The House Judiciary Committee will take up legislation on expiring Patriot Act provisions after May 11, leaving Congress only days to pass a bill renewing the powers.
Before acting on legislation, the panel on May 11 will hold a third hearing on the three Patriot Act authorities that are set to expire May 27, a committee aide told Main Justice. But the committee and the full House will have little time to act. Between May 11 and May 27, the House currently has only seven days set aside for floor votes and is not slated to hold votes on May 27.
The Judiciary Committee has not considered a bill yet and while the Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a measure, it has not gone to the floor.
The Obama administration and panel Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) have expressed support for extending all the expiring powers. The authorities include the “lone wolf” power, which allows investigations of suspected terrorists not tied to a specific organization or nation, along with powers that authorize “roving wiretaps” and make it easier for federal authorities to get tangible evidence — such as library records — as part of a probe.
The Senate Judiciary Committee under Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) approved legislation that would extend the sunsetting authorities and phase out national security letters, which are administrative subpoenas that the FBI uses to get evidence without a court order.
But the bill garnered the support of only one panel Republican, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah. The seven Republicans who voted against the bill expressed concern that the legislation would make it more difficult for law enforcement authorities to use the Patriot Act powers.
The Senate, which is set to be in session until May 27, has yet to schedule a floor vote on the bill.
The three Patriot Act powers are currently allowed under a 90-day extension that Congress passed in February.
The House tried to pass a Patriot Act renewal bill in February that would have extended the authorities until December. That measure was considered under House procedures that required a two-thirds majority to pass the bill. But House Democrats and conservative Republicans joined together and the bill was not passed.
Veteran Department of Justice prosecutor Paul E. Pelletier, who helped build the DOJ’s Criminal Fraud Section into white-collar law enforcement powerhouse, departs today for a new job in the private sector.
Pelletier, 53, was recruited to Fraud in 2002 from the Miami U.S. Attorney’s Office. He spent nine years as the Fraud Section’s chief deputy and acting chief. He will jump to the Washington office of Boston-based Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo P.C., where he will help expand the firm’s white collar defense practice.
Paul Pelletier
Widely given the lion’s share of the credit for transforming Fraud from a sleepy unit to a swift-moving and successful section, Pelletier recruited and trained dozens of Fraud attorneys to try complex financial fraud, health care fraud, insider trading and foreign bribery cases. He’s frequently referred to as “the heart and soul of the section.” Main Justice will explore Pelletier’s tenure at Fraud in more depth next week.
Current Fraud Section Chief Denis McInerney said Pelletier has been the “backbone” of the section since his arrival nine years ago, and leaves behind an “indelible” imprint. Former Fraud Chief Steve Tyrrell, now a partner at Weil Gotschal & Manges LLP, said Pelletier was a “team player” who both “advanced Fraud’s mission and improved its reputation.” Joshua Hochberg, who spent seven years as fraud section chief before joining McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in Washington in 2005, lured Pelletier from Miami. He said on his watch, Pelletier “inspired young lawyers not to be afraid..”
Pelletier did his mentoring with a sense of humor. At his first encounter with budding star Leo Wise in July 2005, Wise remembers Pelletier, who graduated from Providence College and New England School of Law, poking fun at the aspiring prosecutor’s blue chip resume–Harvard Law, DOJ honors program.
“I think the first thing he ever said to me–because Paul had graduated from a Massachusetts law school–was, ‘Not a lot of great prosecutors come out of Harvard Law,’” said Wise, now an AUSA in Maryland, who counts Pelletier as a key mentor. “I’d always wanted to be a prosecutor, but there, I was a fish out of water because 93 percent intend to go to big law firms. ”
From his earliest days at Fraud investigating the Enron scandal, Pelletier proved to local U.S. Attorney’s Offices, the FBI and myriad federal agencies that the Fraud team could parachute in and help them tackle complex cases.
With help from key deputies plucked out of private practice, he redefined the way healthcare fraud is prosecuted, initiating a whole series of prosecutions that have saved upwards of $7 billion.
His eye for spotting talent had a lot to do with the section’s success. Current and former health care fraud deputies Hank Walther and his immediate predecessor Kirk Ogrosky, left private practice in 2006. Ogrosky, who jumped to Arnold & Porter LLP last March, had once been an assistant U.S. attorney in Miami — although Pelletier plucked him out of the Washington office of New York-based Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Walther came out of DLA Piper LLP, where he was defending pharmaceutical companies.
“At the Fraud Section, Pelletier created an atmosphere that was truly infectious,” Ogrosky said. “He recruited a large crop of talented attorneys over the years. His ability to find talent was remarkable. Pelletier was never impressed by high-end credentials, he wanted to know what people had done in their lives and what they had overcome to succeed. When Pelletier said an attorney ‘gets it,’ it meant that the attorney had the judgment and ability to succeed. But his recruiting was just the first step because he was the consummate mentor providing guidance at every step. At the Fraud Section, Pelletier encouraged us to think big, move quickly and have a positive impact.”
Pelletier recruited budding prosecutorial talent from state and federal offices and private practice. He recruited Chuck Duross, the current deputy chief of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unit, as well as Patrick Stokes, who recently tried and won the $3 billion financial fraud case against Lee Farkas, chief executive of TPG Inc.
“Pelletier’s absence is a big leadership loss for DOJ,” Ogrosky said. “His contagious enthusiasm for the law and his skills as a mentor created an atmosphere that made the Fraud Section a truly special place. In over a decade that I’ve worked with Pelletier, he has never given the impression that he worked at a job — it was always a passion that he enjoyed. “
Pelletier is the last criminal fraud deputy to leave after Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer announced leadership changes in the section in 2009.
The departure list includes:
- Former chief Tyrrell, who left for Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in February
- Former Deputy Chief Ogrosky, who oversaw health care fraud prosecutions, who left for Arnold & Porter LLP.
- Former Deputy Chief Mark Mendelsohn, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act supervisor, left for Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
McInerney, who came in to head the section in early 2010 is a former litigation partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP. He replenished management ranks, naming Walther to succeed Ogrosky and Duross to succeed Mendelsohn, and making Stokes and Kathleen McGovern co-deputy chiefs for corporate and securities fraud.
The Obama administration on Friday extended the comment period for controversial proposed rules that would require gun dealers in states bordering Mexico to disclose sales of multiple rifles.
The rules are intended to curb arms smuggling across the border. The administration has received about 13,000 responses to the proposal so far. About 70 percent of the comments were favorable.
The National Rifle Association opposes the plan. The gun rights organization said the administration is using gun crimes in Mexico as an excuse to limit firearm sales — an accusation that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives denies. However, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said the proposed rule respects the rights of law-abiding citizens to purchase rifles, while ensuring that law enforcement has a new powerful tool to catch straw purchasers and illegal traffickers.
Two lawmakers, Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) attempted to include a provision in the omnibus spending bill that is funding most federal programs that would have prohibited the bureau from using federal funds to implement the rules. The amenndment was dropped at the last minute, after lobbying from some lawmakers and Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S.
The ATF has come under fire from congressional Republicans for a gun smuggling operation — “Project Gunrunner” and its “Operation Fast and Furious” component — which allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in an effort to track them.
The ATF program made it possible for suspected smugglers to buy 1,765 firearms, 797 of which were recovered in Mexico and the United States after they were used in crimes. Of those crime guns, 195 were recovered in Mexico. Two of the firearms traced to the program were found near the U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed last year.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, have sent investigators to Arizona to probe the program.
Issa and Grassley also have sent several letters to the Justice Department and the ATF, a DOJ agency, demanding records and documents about the program. Issa has threatened to try to hold ATF officials in contempt of Congress because they have not answered his queries.
Jurors deliberating the fate of Raj Rajaratnam finished deliberations for the week at mid-day Friday and will go back to work on Monday.
The jurors have been at it since last Monday, and they haven’t sent down any notes with questions or requests since Wednesday, Michael Rothfeld of The Wall Street Journal noted. Since the defendant faces 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in what has been billed as the biggest insider trading case in a long time, maybe it’s not surprising that the jury has been out a while.
Rajaratnam, 53, a billionaire co-founder of the Galleon Group LLC hedge fund, is accused of reaping more than $60 million in illicit profits using confidential information from well place confederates. More than 20 people caught up in the inquiry in the Southern District of New York have pleaded guilty, and some have testified against their former friend. Prosecutors also introduced dozens of tape-recorded phone conversations purportedly showing the defendant engaging in his inside dealings.
The defense team has tried to convince the jury that Rajaratnam merely did what a lot of people wish they could do: made shrewd investments by being smart enough to assemble bits of information that were already out there into a “mosaic.”
Some lawyers who have followed the case say the SDNY prosecutors should try a new line of work if they lose this case, so strong is the evidence. On the other hand, Courtney Comstock of Business Insider wrote that the jurors had asked to review what amounted to the defense’s best evidence, and that prosecutors were “visibly worried.”
Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, has a lot riding on the case, although not as much as Rajaratnam, who could go to prison for two decades if he is convicted. On the other hand, he’s not on trial for being money-hungry, and his team doesn’t have to prove him innocent to win. It just has to create a “reasonable doubt.”
A former federal probation officer pleaded guilty on Thursday to violating the civil rights of women under his supervision by abusing them sexually and faces up to 10 years in prison, the Department of Justice has announced.
Mark John Walker, 52, of Eugene, Ore., admitted taking advantage of female offenders, including some who were highly vulnerable because of prior sexual abuse, mental illness and drug addiction, while he was a probation officer from 2006 to 2009, a DOJ statement said. He is to be sentenced on July 18.
“Law enforcement officials violate the public trust when they abuse the rights of individuals under their supervision,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The Justice Department will continue to vigorously prosecute those who abuse their power in this way.”
Dwight Holton, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon, said “our criminal justice system is enhanced every day” by the service of most dedicated, loyal probation officers. “Walker betrayed his fellow officers and abused his power by sexually abusing the vulnerable people he had sworn to help,” Holton said. “These victims have been heard.”
The decision of King & Spalding to bail out of the controversy surrounding the Defense of Marriage Act continues to have a ripple effect, with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli notifying the firm that his office was ending its relationship with it because of the firm’s “obsequious act of weakness.”
On Monday, the firm said it was not going to represent the U.S. House of Representatives after all as Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) leads a defense of the law, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, following the Obama administration’s decision to no longer defend the law in court.
The firm’s switch immediately triggered the resignation of partner Paul Clement, former Solicitor General (see Main Justice’s account).
In a letter to firm partner Joseph Lynch, which was obtained by The Washington Examiner and also reported on by The Huffington Post on Friday, Cuccinelli said the firm’s change of stance was “such an obsequious act of weakness that I feel compelled to end your legal association with Virginia so that there is no chance that one of my legal clients will be put in the embarrassing and difficult situation like the client you walked away from, the House of Representatives.”
Cuccinelli told Lynch that “your firm utterly lacks” the qualities of commitment, courage, strength and toughness necessary for effective lawyers.
The city of Portland, Ore., will contribute to an anti-terrorism partnership with federal and state authorities on an “as-needed basis,” following a six year absence from the venture, The Oregonian reported Thursday.
The Portland City Council unanimously endorsed the “as-needed” participation with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force, allowing the police chief to put officers on cases after consulting with the police commissioner. But Portland will not sign an official memorandum of understanding with the FBI.
The city pulled out of the task force in 2005 over worries about insufficient supervision and civil liberties protections. But the arrest of Somali-born U.S. citizen Mohamed Osman Mohamud on charges that he tried to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland restarted a debate in the city over the task force, according to The Los Angeles Times.
Oregon U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton welcomed the city council’s decision to participate in the task force.
“Everywhere I went early on in this process, cynics and skeptics said to me, ‘Council will never do anything serious. It’s just not that kind of place. It won’t get done. It will get lost in the weeds.’” Holton said, according to The Oregonian. “And you’ve proved them wrong, and I’m deeply, deeply grateful for that.”
A Florida Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent is under investigation for allegedly having accepted more than $100,000 in bribes from a government informant, SunSentinel.com reported Friday.
The probe centers on allegations that the informant made payments to agent Juan Martinez in exchange for providing temporary parole allowing Colombians and others into the country, the newspaper reported, quoting several sources.
Martinez, a former Miami police officer, has investigated drug traffickers, among others. Normally, the U.S. grants temporary parole benefits to endangered family members of traffickers and government witnesses helping the Justice Department
The informant, Jose Miguel Aguirre-Pinzon, was charged in mid-April with bribery. He was accused of making a $109,00o payment to a public official.
Martinez also is under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the newspaper said. He was detained on late March after DEA found a large amount of cash in his car.
Martinez’s attorney, Marty Raskin, declined comment to the newspaper. Martinez has been suspended without pay.
A $760 million settlement between the Department of Agriculture and American Indian farmers and ranchers over discriminatory policies at the agriculture agency received final court approval on Thursday, ending more than a decade of litigation.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District of Columbia called the terms historic, fair and appropriate, according to The Blog of Legal Times. The settlement is also a victory for the plaintiffs’ lawyers: Sullivan said the lawyers can split $60.8 million in fees, twice what the Department of Justice had recommended.
The final settlement includes $680 million in damages and $80 million in debt relief. (The preliminary agreement was reported upon by Main Justice last fall.)
The long-running lawsuit on behalf of Indians alleged that the government, between 1981 and 2007, denied Native American farmers and ranchers the same opportunities as others to obtain low-interest rate loans from the government.
Joseph Sellers, a partner with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and lead counsel in the class action, said the final approval “marks the end of an unfortunate chapter in our nation’s history where USDA’s credit discrimination against Native Americans was the norm,” the BLT said.
The Department of Agriculture has also reached settlements with black farmers and ranchers, women and Hispanics who alleged discrimination in loans and other benefits from the agency.
With FBI Director Robert Mueller’s 10-year term expiring in September, President Obama faces one of the most important decisions of his presidency in the fight against terrorism: the selection of the next FBI Director. There are already calls for the President to nominate a judge or prosecutor, fields where the majority of former Directors served before assuming office.
The Bureau’s leadership must evolve just as the challenges facing the Bureau have evolved, and the President should not limit candidates to judges or prosecutors, as accomplished as some of these individuals may be. The first Director selected post 9-11 must continue to enhance the effectiveness of the FBI in the fight against terrorism, while not compromising the Bureau’s established expertise at both criminal and counterintelligence investigations.
The FBI Agents Association, representing over 12,000 current and former FBI Agents, believes the President should be guided by a new set of principles that will lead him to the best candidate, regardless of background. The FBIAA set forth these principles in a letter to Vice President Biden and Attorney General Holder, and identified former FBI Executive Assistant Director Michael Mason as a candidate who embodies these principles.
The FBIAA’s first principle is that a new Director must recognize that FBI Special Agents are central to the Bureau’s core mission. In the wake of 9-11, there was a concerted effort to transfer the Bureau’s domestic, intelligence-gathering responsibilities to a proposed MI5-styled agency. Quashing that effort, Director Mueller effectively advocated the important linkage between criminal investigative principles and experience, intelligence gathering and analysis, and counterterrorism efforts. While priorities may change, Agents are as essential to the Bureau’s primary mission of protecting our country as they are to combating a wide array of crimes ranging from street gangs to mortgage fraud.
Second, effectively combating 21st century crimes requires bridging counterterrorism and traditional criminal investigative efforts. Therefore, the next Director must have an understanding of more than just criminal prosecutions—he or she must be able to negotiate the unique issues associated with simultaneously working towards intelligence and criminal prosecution objectives.
Third, the new Director must advocate effectively for the Bureau, and therefore must understand and respect the work of Agents. History has shown that when the senior-level men and women who lead the Bureau understand Agents—the obstacles we overcome, the burdens our families endure, and the often life-threatening circumstances we face—the Bureau is a more effective agency.
As the FBIAA developed these principles, one candidate was brought up repeatedly by Agents in the field as someone who embodies them: Michael Mason. While our association is not limiting itself to the candidacy of Mr. Mason, we believe he is the type of person who embodies our principles.
Mr. Mason served the Bureau in a wide variety of positions and locations over his 23 year career, culminating in his assignment as Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office, and, ultimately, as the Executive Assistant Director for the Criminal Investigative Division of the FBI. He has unique private sector experience as director of security for a major international telecommunications company. His experience as a Special Agent in the field and as a leader in a variety of FBI management positions provides him a unique perspective that will enable him to formulate, implement, and communicate policies that maximize the effectiveness of the Bureau.
Just as unexpected challenges confronted Director Mueller when he assumed his position one week before 9-11, the next Director will have new obstacles to overcome and new opportunities to lead. There are many fine candidates who will likely be discussed in the coming weeks. In the post 9-11 world, special attention should be paid to candidates like Michael Mason who possess experience in criminal investigation, management of national security and intelligence operations, and who have worked with foreign countries and intelligence community partners.
Konrad Motyka is President of the FBI Agents Association, a professional association with a membership of nearly 12,000 active and retired FBI agents nationwide.
