The Senate passed a bill today to extend FBI Director Robert Mueller’s 10-year term for two years. The bill now goes to the House for a vote.
The extension, requested by President Barack Obama to give continuity to his national security team, had been held up by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who questioned U.S immigration policy after two Iraqi refugees were arrested in Kentucky and charged with terrorism-related offenses.
Paul met with Mueller today over the issue.
Attorney General Eric Holder plans to meet with the families of 9/11 victims amid allegations that News of the World employees may have tried to hack their phones, the Associated Press first reported.
The prospective meeting comes on the heels of a Justice Department announcement that it has opened an FBI investigation into the hacking allegations, which as of now have not been confirmed.
The British paper the Daily Mirror has claimed that on September 11, 2001, someone working for the now-closed British newspaper the News of the World tried to bribe a former NYPD officer to provide the cell phone records of some of the victims. The Daily Mirror was a rival of the News of the World and both are considered tabloid newspapers.
Even the victims are not yet convinced that the account is true, and their attorney says that the meeting is intended solely to give the families as much information as possible, lohud.com reports.
Attorneys for Honeywell International Inc. are contending that Justice Department attorneys failed to hand over documents in a false claims suit against the company and they are accusing the lawyers of misconduct.
In a motion filed in federal court Wednesday, lawyers for Honeywell accused the DOJ of withholding “critical” evidence – a delay that amounts to misconduct, they say – and asked a judge to sanction prosecutors for supporting “inaccurate and misleading” testimony regarding claims that it used defective materials in body army purchased by the government, Bloomberg reported.
“We believe the Department of Justice has violated federal discovery rules by failing to properly search for, produce and preserve evidence that would exonerate Honeywell,” Honeywell spokesman Peter Dalpe told Bloomberg in an email. “We continue to believe there is no factual or legal basis for the Justice Department claims, and we will continue to vigorously defend ourselves.”
The Honeywell case springs from a 1998 claim that the company allegedly knew the “Zylon Shield material” used in body armor sold to the government degraded “quickly over time,” particularly in hot and humid conditions, and failed to notify the government about the problem.
But from October 2010 through April, Honeywell claims the government discovered 120,000 additional documents relating to the armor sale. Some of those documents show the company informed the government about the problem, asked for guidance on how to test the vests, and repeatedly offered to share test data and technical expertise with the government, Honeywell said in court documents.
The material used in the vests was manufactured by Armor Holdings Inc., which has since ceased production and was purchased by European-arms company BAE Systems plc in 2007. In 2008, Armor Holdings agreed to pay $30 million to resolve allegations regarding the vests.
In the wake of allegations that the House ethics probe against Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) may have been tainted by improper conduct by investigators, the Ethics Committee has hired former veteran prosecutor official Billy Martin as an outside counsel to look into the matter.
“The hiring of an outside counsel will allow for an independent review and a faster resolution than if the Committee staff were to handle it alone,” Committee Chairman Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and Ranking Member Linda T. Sánchez (D-Calif.) said in a release, adding that Martin will start on the Waters investigation immediately.
Martin, now a partner at Dorsey & Whitney LLP, is a former local and federal prosecutor. He started in Cincinnati, Ohio before joining the Justice Department and at age 29 was named managing attorney for the Dayton branch of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Southern Ohio. He has also served an Organized Crime Strike Force in San Francisco and as Executive Assistant United States Attorney in Washington D.C., where he oversaw the prosecution of then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry on drug charges. He graduated from Howard University as an undergraduate in 1973 and the University of Cincinnati College of Law as a law student three years later.
The Committee’s statement says Martin has also represented elected officials of both parties as a defense lawyer and he joined Dorsey & Whitney in March of this year.
“The outside counsel’s review will also help assure all respondents and the entire House community of the integrity of the Committee’s process for all matters,” Bonner and Sanchez said.
That integrity has already come under serious challenge. Two Committee investigators are alleged to have improperly shared details of the investigation of Waters to Republican committee members.
Following concerns about its speed and transparency, Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Wednesday an independent audit of the $20 billion fund set up last year to compensate victims of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Associated Press reported.
In a letter sent to Kenneth Feinberg, who administers the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, Holder reiterated the need for speed and fairness in the fund’s distribution and said the audit would likely start before the end of next year.
On a trip to the gulf on June 30, Holder met with victims of the spill and expressed concern over the way the claims process was being run by Feinberg.
“I’m a little worried about the pace and the transparency,” Holder said then. “We have to ensure that it keeps pace with the restoration of this most beautiful part of the country.”
But Holder did cut Feinberg some slack over the enormity of the task.
“I know he and his people are trying,” he said. “But this was an extraordinary event. It had a major impact on the communities here and on the lives of a great many people. We need to do the best we can by our fellow citizens.”
In the letter, Holder said Feinberg had agreed to an audit. And Feinberg said in response that the audit would not disrupt the processing of claims.
So far, the fund has paid out $4.7 billion to 198,475 of the total 522,506 individuals seeking money, many with multiple claims. The fund has received nearly 1 million claims in all.
Longtime former Justice Department official Roslyn A. Mazer was nominated by President Barack Obama for the position of inspector general of the Homeland Security Department Tuesday.
Mazer served at the DOJ from 1993 to 2009, including seven years in the Office of Inspector General. She rose from associate deputy attorney general, to the attorney general’s representative to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel from 1996 to 2001, and then special counsel for intellectual property in the department’s Criminal Division.
Prior to working at Justice, Mazer worked as a partner for Dickstein Shapiro LLP.
She currently serves as the IG of the Office of Director of National Intelligence, where she manages inspections, audits and investigations of the office’s operations. She is also a chair of the Intelligence Community Inspectors General Forum.
Mazer will replace former Inspector General Richard Skinner, who retired March. But first, she faces Senate confirmation for the position.
Prosecutors just can’t get a break when it comes to ethical mistakes, says Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s Criminal Division.
Speaking at the National District Attorneys Association Summer Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, Breuer touted the Justice Department’s commitment to ethics and chewed out defense lawyers for turning “honest mistakes” on the part of prosecutors into examples of misconduct.
“This kind of gamesmanship is unfortunate,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “The steps we’ve taken go further than what the Supreme Court requires. And they go well beyond what any prior administration has done.”
The speech itself covered a lot of ground – from efforts to combat drug cartel-related violence along the Southwest border to headway on violent crime.
But Breuer reserved time at the end for addressing ethical criticism of the department. He didn’t cite specific cases, but the past two years provide several cases of disclosure foul-ups and ethical breaches that both defense lawyers and the media don’t seem willing to let the DOJ forget.
Two years ago marked the infamous implosion of the public corruption cases against Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens, whose conviction was thrown out over mistakes made by prosecutors that included withholding evidence from defense counsel.
After that fiasco, the department said it added training and provided more ethical guidance to prosecutors – particularly for discovery and when disclosing information.
Then there’s the recently botched perjury prosecution of Roger Clemens, which fell apart this month when prosecutors tried twice to introduce inadmissible evidence. Prosecutors say the case-killing actions were mistakes.
In fact, Breuer represented Clemens during the 2008 appearance before Congress that led to perjury charges. But Breuer didn’t mention the baseball star in his remarks.
“I think prosecutors are more aware of their ethical obligations today than they may ever have been – and, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a good thing,” he said.
And just because mistakes have been made in the past doesn’t mean prosecutors will shy away from difficult cases in the future, he said, even when “an opportunistic defense lawyer will try to make hay out of an honest mistake.”
“The Justice Department has taken a series of far reaching steps in the past two years to ensure that all federal prosecutors consistently meet their disclosure obligations,” Breuer said. “And I think it’s fair to say that, as a department, we are in a better place today than we were two-and-a-half years ago.”
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong accused Justice Department officials of attempting to ruin his legacy and asked a federal judge in Los Angeles to determine who leaked information from the grand jury investigating whether he used performance enhancing drugs.
In a motion unsealed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Armstrong’s attorney, John W. Keker, said he found “repeated and obvious violations of the secrecy rules governing grand juries.”
“Someone in this district with regular access to grand jury information is routinely flouting the law requiring grand jury secrecy,” Keker, the star trial lawyer of Keker & Van Nest, said.
Even if Armstrong is exonerated and never charged, the leaks guarantee that his reputation will be “permanently damaged,” he said.
“The leaks seem more like a public relations campaign to portray Armstrong as having violated cycling rules during European competitions, and an attempt to justify why the government should even pursue a criminal investigation,” “he said.
Armstrong asked the judge to examine the phone records of Justice Department officials and reporters to determine who may have leaked the information. He also raised the possibility of asking the court to order the journalists who wrote stories about the allegations to disclose their sources—a request that is certain to be fought by the news organizations involved.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California declined comment on the allegations. “The government has received the motion filed late last week and the government will file its opposition brief consistent with the briefing schedule that will be set by the District Court,” he said, in an e-mail response. “Therefore, we will not comment on the assertions made in the motion at this time.”
This dramatic development is the latest salvo in Armstrong’s attempt to salvage his reputation amid repeated reports that he cheated throughout his career. For much of his career, Armstrong, a survivor of testicular cancer, was viewed as a hero. While he has announced his retirement as a competitor, he is a high-profile fund raiser for cancer research and established his own foundation to help fight the disease.
But the continued drumbeat of allegations appears to be damaging Armstrong’s commercial value, as well as his reputation. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Armstrong’s commercial value has dropped, according to a marketing poll of 1,000 people that measures an athlete’s overall appeal. Armstrong’s score had declined from 775 in 2005 to 179 as of June 10, the newspaper reported.
Until now, Armstrong’s attorneys have been waging a public relations battle in order to refute the allegations.
The motion, filed last week, takes the battle to a new forum. Keker said that leaks from the grand jury “have rendered what should have been a closed investigation into a field day for reporters with access to the leaks, and an easy forum for whoever seeks to damage Armstrong’s reputation.”
Citing stories from several news organizations, the attorney said the leaked information included identities of witnesses, the alleged substance of the testimony, the strategy of the investigation, potential charges, the timing of a possible indictment and documents relating to the probe.
The leaks began in May 2010, according to the court documents, when the New York Times published a story citing “two people briefed on the investigation.” They continued this year and culminated in a “60 Minutes” segment which featured details of the probe and allegations by Tyler Hamilton, a former Armstrong teammate, who said the bicyclist had failed a drug test in 2001 and that a deal was made to hide the results.
The story also featured details from former teammate George Hincapie, who, according to “60 Minutes,” had testified before the grand jury about Armstrong’s drug use. Hincapie later issued a statement saying that he had never spoken to CBS News.
The leaks, according to Keker, are “eerily reminiscent” of a previous investigation into performance enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball and that Jeff Novitzky, a Food and Drug Administration investigator, participated in both probes.
Prosecutors in the Central District of California have also come under fire in recent cases. Earlier this year, a federal judge blasted prosecutors in a foreign bribery case against Lindsey Manufacturing for failing to turn over documents. A judge last year criticized prosecutors and dismissed charges relating to stock fraud allegations.
The chairman of the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee is asking the Justice Department to block AT&T’s planned acquisition of T-Mobile USA.
In his letter, Senator Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.) tells Attorney General Eric Holder and Chairman Julius Genachowski of the Federal Communications Commission, that the deal would seriously hinder competition in the cell phone industry and harm consumers and urges the agencies “to take all necessary actions” to stop it.
Describing T-Mobile as a competitor of AT&T’s that offers lower prices, Kohl said that a deal that “eliminates the low price competitor from this market, is in my view highly dangerous to competition and consumers. It will likely tend to substantially lessen competition, lead to consumers paying high prices with fewer choices, as well as lessen the innovation that has been the keystone of this industry in the last decade.”
Kohl says that the acquisition would reduce the number of national competitors in the industry from four to three and thus is suspect under the Clayton Antitrust Act.
Kohl’s letter comes just as House Democrats, including House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers (D-Mich.) are also questioning the deal, the National Journal reports, though AT&T continues to defend the merger.
“We respect Senator Kohl. However, we feel his view is inconsistent with antitrust law, is shared by few others, and ignores the many positive benefits and numerous supporters of the transaction,” an AT&T spokesman said in a statement, adding that AT&T believes that the DOJ and FCC will approve the deal.
