Personnel moves at the Phoenix office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are linked to a controversial gun trafficking operation, Tickle the Wire reported.
Thomas E. Brandon, special agent in charge of the Detroit office, has been temporarily assigned to head up the Phoenix office. Brand will take over for Special Agent in Charge William D. Newell, Newell has been sent to Washington, D.C. to help prepare and answer questions about the gun program for Congress and the Office of Inspector General, Tickle the Wire reported.
Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jim Needles already has been sent to Washington, D.C. to help prepare answers for the inquiries. Tickle the Wire reported that another Assistant Special Agent in Charge has taken a sick leave.
The controversial ATF program , known as “Operation Fast and Furious,” allowed traffickers to bring weapons into Mexico in an effort to track them. The traffickers were not arrested. The program has come under fire from Congress, as well as the Mexican government. Two weapons found at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry were traced to the program.
This story has a correction.
A policy in a South Carolina jail that bars prisoners from reading anything but the Bible is unconstitutional, the Justice Department says in a motion supporting an American Civil Liberties Union suit challenging the policy.
DOJ filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina questioning the policy at the Berkeley County Detention Center in Moncks Corner, S.C. the ACLU announced.
According to the motion, the policy violates the First Amendment as well as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a 2000 federal law intended to protect the religious rights of prisoners and other institutionalized persons.
According to the Associated Press, U.S. Attorney for South Carolina William Nettles wrote, “In the past two years, defendants have denied numerous prisoner requests for expressive material, including educational materials required by a correspondence education course, other books, magazines and legal newsletters.” He added, “Defendants compound these restrictions by failing to provide a library or any other avenue through which prisoners can access expressive material.”
The ACLU’s lawsuit claims that a publication, Prison Legal News, along with books sent to prisoners have been returned to the sender or discarded. In addition, the publication has been prohibited from sending detainees copies of the “Prisoners’ Self-Help Litigation Manual.”
In an email to the AP, First Sergeant K. Habersham, representing the detention center, said, “Our inmates are only allowed to receive soft back bibles in the mail directly from the publisher,” adding, “They are not allowed to have magazines, newspapers, or any other type of books.”
As part of last-minute haggling over a plan to keep the federal government funded, budget negotiators last week dropped a proposal that could have made it more difficult for the federal government to track certain gun sales, the Huffington Post reported.
The plan, offered by Reps. Dan Boren (D-Okla.) and Denny Rehberg (R-Mont), would have prevented the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives from using federal funds to track bulk sales of long guns in Southwest states.
Some lawmakers along with Mexico’s Ambassador to the U.S. lobbied congressional leadership and the White House to remove the amendment from the deal, HuffPost reported.
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a co-chair of the group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, in a statement said, “ATF is already chronically underfunded and has been without a confirmed director since 2006 as a result of inaction by past sessions of Congress,” adding, “We welcome this sign that leaders in Washington may be ready to step up and help law enforcement save lives.”
The Senate on Tuesday unanimously confirmed two pending nominations to fill judicial emergency vacancies in New York and California.
Vincent Briccetti first was nominated Nov. 17 to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. His nomination was returned to President Barack Obama at the end of the 111th Congress. Obama renominated him on Jan. 5. Briccetti currently is a partner at Briccetti, Calhoun & Lawrence, LLP in White Plains, N.Y. He previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1985 to 1989. He replaces Kimba Wood, who assumed senior status.
John Kronstadt was also first nominated Nov. 17, to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. His nomination was also returned to Obama at the end of the 111th Congress. Obama renominated him on Jan. 5. Kronstadt is currently judge on the Los Angeles County Superior Court. He replaces Florence-Marie Cooper, who died in 2010.
Former federal prosecutors and veteran litigators have formed a new white collar law firm Levine Lee LLP, the firm announced Tuesday.
Scott B. Klugman (Levine Lee LLP)
The New York-based firm includes partners Scott B. Klugman, Kenneth E. Lee and Seth L. Levine.
Most recently, Klugman served as the Deputy Chief of the Business and Securities Fraud Section of the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. He previously served as the Deputy Chief of the Narcotics Section and Lead Task Force Attorney to the El Dorado Task Force, a multi-agency task force that investigated money laundering and criminal violations of the banking laws. Klugman had worked in the Brooklyn-based office for a decade.
Before entering the public sector Klugman was with the firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, where he focused on complex civil and criminal litigation.
Seth L. Levine (Levine Lee LLP)
Levine most recently was a partner at Foley & Lardner LLP where he served as the vice-chair of the Securities Litigation, Enforcement and Regulation Practice Group. He previously was an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn, working on securities and accounting fraud, bank, wire, healthcare and tax fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Levine started his career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.
Most recently, Lee was a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP. He also started his career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP.
Saying that he must be held to a higher standard, Indianapolis U.S. Attorney Joseph Hogsett apologized for having been pulled over for speeding last week.
Hogsett on Tuesday was cited and fined for driving 65 mph in a 55-mph zone, according to a news release from his office.
Joseph H. Hogsett (Facebook)
The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana was driving from Bloomington from Terre Haute on Indiana 46.
In the release the office said the fact that he was running late for a meeting didn’t justify breaking the law.”The United States Attorney must be held to a higher standard. I apologize for my poor judgment in exceeding the posted speed limit and I readily accept the consequences of my haste.”
He is in the process of paying the $130 fine, according to the release.
A former records specialist at the defunct Howrey LLP has filed a class action suit charging that the firm did not give its employees 60 days’ notice before being laid off.
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York states that up to 600 former Washington, D.C.-area and California employees could be eligible to join and contends that the company violated the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act..
Early last month, the partners at Howrey voted to dissolve the firm effective March 15. Workers who did not find other employment before the end of the month were laid off.
The suit was filed by Stephanie Langley, who worked in the firm’s Falls Church, Va., office. The former employees are seeking compensation for wages, bonuses, retirement account contributions and accrued vacation and sick time that was not paid during the 60-day period after Howrey’s March 9 announcement.
Outten & Golden LLP is representing the former Howrey workers.
Local police departments could lose their federal funds if they fail to adopt a new Justice Department policy on body armor, USA Today reported.
This month a new DOJ requirement goes into effect that mandates local police departments adopt policies that require uniformed officers to wear body armor or have funds from the Bureau of Justice Assistance withheld.
Local police departments apply for funds from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to purchase bullet-proof vests. In 2010, DOJ distributed $37 million to reimburse 4,127 agencies for the purchase of 193,259 vests, according to USA Today.
Bureau of Justice Assistance Acting Director Jim Burch told the newspaper that the new policy is in response to the spike in violence toward police officers. There has been a 44 percent increase in fatal police shootings over the same time last year, according to USA Today.
Burch told the newspaper, “What struck us is the number of agencies that don’t have a mandatory policy … a potential huge vulnerability.” According to the acting director 41 percent of police agencies do not require officers to wear body armor. “If we’re investing federal dollars, we should require agencies to have policies.”
Attorney General Eric Holder said in March that vests purchased through the program already have helped save the lives of six officers this year, USA Today reported.
Somali pirate Jama Idle Ibrahim on Thursday was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a violent act of piracy that lasted for 71 days from the end of 2008 through the beginning of 2009, the FBI announced.
From November 2008 to January 2009, Ibrahim along with other Somalis attacked a merchant vessel, the M/V CEC Future, in the Gulf of Aden and held the crew for ransom.
On Sept. 8, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit piracy and conspiracy to use a firearm during a crime of violence. He received the maximum penalty of five years for the piracy conspiracy charge and the maximum penalty of 20 years for the firearm conspiracy charge. The plea was the first plea in a piracy case in Washington, D.C.
Senate Judiciary Republicans on Thursday said they have no plans to forgive judicial nominee Goodwin Liu for his opposition to the confirmation of Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito Jr., the Blog of Legal Times reported.
Goodwin Liu (photo by Andrew Ramonas / Main Justice)
President Barack Obama first tapped Liu for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judgeship in February 2010 and again in September 2010 and January. The Senate sent his nomination back to the White House twice because it did not hold confirmation votes on him before adjournment.
Liu has twice publicly apologized to Alito for his comments. However, Senate Judiciary Republicans don’t appear to be a forgiving crowd.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Thursday said he still opposes Liu, BLT reproted. “We all make mistakes in life, but it doesn’t change the fact that there are consequences for what we’ve done.”
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who twice clerked for Alito, called Liu’s comments “offensive” and an “unfair personal attack on a dedicated public servant.” He also questioned why Liu didn’t renounce them before his own nomination, BLT reported. “It was then, and so far as I know only then, that he offered any apology for his criticism of Justice Alito.”
After the committee meeting, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) told BLT, “I think there’s a definite possibility of a filibuster because of the extraordinary circumstances posed by this nomination.”
When Alito was nominated, Liu was quoted as saying that in Alito’s America, “the police may shoot unarmed Americans … the FBI may install a camera where you sleep … an all white jury may convict a black man to death.”
Democrats continue to support Liu, saying he is qualified to serve.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said, “There’s fear on the other side, that this man may be so good that one day he may end up on the Supreme Court, and therefore you have to stop him before he gets to the circuit court,” adding,“This is a brilliant man. He should be confirmed.”
