Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) on Saturday will wed Justice Department official Melodee Hanes, whose candidacy for a U.S. Attorney slot in 2009 raised concerns about a possible conflict of interest.
Baucus and Hanes will wed at the senator’s ranch near Helena, The Billings Gazette reported. The outdoor wedding will be a casual “jeans and boots affair,” Baucus spokeswoman Kate Downen told the newspaper. More than 100 people are expected to attend, including Vice President Joe Biden.
Baucus and Hanes were engaged over Christmas in Montana. As first reported by Main Justice, Hanes withdrew as a candidate for U.S. Attorney in 2009 because of her relationship with the senator. Michael Cotter, whom Baucus also recommended for U.S. Attorney, was ultimately appointed to the post in December 2009.
Hanes is now the acting Deputy Administrator for Policy in the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, a branch of the Justice Department that supports criminal justice research, training and programs aimed at young people. She received the political appointment in OJP in June 2009, a few months after she took herself out of the running for U.S. Attorney.
The DOJ official previously was a Baucus staffer and state prosecutor.
Baucus and Hanes began their relationship in the summer of 2008, the same year the senator separated from his second wife, Wanda. The senator and his second wife, who were married for 25 years, announced their divorce in April 2009.
Hanes also was previously married. She and her ex-husband, Thomas Bennett, divorced in December 2008.
The use of wiretaps is on the rise, according to a government report released Thursday.
The number of state and federal wiretaps reported swelled by 34 percent from 2009 to 2010, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts report said. Of the 3,194 wiretaps authorized in 2010, 1,987 were approved by state judges and 1,207 were granted by federal judges. A single application was rejected in 2010.
More than 80 percent of applications in 2010 involved drug cases. California, New York and New Jersey attributed to 68 percent of the state court applications.
Terminated wiretaps in 2010 led to 4,711 arrests and 800 convictions. In 2009, terminated wiretaps brought 4,537 arrests and 678 convictions.
The Senate on Thursday confirmed nominees for four U.S. Attorney posts.
The chamber approved the nominations of Thomas Walker for the Eastern District of North Carolina, George Beck for the Middle District of Alabama, Felicia Adams for the Northern District of Mississippi and Ronald Sharpe for the Virgin Islands by unanimous consent.
President Barack Obama first nominated Walker on Nov. 30, 2009, to replace U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding, a George W. Bush appointee.
Holding was left at the helm of the office to oversee the campaign finance probe into former presidential candidate John Edwards, a Democrat. North Carolina Sens. Kay Hagan (D) and Richard Burr ( R ) worked to keep Holding in place while he supervised high-profile corruption probes into Edwards and former Gov. Mike Easley (D).
Edwards was indicted June 3, and Holding announced the following week that he would step down July 8.
Walker, a former federal prosecutor, is a partner at the law firm of Alston & Bird LLP in Charlotte, N.C.
Adams, whom Obama nominated March 2, will replace John Marshall Alexander, who has headed the Oxford-based U.S. Attorney’s office since December. Alexander succeeded Bill Martin, who took the helm of the office after U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee, a George W. Bush appointee, resigned in January 2009.
She has been an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Mississippi since 2000. Adams is currently the acting First Assistant U.S. Attorney, the No. 2 position in the Southern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney’s Office. She previously served at the Northern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney’s Office from 1989 to 2000.
Adams emerged as a candidate for the position in March 2010, several months after Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who took the lead on picking U.S. Attorney candidates for Mississippi’s congressional Democrats, formally recommended criminal defense lawyer Christi McCoy for the job.
McCoy’s connection to a local private investigator, who was probed for his billing practices, dogged her candidacy. The Northern District U.S. Attorney’s Office, which handed the case, dropped its investigation last year, clearing McCoy.
Beck, whom Obama nominated March 31, will succeed Leura Canary, a George W. Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney, who stepped down in May.
He currently is a shareholder at the law firm of Capell & Howard P.C. in Montgomery, Ala. Beck has spent most of his career in private practice, but served as Alabama deputy attorney general from 1971 to 1979.
In 1977, Beck handled the successful prosecution of Bob Chambliss for his role in the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Ala. The racially motivated attack killed four black girls and blinded another black girl.
The White House had considered Michel Nicrosi, who lost in a 2010 bid for Alabama attorney general, and defense attorney Joe Van Heest for Middle District of Alabama U.S. Attorney. But Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), who supported another candidate, contributed to the slow pace of the process.
Sharpe, whom Obama nominated March 10, has served as the interim U.S. Attorney in the Virgin Islands since September 2009. He previously worked in the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office from 1995 to 2009, rising to First Assistant U.S. Attorney. The Virgin Islands hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney since October 2008, when Anthony Jenkins stepped down.
One of the U.S. Attorneys ousted during the 2006 firing scandal is representing the family of a Border Patrol agent whose death has ties to a controversial Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun smuggling program, the Arizona Daily Star reported Thursday.
Paul Charlton, who served as Arizona U.S. Attorney from 2001 to 2007, will help determine if the family of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry should take legal action in connection with his death in December, which allegedly came at the hands of Mexican bandits who appear to have links to Operation Fast and Furious. Two guns from the program, which allowed guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels in an effort to track them, were recovered near Terry’s body.
The Border Patrol agent’s death initiated an investigation by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) into the program. Issa held hearings on the operation earlier this month with testimony from Terry’s family.
Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who also is probing the program, have said they intend to hold top Justice Department officials accountable.
Charlton, currently a shareholder at the law firm of Gallagher & Kennedy PA in Phoenix, said he will monitor the congressional investigations and examine the facts of Terry’s death in determining if his clients should take legal action.
“We want to be careful about how we talk about this because we don’t have all the facts,” Charlton told the Daily Star. “Once we have the facts, then we’ll make a decision.”
Charlton was one of nine U.S. Attorneys fired during the George W. Bush administration scandal that made national headlines and prompted congressional investigations. Bush officials stated that his dismal was partly due to his decision not to seek permission from DOJ officials in D.C. before he ordered the electronic recording of interviews with criminal suspects in his district.
Main Justice reported in April 2010 that the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee, a group of U.S. Attorneys who counsel the Attorney General on DOJ policies, was reviewing the FBI’s policy of using pen and paper to record interviews. But the committee hasn’t made any recommendations public.
The FBI’s long-standing policy has garnered criticism from prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday tapped Gregory K. Davis to lead the Southern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The office hasn’t had a Senate-confirmed appointee since Dun Lampton stepped down two years ago. Temporary appointees have headed the office since his resignation. They include John M. Dowdy Jr., the current leader.
Adams currently is the acting First Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney’s Office. She emerged as a candidate for the post in March 2010, several months after Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who took the lead on selecting U.S. Attorney candidates for Mississippi’s congressional Democrats, formally recommended criminal defense lawyer Christi McCoy for the post.
McCoy’s ties to a local private investigator, who was probed for his billing practices, dogged her candidacy. The Northern District U.S. Attorney’s Office, which handed the case, dropped its probe last year, clearing McCoy.
Davis, a member at the law firm of Davis, Goss & Williams PLLC in Mississippi since 1989, emerged as the frontrunner for the job in Jackson in October. His nomination comes about four months after the president nominated Felicia Adams to be the U.S. Attorney for Mississippi’s other federal judicial district, the state’s Northern District.
During this Congress, Obama now has made 10 U.S. Attorney nominations. The full Senate has yet to consider any of the nominees.
The Senate last year confirmed 76 of Obama’s U.S. Attorneys. There are 93 U.S. Attorney posts across the nation.
The Senate on Wednesday passed legislation that would exempt an additional five Justice Department positions from the confirmation process, sending the bill to the House for consideration.
The Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Directors of the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Bureau of Justice Assistance, National Institute of Justice and Office for Victims of Crime, in addition to about 170 other executive branch posts, would not need Senate confirmation if the bill becomes law.
In the measure introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in March, the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs also received an exemption. But the bill the Senate approved with a 79-20 vote Wednesday did not include an exemption for the position.
A representative for Schumer didn’t have an immediate comment for Main Justice.
The legislation stems from bipartisan negotiations at the beginning of this Congress. During the negotiations, a “gentlemen’s agreement” was reached that was intended to address concerns about filibusters. As part of the deal, Senate leaders agreed that neither party would filibuster motions to proceed to bills on the Senate floor in return for a more open amendment process.
Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) had threatened to try to revamp Senate rules to facilitate a quicker end to filibusters. But he backed off after Senate leaders reached the agreement.
Filibuster critics have said the confirmation process has become bogged down by “holds” senators place on nominees, including those picked for judgeships. The legislation doesn’t address judicial nominees.
Two Justice Department lawyers involved in the bungled prosecution of former Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on Wednesday urged an appeals court to vacate a contempt finding against them, The Blog of Legal Times reported.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan of D.C. held former Public Integrity Section officials William Welch II and Brenda K. Morris in contempt for not handing over documents to Stevens’ defense. Sullivan in October removed them from under contempt. But he didn’t vacate his contempt finding.
“It is no solace to Ms. Morris and Mr. Welch that the court did not follow through with its stated intent to impose further sanctions or that it later characterized the contempt as civil, for they remain adjudicated contemnors,” lawyers for Morris and Welch wrote in a filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, according to The BLT. “Without review by this court, the personal and professional records of Ms. Morris and Mr. Welch will forever include a conviction of criminal contempt.”
A preliminary draft of an Office of Professional Responsibility report last year on the allegations that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence from the Stevens defense cleared Welch and Morris.
The House Ethics Committee has brought on a trial attorney from the Justice Department Public Integrity Section as its top investigator.
Deborah Mayer, who will be the panel’s director of investigations, assisted in the DOJ probe into former Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), who, according to the Senate Ethics Committee, helped a former staffer get a lobbying job after having an affair with the individual’s wife.
Ensign resigned in May, less than two weeks before the bipartisan leadership of the committee said he may have violated criminal statutes. The panel sent its findings to DOJ. This follows a December decision by DOJ not to pursue charges against Ensign at that time.
She also helped prosecute the case against Jack T. Camp, the former chief judge of the Northern District of Georgia, who was sentenced in February to 30 days in jail and 400 hours of community service on a misdemeanor charge after authorities busted him for buying cocaine for a stripper. He initially pleaded guilty to a felony.
The Daily Report, a Georgia legal news publication, published a story after the sentencing that seemed to suggest that defense lawyers did their jobs better than the prosecutors. Arthur W. Leach, a former federal prosecutor in Alpharetta, Ga., told the publication that the decision to sentence Camp for a misdemeanor after he pleaded guilty to a felony is “absolutely amazing.” He added that it generates “the perception that because [Camp] was a district court judge, he was treated differently.”
Mayer joined the Public Integrity Section in 2008. She previously was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York for five years. Mayer, an officer in the Navy Reserve, also has served as a Navy judge advocate.
