Justice Department lawyer Scott Stewart, an eight-year veteran of the DOJ’s Environment and National Resources Division, has left the government to go into private practice, the Blog of Legal Times reported today.

Stewart has joined Patton Boggs as a partner, focusing on the practice of environmental law. At the Justice Department, Stewart led the litigation team in U.S. v. Chevron Pipe Line Company, a Clean Air Act enforcement case.

In a news release from Patton Boggs, Stewart said he anticipates increased enforcement of anti-pollution laws. “There is a paradigm shift taking place,” Stewart said. Read his bio here.

It might not have stirring videos or a Twitter page — yet. But the Department of Justice’s system for keeping in touch with victims of crime is getting an upgrade, Government Computer News reported today.

According to the magazine, AT&T Government Solutions just won a $12 million contract to beef up the Victims Notification System,  which sends electronic updates to crime victims about cases with which they’re involved.

The system was developed in 2000 by AT&T Government Solutions, the magazine reported. AT&T Government Solutions Vice President John Klebonis is quoted in the article as saying the new system, when it’s finished, will be more “plug and play.” He added:

“As one of the architects of the Victim Notification System for the Department of Justice, AT&T knows firsthand the intricacies of the complexity of the system, from coordinating activities across the respective government agencies to the user training.”

More than 300,000 notifications are sent out each month under the current system, the magazine said.

Assistant Attorney General Tony West (Steve Bagley/Main Justice)

The Department of Justice and Congress are working together to beef up the government’s ability to fight health care fraud.

Assistant Attorney General Tony West told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday the DOJ needs Congress’s help. “We cannot combat this fraud alone,” said West, who has headed the DOJ’s Civil Division for eight months.

Good timing. Later Wednesday, Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) introduced the Health Care Fraud Enforcement Act to help the Justice Department out.

The act would make a few key reforms, Kaufman said, including changing sentencing guidelines for criminals convicted of health care fraud, make punishments “commensurate with costs” of the fraud, and increase whistleblower payments.

According to a news release from Kaufman’s office, the bill would increase the sentences for health care fraud convictions, redefine the definition of what constitutes a health care fraud offense to include drug marketing, kickback and ERISA crimes, increase whistleblower claims, create a mental state requirement for trying health care fraud offenses and devoting $20 million annually from 2011 to 2016 in federal funding to increase Medicare fraud investigations and prosecutions.

“We have seen an increasing number of sentences of fines for where there is really serious egregious conduct. Fines have just added to the cost of doing business,” Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) said at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning.

On the Senate floor Tuesday, Kaufman spoke about the bill, the Health Care Fraud Enforcement Act of 2009. “We must also ensure law enforcement has the tools it needs,” Kaufman said.

West said that “fighting Medicare and Medicaid fraud has become a “Cabinet-level priority,” with the DOJ and HHS’s combined efforts.

The two agencies in May announced the Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) to pursue Medicare and Medicaid fraud.  ”If we can put these people in prison, we will do that,” West said. “That’s a commitment the department has made.”

At the hearing, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said he wanted to see the DOJ’s Civil and Criminal Divisions beef up their staff to deal with health care fraud. “The bad guys outnumber the good guys,” Cornyn said. “I don’t know how we can expect [The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] to do a better job, when out of the 4.4 million claims you get every day you can only review 3 percent of them. I’m not sure we are ever going to have enough good guys to outnumber the bad guys in this.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) questioned West on the 1,040 pending qui tam lawsuits waiting for the DOJ to sign on. “I find it troubling that some cases are lingering for 36 months,” Grassley said of the whistle blower suits. “Does the Justice Department have a plan to clear this backlog in a timely manner? And if so, what is it?”

Those cases, West said, are being “actively investigated.”

Stryker Biotech, Inc., a medical technology company based out of Hopkinton, Mass., was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury for fraudulent marketing of bone-growth products, Reuters reported yesterday.

The indictment accused the company’s former president, Mark Philip, and three sales managers who are still working at the company, of promoting the use of a bone-filling putty for uses that were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Stryker released a statement indicating it would pursue negotiations with the government. “Conviction of these charges could result in significant monetary fines and Stryker Biotech’s exclusion from participating in federal and state health care programs, which could have a material affect on Stryker Biotech’s business,” the statement said.

The defendants face up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and up to $250,000 in fines or twice the gross amount of money they made off of their allegedly fraudulent sales.

Carter Stewart (Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease)

A second ceremony marking the swearing-in of Carter M. Stewart (Stanford University, Columbia University, Harvard Law) was held in the Lincoln Theater in downtown Columbus today, a month after Carter took the oath of office before a federal judge, a local NBC affiliate reported today.

In remarks delivered by video tape, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said: ”How we earn the public’s trust, or how we seek justice – as Carter explained to me – free of bias and fairly based in law – is the great challenge of public service.”

Brown added: “The pursuit of justice, based on the merits and devoid of ideology or hidden agenda, is part of an honored profession.”

The Southern District of Ohio office has a staff of 108 and covers 48 southern Ohio countries, NBC reported.

Stewart, formerly an associate at law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on Sept. 15, taking over for Bush appointee Gregory Lockhart. He was first sworn in by U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. on Sept. 30.

Before he joined the law firm in 2005, Stewart served in the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Jose, Calif., where he prosecuted gangs, drug violations, gun possession, social security fraud, obstruction of justice, environmental crime and illegal immigration.

Assistant Attorney General Tony West (Steve Bagley/Main Justice)

The Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division of the Department of Justice made a public appearance today to mark the American Bar Association’s Pro Bono Week festivities.

Tony West, confirmed in April to his post at the top of the Civil Division after a January nomination, led a panel discussion with three lawyers who focused on getting legal aid to members of DC’s low income community.

“These are families that make less than $25,000 a year—roughly one million cases that are rejected every year. And that need is growing. This year alone, requests for services have risen by 30 percent or more in some areas of the country,” West said.

West added: “The government can’t solve this problem alone. We need to do more.”

The Obama administration would increase funding to the Legal Services Corporation, a national nonprofit created by Congress that uses government funding to provide legal services to America’s low income community, West said. It would also allow LSC lawyers to “collect fees, participate in class action lawsuits and ensure that non-LSC funds used by LSC grant recipients are not unfairly restricted.”

West led a panel of luminaries in the District’s pro bono world, featuring George Washington University professor Peter Edelman, Chair of the DC Access to Justice Commission; Maureen Syracuse, Director of the DC Bar Pro Bono Program and Chair of the DC Consortium of Legal Service Providers; and Eric Jackson, Vice Chairman of the DC Bar Pro Bono Committee and partner at Jenner& Block.

In wrestling with how to close what West referred to as the “justice gap,” the panelists spoke at length about economic problems plaguing the legal world.

Syracuse described the economic climate as a “perfect storm” for pro bono. While law firms are deferring or even rescinding new hires, more people are walking into the Pro Bono Program’s office looking for help to deal with debt, housing problems or tenants’ rights issues she said.

“There’s a great deal of pressure on nonprofit social services providers,” Syracuse said. “The coming year is going to be harder than the one we just finished.”

Edelman offered evidence from a report by the Access to Justice Commission. “The number of people not represented in courts is just astonishing,” he said, ticking off the following statistics: 98 percent of tenants who go to court over disputes with their landlords are not represented; 98 percent of domestic violence victims are unrepresented; 98 percent of domestic paternity plaintiffs are not represented.

These pro se cases have a much smaller chance of rulings in the plaintiff’s favor, Edelman said.

There were few ideas, however, about how to close the “justice gap.” The panelists seemed stumped by economic realities on the ground. Jackson echoed Syracuse’s dire forecasts of the legal job market. “These are just unprecedented times for law firms,” he said, with the layoffs and associate deferrals.

Syracuse told the audience that lawyers across Washington wanted to do more pro bono work.”The culture is still alive and well, though it’s existing in a very troubled time.”

Syracuse plugged efforts by her organization to reach out to Washington’s Spanish speaking community by holding open houses in Columbia Heights and other heavily Latino neighborhoods. “I probably haven’t been able to convey to you the number of people who have walked into our office,” Syracuse said.

Syracuse added: “We’re really hoping and counting on the government lawyers.”

Edelman told West that federal funding is “just vital” if private law firms and pro bono agencies were going to meet demand for free legal aid.

A new audit report by Department of Justice Inspector General Glen Fine says the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been slow to complete translations of electronic data collected in foreign languages. But the Bureau has shown improvement, according to the report, which was released today.

While the FBI managed to slog through 4.8 million pages of foreign-language texts from 2004 to 2008, the agency had only translated two thirds of its backlogged electronic information from the same period. That left 25 percent of its audio from 2005 to 2008 untranslated. The agency’s translation staff was also reduced, from 1,338 in 2005 to 1,298 in 2008. According to an article in the New York Times, The FBI met its hiring targets in 2008 for only two of 14 targeted languages.

In 2004, Fine wrote, there were “significant backlogs” of audio information collected on the FBI’s “highest priority” cases. In 2005 that backlog, even on the most important cases, had increased, and the FBI “was not prioritizing” the translation of the material, the report said.

For fiscal year 2008, according to the OIG audit, the FBI recorded almost 880,000 hours of audio in foreign languages and English, 1.6 million pages of text and almost 28 million electronic files.

While Fine’s report praised the FBI for its catch-up efforts, the Inspector General noted that the FBI left more than 180,000 hours of data in terrorism and counterintelligence investigations untranslated. The recommended the FBI improve its quality control standards for its translators and revamp its record-keeping system to better keep track of its data.

It’s crucial the FBI have the resources to translate non-English material, the OIG report said, because “without accurate and timely translations, the FBI’s ability to effectively investigate criminal enterprises that communicate in a foreign language is severely hampered.”

FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said in a written statement that the FBI’s translation efforts were making progress. “With regard to counterintelligence collections, we are doing a careful job of prioritizing and monitoring the most important material,” Pistole said.

The FBI released another statement on its Web site in response to the OIG’s audit, in which it described further efforts to improve its translation operation, including a two-week crash course for new department linguists, “and the establishment of the Quality Control Standards Unit, which ensures compliance with the linguist quality control standards.”

Since the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the FBI said, its effort to translate foreign language data and information has doubled.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, released a statement urging the FBI to redouble its efforts. ‘These shortcomings just make it harder to get the bad guys,” Grassley said in the written statement. “The FBI needs their feet held to the fire in order to make substantive changes in the translation area.”

Attorney David Hickton (Burns, White and Hickton)

The Department of Justice has begun “preliminary vetting” for a replacement for Bush holdover U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan in Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today.

David Hickton, co-founder of transportation law firm Burns, White and Hickton, is under consideration for the Western District of Pennsylvania job, the paper said. He believed to be the favorite of Democratic Sens. Bob Casey and Arlen Specter, the Post-Gazette said. His vetting means the tenure of Buchanan, one of the longest-serving and most controversial U.S. Attorneys appointed byGeorge W. Bush, is likely nearing an end.

While no formal announcement has been made, the DOJ interviewers have begun speaking with Hickton’s former colleagues, the Post-Gazette reported.

Mary Beth Buchanan (Steve Pope)

One of Hickton’s former bosses, senior U.S. District Judge Gustave Diamond, for whom Hickton clerked in 1981 and 1982, said he was among those interviewed, the newspaper reported. Hickton is “highly qualified for the position,” Diamond told the Post-Gazette.

Hickton, a long-time donor to the Democratic party, was praised in the Post-Gazette by Allegheny County Democratic Party chair Jim Burn. Burn called Hickton an asset to the community who “shows an impeccable ability to call it like he sees it and do the right thing.”

Buchanan has been under fire for years from Democrats, who said she helped politicized the Justice Department under Bush. She served simultaneously as U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh and as a senior official in various positions at  Justice Department headquarters in Washington, and has been accused of targeting Democrats for prosecution, which she has denied.

Buchanan recently came under fire from a federal public defender for her handling of privileged telephone conversations between inmates at the Allegheny County Jail and their lawyers that were inadvertently recorded.

Three Drug Enforcement Administration officials were killed when their helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan Monday, USA Today reported.

The DEA agents died with ten soldiers and one civilian in a firefight that broke out as the American soldiers were leaving a raid on poppy fields in the Western part of Afghanistan, The Times of London reported. In addition to the 10 deaths, 14 Afghan service members, 11 U.S. service members and one U.S. civilian were injured in the crash, USA Today reported.

Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement Monday about the deaths of the DEA agents. “While the circumstances of this crash are still being investigated, I want to express my deepest condolences to the families of these heroic agents,” Holder said.

According to the Times of London, the helicopter was shot down among heavy fire during an extraction mission to retrieve soldiers engaged in a midnight raid on the compound of a prominent Afghan drug suggler.

The DEA has been working in Afghanistan to combat the country’s booming opium trade, which funds the fundamentalist Taliban. In 2007,  its Special Operations Division was given an almost $9 million boost funding boost to fight the opium trade in the country’s southern and western provinces, ABC News reported.

Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world’s heroin, and much of the farms producing the poppies needed for heroin production are believed to be under control of the Taliban or Al Qaeda, ABC News reported.

The opium trade in Afghanistan is currently based in five provinces in the south, bordering Pakistan, and two provinces in the west, bordering Iran.

The DEA declined to comment on the specifics of the crash.

In addition to the helicopter crash that killed the DEA agents, two American helicopters collided on Monday in southern Afghanistan, killing four. Monday was the deadliest day for American troops in Afghanistan in four years, USA Today said.

The New York Times reported that the U.S. military was “98 percent sure that insurgent activity was not involved.”

UPDATE: The names of the DEA agents were released early Tuesday morning. Tickle the Wire posted a DEA news release identifying the agents killed:

“Special Agent Forrest N. Leamon. SA Leamon became a Special Agent in 2002. He served at the Washington Field Division and in the El Paso Field Division until 2007, when he joined the FAST team in Afghanistan. He lived in Woodbridge, VA and was 37 years old. He is survived by his wife and their unborn child.�

“Special Agent Chad L. Michael. SA Michael graduated from basic training in March 2004. He began his career with DEA in the Miami Field Division, and left there to join the FAST team in Afghanistan in August of this year. He lived in Quantico, VA and was 30 years old.�

“Special Agent Michael E. Weston. SA Weston has been a Special Agent with DEA since 2003. He was assigned to the Richmond, Virginia District Office until joining the Kabul Country Office in August of this year. He lived in Washington, DC and was 37 years old. He is survived by his wife.�

In a statement posted on the DEA Web site, Acting Administrator Michele Leonhart said the DEA’s “extremely tight family” was devastated by the loss of the agents. “No expressions of grief can adequately convey the depth of the collective sorrow that we feel for their loved ones,” Leonhart said.

Just how far did Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Saldana make it with the Democrats in Texas?

The Ft. Worth Star-Telegram reported last week that Saldana never made it on the Lone Star’s House Democrats’ list. This item contradicted information reported in the Dallas Morning News, which reported days earlier that Saldana was on the Democrats’ short list “for much of the year,” but taken off once Sen. Kay Baily Hutchison (R-Texas) backed her.

The Star-Telegram goes further, claiming Saldana didn’t even interview with the state’s House Democrats, quoting Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D), as saying Saldana’s name “never came up in our group.”

In fact, according to the Star-Telegram, Saldana had been “extremely pushy” with Johnson. The Assistant U.S. Attorney recently participated in the prosecution team that won conviction of  former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Don Hill in what the Morning News called the largest corruption scandal in Dallas’ history.

Recently, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) told Main Justice that no federal attorney would be confirmed “without the Texas Democratic delegation’s support.” But the Republican senators, even though they aren’t from President Obama’s party, have not been willing to relinquish their role in the process.

Doggett has said Cornyn and Hutchison’s Republican screening committee has been “not very helpful” in the process. Democrats have drawn up their own list of candidates, which recommends Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Terri Moore and Dallas civil lawyer Roger Williams for the Northern District spot.

Calls to Doggett and Cornyn’s offices were not returned.