The Justice Department is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that upheld most of Alabama’s controversial immigration law.
In filing its appeal Friday, the DOJ also requested an injunction that would keep Alabama from enforcing the law.
DOJ attorneys said the government already has “a comprehensive statutory scheme regarding aliens unlawfully in the United States.”
They also said that immigration “cannot be subject to a patchwork of state measures” and that “Alabama thus has no authority to regulate in the area of immigration.”
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn upheld the section of the law allowing state law enforcement officials to stop and detain people suspected of having entered the country without proper documentation, and the section requiring schools to verify the immigration status of its students. She said the same about the section of the law that nullifies contracts knowingly entered into with undocumented immigrants and the section that makes it a felony offense for an undocumented immigrant to apply for official state documentation – such as driver’s licenses, business licenses or license plates.
Remember the $16 muffin?
Who can forget it.
Like expensive toilet seats for the Defense Department, it’s become a symbol of wasteful Washington spending.
One problem: the Justice Department’s Inspector General is now admitting that, well, maybe the $16 muffin really wasn’t a $16 muffin. The allegation seems to be crumbling.
The hotel that billed DOJ for the muffins had provided poor information, the IG says.
Here’s the flaky story:
Earlier this month, the IG released a report contending that the Justice Department had paid exorbitant fees for food, beverages and entertainment at conferences during the late years of the George W. Bush administration and the start of the Barack Obama administration.
Included in the report was the contention that at a Washington, D.C. training conference for employees of the Executive Office for Immigration Review in August 2009, DOJ officials paid $16 for muffins.
Outrage ensued because that’s a lot of dough.
Heads should roll, Senate Judiciary Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) proclaimed.
DOJ officials said they would redouble their effort to make sure that they don’t pay too much for food.
Jacob Lew, the director of the Office of Management and Budget laid down the law.
But then, Hilton Worldwide, whose Washington D.C. Capital Hilton hotel supposedly served the muffin said the story was half-baked. The $16 included fresh fruit, coffee, juice, tax and tips, they said.
Now, the IG is saying that maybe the muffins didn’t cost $16.
“The $16 muffin was based on documentation obtained during the audit showing that the Department was invoiced by the Capital Hilton Hotel $4,200 including gratuity and service charge for 250 muffins,” the IG said. “Although we made repeated attempts over several months to reach the Capital Hilton during the course of the audit to discuss its billing, it was not responsive to our numerous requests. Since our report was issued, the Capital Hilton has stated that other food and beverage items, such as coffee, tea, and fruit, were included in the charged amount, but did not provide any supporting documentation. Even if the $4,200 fee included additional food and beverage items, the OIG believes, as stated in our report, that many individual food and beverage items listed on conference invoices and paid by the Department were very costly.”
In other words, never mind the $16 muffins.
But what about the $32 for candy bars, Cracker Jacks and popcorn?
Already engaged in legal battles over immigration legislation recently passed in Alabama and Arizona, the Justice Department is also considering filing suits against other states for enacting similar laws.
DOJ lawyers are debating whether to challenge laws passed in South Carolina, Georgia, Utah and Indiana, according to a report in Friday’s Washington Post.
The Obama administration has argued that many of the laws discriminate against lawful Hispanic Americans citizens, and that immigration law is not for states to decide.
“We can’t have a patchwork of 50 states with 50 different immigration laws,” the President said Wednesday.
Legal analysts told the Post that the administration’s interventions are unprecedented, because human rights groups have already filed or are planning to file suits against states that have passed sweeping immigration legislation.
A federal judge earlier this week upheld most of a controversial Alabama immigration law. The law, Alabama H.B. 56, was challenged by the Department of Justice in a lawsuit filed Aug. 1.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn ruled that the part of legislation allowing state law enforcement officials to stop and detain people suspected of having entered the country without proper documentation, and the section requiring schools to verify the immigration status of its students, are both constitutional.
It is likely that the Department of Justice will appeal the decision. Last year, it challenged Arizona’s controversial immigration law with some success, although the legal battle has not yet reached a conclusion. Courts largely blocked Arizona’s law, known as S.B. 1070, from coming into effect in July 2010. A Justice Department spokesperson said the department is reviewing the decision but added it will not hesitate to challenge laws that usurp federal authority over immigration.
Let everyone stipulate that Judge Brooks E. Blitch 3d, who served 28 years on the Superior Court bench in rural Georgia before resigning amid scandal, will never be ranked with Earl Warren, Louis Brandeis and other immortals of the law.
But prosecutors and defense agree on this much: the charge against Blitch, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to one corruption charge out of 14 lodged against him, should be thrown out because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on “honest services fraud.” (Some lawmakers are pushing legislation in response to Skilling v. United States, which narrowed the scope of honest services fraud to bribery and kickbacks schemes.)
Okay, so prosecutors in the Middle District of Georgia charged him with “fixing cases, appointing his former law partner to a judgeship in exchange for legal services and making illegal payments to employees,” as the Associated Press notes. But the really important thing to keep in mind is that “honest services fraud” is only a crime if the defendant accepted bribes or kickbacks.
Apparently, he never did, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District, Michael J. Moore, agreed. So Moore’s office has joined the defense in moving to have the guilty plea set aside.
But at his plea hearing in 2009, Blitch, who is 76, was asked if he was truly guilty. “Yes, sir,” he replied. “I am responsible for it too.”
Sometimes the law works in mysterious ways.
Raj Rajaratnam, the once high-flying, billionaire hedge fund manager who was convicted of insider trading, faces two decades or more in prison when he is sentenced on Oct. 13 — unless the judge is persuaded by Rajaratnam’s lawyers that a long sentence could condemn their 54-year-old client to die in prison because he is in declining health.
So, what are the chances that U.S. Judge Richard Holwell of the Southern District of New York will temper justice with mercy, as the old saying goes?
Not so good. That’s the message in an intriguing essay in Forbes by Walter Pavlo, who starts off this way: “I knew a guy who went to federal prison who was told by his lawyer that there was a chance he could get him out on a ‘health waiver.’ When the guy showed up to prison in Edgefield, S.C., he noticed a blind inmate being pushed in a wheelchair by another with a cane…and it was then that the newest inmate knew he would not be leaving any time soon.”
Prosecutors working for Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, are decidedly skeptical about the defense’s poor-health claims and have asked for Rajaratnam’s medical records. Bharara, of course, has made insider trading and other Wall Street mischief his priorities.
Rajaratnam was branded the very “face of insider trading” by prosecutors (see Main Justice’s earlier report.) In his trial last spring, prosecutors played a series of recorded conversations that portrayed the super-rich defendant as obsessed with acquiring still more money by trading on confidential information (see Main Justice’s report.)
On sentencing day, prosecutors may speak in somber tones about the human tragedy of a man undone by his own greed and the need to send a strong message to keep another people from being tempted. But newspaper photographs just after the verdict showed one prosecutor grinning broadly, as though he’d just won a big Super Bowl bet. And who could blame him, after all the work he and his colleagues put in?
The underlying message is two-fold: Don’t get in the cross hairs of the federal government. And pack your bags, Raj.
A Japanese auto parts company and three of its executives agreed Thursday to plead guilty to four separate felony price-fixing charges filed in a Detroit federal court.
Junichi Funo, Hirotsugu Nagata and Tetsuya Ukai, executives at Furukawa, will serve prison sentences in the U.S. ranging from a year to 18 months, and the company has agreed to pay a $200 million fine for Sherman Act violations, according to a Department of Justice news release.
Violating the Sherman Act carries a maximum ten year sentence, but as part of the plea agreement, Funo, Nagata, Ukai and the company agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into price fixing in the auto parts industry.
The three executives admitted to conspiring to rig bids for and manipulate the prices of automotive electrical distribution systems and other related products sold in the United States and other parts of the world.
Funo worked in the Honda sales division of Furukawa in Japan and in the United States as a sales representative in a managerial role. Nagata was a general manager of sales and a chief financial officer of a Furukawa subsidiary in the United States. Ukai was a general manager in Japan for the Honda sales division of Furukawa.
The DOJ said that the conspiracy spanned at least all of the last decade.
“This cartel harmed an important industry in our nation’s economy, and the Antitrust Division with the Federal Bureau of Investigation will continue to work together to ensure that these kinds of conspiracies are stopped,” Sharis Pozen, Acting Assistant Attorney General of DOJ’s Antitrust Division said.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.)
Congressman Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday, imploring him to conduct a full investigation of mortgage fraud related to the 2008 financial collapse.
Inslee sent the letter amid ongoing discussions of a possible multi-billion dollar settlement between the Department of Justice, state governments, and banks who were found to have engaged in fraudulent practices.
The congressman, who is also a 2012 gubernatorial candidate in Washington, urged Holder to reject “blanket immunity” and any resolution that doesn’t include a “substantial fund from which to assist homeowners.”
He claimed that the extent of the damage done by fraudulent lending practices is not yet known, and that “to stave off yet another flood of foreclosures we need tens of billions more than what is reportedly being discussed.”
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.
On Sept. 22, The Washington Post reported that discussions between the U.S. government and financial institutions alleged to have committed fraud, including Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and Wells Fargo, revolved around a multi-billion dollar deal that would free the banks from future liability.
Reports of an impending deal prompted a number of state attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, to voice their concerns about immunity clauses and the size of the settlement.
