President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated Alison J. Nathan to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. In February, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced he was recommending Nathan to the bench.
Alison J. Nathan
Since 2010, Nathan has worked in the New York attorney general’s office as as special counsel to the solicitor general. Previously, she served as a special assistant to Obama and an associate White House counsel. She also served as a senior adviser to the Obama campaign’s voter protection effort and was on its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advisory committee.
From 2006 to 2008, she was a visiting assistant professor of law at Fordham University Law School and later was a Fritz Alexander Fellow at New York University School of Law from 2008 to 2009.
Before entering careers in government service and academia, Nathan was an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP from 2002 to 2006 in the firm’s New York and D.C. offices.
Nathan has clerked for John Paul Stevens from 2001 to 2002 and Betty B. Fletcher of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from 2000 to 2001.
She earned her law degree from Cornell Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Cornell Law Review. Nathan received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University.
Nathan and her partner, law professor Meg Satterthwaite, have twin toddler sons, Nathan Robert Satterthwaite and Oliver Nathan Satterthwaite. The family met with Obama at the White House.
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President Barack Obama on Thursday nominated a replacement for one of the few remaining U.S. Attorneys appointed by President George W. Bush.
George Beck Jr. (Capell & Howard)
Obama tapped George Beck to replace U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, who has led the Middle District of Alabama U.S. Attorney’s Office since 2001. She is one of five U.S. Attorneys still in office who were confirmed by the Senate and appointed by Bush.
Canary irked several Democrats in Alabama for what they considered a politically motivated prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D).
At one time, the White House considered Michel Nicrosi, who lost in a 2010 bid for Alabama attorney general, and defense attorney Joe Van Heest for the Montgomery-based U.S. Attorney post. Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby (R), who backed another candidate, contributed to the slow pace of the process.
Beck is currently a shareholder at the law firm of Capell & Howard P.C. in Montgomery. He previously was a sole practitioner from 1986 to 2003.
The nominee also was a partner at the law firm of Baxley, Beck, Dillard & Dauphin from 1979 to 1982 after serving eight years as deputy attorney general for the state of Alabama.
From 1966 to 1971, he was an associate at the law firm of St. John & St. John LLC.
Beck received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University in 1963 and graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1966.
The Senate has confirmed 76 of Obama’s U.S. Attorneys thus far. Including Beck, there are five U.S. Attorney nominees waiting for consideration by the Senate. There are 93 U.S. Attorney posts across the nation.
Citing his career as a plaintiff’s attorney, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday called into question the qualifications of John J. McConnell to sit on the U.S. District Court in Rhode Island.
Lisa A. Rickard, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, said the 11-7 Senate Judiciary Committee vote on McConnell’s nomination Thursday “underscores the strong concern that many have with this troubled judicial nominee.” In a letter to the committee, R. Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs at the Chamber, raised concerns about his legal work against companies that manufactured lead paint and payments he will receive from his career as a plaintiffs’ lawyer. McConnell is a partner at the law firm of Motley Rice LLC in Providence.
“It is well-documented that Mr. McConnell is less than qualified to be a federal judge, that he has demonstrated a fundamental bias against business, and that his lifetime payouts from his career as a plaintiffs’ lawyer pose serious conflict-of-interest concerns,” Rickard said in a statement. The Chamber represents business interests.
President Barack Obama has nominated McConnell three times over the last year, but the full Senate has yet to act on his nomination before adjourning.
Politics-not the law–drives President Barack Obama’s Justice Department and Attorney General Eric Holder, conservatives charged Thursday, renewing now-familiar allegations against the Democratic administration.
Speaking at a panel discussion hosted by conservative public interest group Judicial Watch, the organization’s Tom Fitton, former DOJ Civil Rights Division official Hans von Spakovsky, Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defense Fund and Debra Burlingame of Keep America Safe expressed concern that politics played a role in decisions made by the DOJ during the Obama administration. Their criticism centered on the DOJ’s handling of a case against the New Black Panther Party, the Defense of Marriage Act and terrorism suspects.
The discussion comes one day after the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility said that race and politics played no role in DOJ’s handling of the New Black Panther case.
But that did not deter the conservatives. Fitton said the controversies involving the DOJ have drawn concern about the direction Holder is taking the DOJ.
“We knew Holder would be a disaster as Attorney General,” said Fitton, who is the president of Judicial Watch. “But even I could not have predicted just how bad the situation would get on his watch. A review of Holder’s record so far makes one wonder how he remains Attorney General.” The organization recently filed suit to try to force the Justice Department to release records detailing possible meetings between DOJ officials and the NAACP to discuss the New Black Panther Party case.
von Spakovsky took aim at the decision by the DOJ to drop most of the charges in the civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party in 2009, saying he wasn’t satisfied with the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility conclusion released this week that politics or race did not play a role in DOJ decisions related to the case. He said, for instance, that OPR officials did not interview White House officials as part of the probe. He also charged that Holder attempted to dictate OPR’s conclusions.
The George W. Bush administration filed the civil lawsuit against the New Black Panther Party and three of its members in the waning days of his presidency. It alleged the New Black Panther Party members intimidated voters by wearing military-style clothing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood during the November 2008 election. One of the men held a nightstick.
Republicans have blasted the Holder DOJ over the Department’s handling of the case, expressing concern that politics had a role in the DOJ’s decisions in the case. Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) prodded Holder on the case this month at a House hearing, claiming that the Attorney General allows reverse racism to thrive in the DOJ Civil Rights Division. Holder vehemently denied the allegation.
The conservative-led U.S. Commission on Civil Rights spent most of the last two years probing the DOJ’s handling of the case. The commission said in a report on its investigation that the department did not completely address “serious accusations” made by former DOJ Civil Rights Division J. Christian Adams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Coates, the former chief of the Civil Rights Division Voting Section, about opposition in the DOJ to taking up voting rights cases against minorities.
“The federal laws enforced by the Justice Department were intended to protect all Americans regardless of color,” von Spakovsky said. “I never assumed when I worked there as the Obama administration did that I could ignore my duty to enforce the law.”
Nimocks, who is senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian nonprofit organization, focused his disapproval of the DOJ on its announcement last month that it would no longer defend the 1996 law that restricts the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman. He said the decision on the Defense of Marriage Act raises questions about the role politics may have played.
The Obama administration previously had supported the defense of the law. But Holder said last month there was no longer a reasonable argument to be made in the defense of the statute, citing a changed legal landscape concerning homosexuality.
“When you look at the whole ball of wax and the legal analysis, it seems very clear that the decision here is not one based necessarily on the rule of law but is a more politically or ideologically driven decision, which puts the rule of law at risk,” Nimocks said.
Burlingame, who co-founded Keep America Safe, which aims to enhance national security, expressed concern with Holder’s support for using the federal court system to handle some terrorism matters.
The Attorney General has faced backlash from Republicans and Democrats over his November 2009 announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged accomplices would be tried in a Manhattan federal court as part of Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center. But since the announcement, the White House has said that it would consider using military commissions for the prosecutions and review other locations for a civilian trial.
“I believe the Holder Justice Department, which is ideologically married to the policies of his boss, the Obama administration itself, to demilitarize this war,” Burlingame said. “And a lot of the policies that are coming out of the Justice Department are aimed at doing just that.”
The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it is investigating the Seattle Police Department to determine whether there is a deep-seated problem of “discriminatory policing” and the use of excessive force.
The inquiry, to answer whether there is a systemic pattern of violating the U.S. Constitution and federal law in the 1,300-member police force, was announced by Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, head of DOJ’s Civil Division, and the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington, Jenny Durkan, both of whom said there was no single, egregious incident that sparked the probe.
“We can’t get into the specifics of what we’ve discovered,” Perez said at a Seattle news conference with Durkan. But the kind of inquiry announced on Thursday was urged recently by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington State, which cited several examples of possible discrimination and use of excessive force by officers against members of minority groups.
Perez insisted that the very existence of the inquiry should not be taken as a sign that the DOJ and U.S. Attorney’s office are already moving toward conclusions. Nor should the Seattle situation be likened to that in New Orleans, whose police department was long plagued by corruption, excessive use of force and other problems. (See Main Justice’s recent coverage.)
Both Perez and Durkan said the scope of the investigation would be determined by the facts that are uncovered. They said it was impossible to estimate how far back in time it would go — “a door, another door and another door,” is how Perez described the course of such probes.
So far, the officials said, the inquiry is civil in scope, not criminal. They promised to listen to whoever has useful information and said they have already received good cooperation from members of the police department.
The department, headed by Chief John Diaz, offered statistics in its 2009 annual report that Seattle police use force much less often than is typical for departments nationwide; that the use of force by Seattle police has been declining, and that even when force is used relatively few people arrested suffer serious injury.
Diaz became chief two years ago. His predecessor was R. Gil Kerlikowske, now head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy — the “Drug Czar,” as the post is commonly known. In his nine years as chief, he emphasized community policing principles and good relations with the people as pillars of effective law enforcement.
On the other hand, he had strained relations with the NAACP, which called for his dismissal in 2007 on grounds that he had been far too tolerant of rough treatment by officers of minorities.
While working as an FBI agent in the 1990s, Gerard “Jerry” Forrester claims he routinely arrested Bahamian criminal defendants in South Florida and illegally returned them to the Bahamas on commercial flights without any formal review of their cases in U.S. courts, the Miami Herald reported.
Jerry Forrester (jf-investigations.com)
Forrester later said he was simply bragging and that the claims were not true.
The revelation came in the form of secretly recorded conversations that were released this week as part of an unrelated civil court case in the Bahamas, the newspaper reported. The recordings were done by former Scotland Yard detective Alick Morrison, who was working as a private investigator for one of the parties in the civil case.
During the 1990s, Forrester, who now is a private investigator, was the FBI’s Miami liaison officer in the Caribbean. On the recordings, he detailed the kidnappings. “I did it all the time. … All the time for 20 or 30 years.” Morrison replied, ““Well, you can’t just pack somebody up and put them on a plane.” Forrester retorted: : “We did it all the time.”
In the recordings he detailed several instances of when and how this occurred.
The Herald reported that Forrester downplayed his statements on the tapes: “Yes, I did say it. Was it true? No. Why did I embellish? Because I brag,” he laughed.
According to the newspaper, it is unclear how many times Forrester may have forcibly removed Bahamian fugitives from South Florida.
However a former Bahamian police officer, Bradley Pratt, who worked with Forrester denies the former agent’s claims. Of one specific case, Pratt said, “I can categorically tell you that’s a lie. The Bahamian government would not engage in such activity, nor tolerate such activity.” The newspaper added that Pratt said Forrester has a tendency to “run off at the mouth.”
An agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Wednesday was sentenced to to one year and one day in prison for stealing cash during an Oct. 18 drug raid in suburban Cleveland, Scripps Media reported.
Steven Campbell, who also will be supervised for three years after his release from prison, was part of a task force that raided a home in Lyndhurt. The drug suspect told agents he had a couple pounds of marijuana in a blue bag in the garage and between $45,000 and $50,000 under a dresser. Campbell, along with at least one DEA agent, found the cash. Campbell began stuffing fistfuls of cash into his pockets, an act that an agent witnessed.
When confronted, Campbell said the only money he had was his personal money. After resisting a search, Campbell was handcuffed. Before ATF agent Ed Dabkowski could search Campbell, the cash fell out of Campbell’s pockets. It was estimated that he took more than $46,000.
The case was prosecuted by the U.S. Attorneys office for the Eastern District of Michigan because the the Northern District of Ohio is recused from the case.
Detroit U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said, “Just as we hold public officials accountable for wrongdoing, we hold federal agents accountable as well.”
The Departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security are offering a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of individuals responsible for the murder of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and the the attempted murder of another, the agencies announced in a statement.
In February, ICE agent Jaime Zapata was gunned down while working in Mexico. Fellow agent Victor Avila Jr., who was with Zapata during the shooting, was wounded as they drove their armored Suburban with U.S. Embassy plates along a highway in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
To collect information, the FBI, in conjunction with ICE, has established a 24-hour tip line at 1-866-859-9778 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 1-866-859-9778 end_of_the_skype_highlighting or +001 800-225-5324. People also may submit tips online at https://tips.fbi.gov.
The U.S. reward is being offered through the State Department’s Narcotics Rewards Program.
Separately, the Government of Mexico on Wednesday announced a reward of up to 10 million pesos (approximately $840,000) for information leading to the arrest of individuals allegedly responsible for Zapata’s murder and Avila’s attempted murder.
Zapata’s murder has come under congressional scrutiny since guns involved in a controversial federal gun smuggling investigation were found at the scene.
FBI Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday that the bureau has struggled to recruit Somali Americans and other members of key ethnic communities as agents.
The FBI is trying to encourage them to apply for jobs at the bureau, but the efforts haven’t always been fruitful, Mueller said in response to a question from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing on the FBI.
“We have not been as successful as we would like,” Mueller said. “But we continue to press forward and recruit from all segments of the community.”
Somali Americans from Minnesota made national headlines in 2009 when federal authorities brought terrorism charges against about 15 of them for their alleged connection to Somalia-based militant group al-Shabaab. The FBI said al-Shabaab was recruiting men from Minnesota to fight in Somalia.
Mueller said members of the Minnesota Somali-American community have been “very cooperative” with the FBI in its efforts to root out terrorism.
“I think that the Somali community in Minneapolis was taken aback by the number of young men who have traveled to Somalia to work with al-Shabaab,” Mueller said.
The FBI has come under fire from all sides — Republicans, Democrats and Muslim Americans — for its handling of terrorism cases involving U.S. citizens. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations last month filed suit against the FBI alleging the bureau improperly targeted Muslims for surveillance.
Mueller told House members this month that the FBI has a “very good relationship” with Muslim Americans. But he acknowledged that FBI actions in terrorism investigations can often be misinterpreted because the classified nature of some probes makes it difficult to provide details about them.
On Tuesday, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez of the Civil Rights Division testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee about steps the DOJ is taking to protect the Muslim Americans from prejudice and abuse because of their religion. Perez touted several cases in which the DOJ has sought to defend the rights of Muslims to practice their religion freely and not face discrimination.
