knowledge of the process. Eldridge was very young and had never been a prosecutor.
In May 2009, someone who wasn’t recommended by the senators, state prosecutor Carlton Jones, mysteriously emerged as the leading candidate. Then the chief deputy prosecutor in Arkansas’s Miller and Lafayette counties, Jones had initially been recommended as a federal judge, despite wanting the U.S. Attorney appointment.
As it turned out, Jones didn’t get the judgeship. His name was floated once again for U.S. Attorney, but the slow nomination process caused him to withdraw from consideration in February 2010, after he met with Attorney General Eric Holder in Washington.
After Jones’s withdrawal, the FBI began vetting Eldridge. The other two candidates recommended by the senators don’t appear to have been seriously considered, even though one of them — Plumlee — had been a career prosecutor.
Eldridge, meanwhile, filled in the blank on his resume. He took a job as a special deputy prosecutor in Clark County, a post with a slightly misleading title. The term “special deputy prosecutor” means volunteer, according to Clark County Prosecutor Blake Batson. While in that post, Eldridge also continued to serve as chief executive for the Whipple-owned Summit bank.
“Conner is just a natural,” Batson said. “I observed him many, many times at trial and watched his style and his demeanor and his abilities. I’ve just always been impressed with him.”
Cases involving the physical and sexual abuse of children are among those that disturb him the most, Eldridge said in the interview, calling them the ones that “always motivated me to work hard” and try to “make a difference in the lives of those victims.”
Obama officially nominated Eldridge in September 2010 — a development that was no surprise, said Jay Barth, chairman of the Department of Politics and International Relations at Hendrix College in Conway. “Personal connections matter enormously in this state because of its size,” Barth said.
But Eldridge’s inexperience wasn’t completely ignored by other Arkansans. “I did hear people saying things about his relative youth and questioning whether the family ties were at work,” Barth said, “but I think that happens when people feel like they were more deserving and didn’t make the list.”
Although he was never a federal prosecutor, Eldridge clerked for U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele of the Eastern District, an experience he described as invaluable. Eldridge also has been lauded by the newspaper Arkansas Business as being among the “Top 40 under 40,” and by the Arkansas law school as “Most Likely to Succeed in the Practice of Law.”
And what about the practice of politics? Does Eldridge have any ambitions in that direction? Not now, at least, he said.
Still, Barth noted, being a U.S. Attorney has often been a launch pad for elected office, as it was for Asa Hutchinson, later elected to Congress from Arkansas as a Republican; and for former George W. Bush White House aide Tim Griffin, who survived an uproar over his appointment as U.S. Attorney in Little Rock in 2006 to be elected to Congress last year. Federal prosecutors can get media attention, especially with high-profile cases — and it’s tough for rivals to paint them as soft on crime.
Confirmed by the Senate in December, Eldridge replaced Deborah J. Groom, who led the U.S. Attorney office after Bush-appointee Robert Balfe resigned in January 2009.
