Justice Department veteran Dana Boente will serve as the interim New Orleans U.S. Attorney following Jim Letten’s resignation today, announced Attorney General Eric Holder.
Dana Boente
Boente has been the First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia since 2007. He was the acting U.S. Attorney in the Alexandria, Va., based district from 2008 to 2009. Before moving to the Virginia position, Boente served in the Justice Department’s Tax Division, where he began his DOJ career in 1984. He served as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the division from 2005 to 2007. From 2000 to 20005 he was a lawyer in the Eastern District of Virginia. For 16 years at the beginning of his career he served as a trial attorney in the Tax Division.
“Dana Boente is a veteran federal prosecutor with a record over the past 28 years of distinguished service to the Department of Justice,” Holder said in a statement. “I am confident that he will lead the U.S. Attorney’s Office through this time of transition and ensure the office’s continued commitment to justice for the people of the Eastern District of Louisiana.”
Letten announced his resignation this morning in the wake of an online commenting scandal that forced one of his prosecutors to resign and another to be demoted. The prosecutors were making anonymous and derogatory online comments on a news website about targets of federal investigations.
