Former Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) became a Washington, D.C.-based partner in international law firm SNR Denton, the Associated Press reported.

Davis served eight years in the House. Last year, he ran unsuccessfully for governor of Alabama, losing to state Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks.

Davis was in the middle of White House struggles to find a nominee to replace Middle District of Alabama U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, a George W. Bush holdover whom some Democrats accused of pursuing a politically motivated public corruption prosecution against former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D).

Two of Davis’s recommendations to the White House for the Montgomery-based job foundered under opposition from the state’s Republican senators. At one point, he had discussions with the Justice Department about potentially nominating himself for the U.S. Attorney position, as reported by Main Justice.

Davis will work in the law firm’s Washington office specializing in white collar and government investigations, including securities and financial cases and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act matters.

George Beck Jr. (Capell & Howard)

Rep. Artur Davis, Alabama’s senior congressional Democrat, has recommended a Montgomery lawyer for U.S. Attorney in the state’s Middle District, reports The Associated Press.

Davis, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor, said on Thursday he is backing George Beck Jr., 68, a white-collar defense lawyer at Capell & Howard and former state prosecutor. Earlier this month, we reported that Beck was the front-runner for the Middle District post, which is based in Montgomery.

Beck is the third lawyer Davis has recommended for the job. Over the summer, the White House eliminated defense lawyers Joe Van Heest of Montgomery and Michel Nicrosi of Mobile, who ran into opposition from the state’s Republican senators.

U.S. Attorney Leura Canary, a Bush appointee, continues to serve, nearly a year into the Obama administration. Alabama Democrats have accused her of bringing politically motivated cases, including the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D). Canary has said the criticism is without merit.

For a more on the troubled history of the Middle District U.S. Attorney search, click here and here.

This report was corrected to reflect that the Middle District is based in Montgomery.

The White House is having trouble finding a replacement for controversial U.S. Attorney Leura Canary in Alabama’s Middle District, having considered and discarded three candidates over the last year, according to Alabama Democrats.

Leura Canary (gov)

Both Republicans and Democrats have objected to different candidates, and the White House has been unwilling to cross the state’s powerful GOP senators, according to a Democrat who has spoken to administration officials about the matter. The result has been the continued service of Canary, a bête noire of Alabama Democrats for her prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman (D), while the administration now considers a fourth candidate.

Over the summer, the White House eliminated white-collar defense lawyer Joe Van Heest of Montgomery, even though he’d already been fully vetted, the Alabama Democrats said.

Joe Van Heest (via Facebook)

Van Heest met objections from Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee. Shelby had also helped thwart the original candidate for the job, Mobile-based lawyer Michel Nicrosi, the Democrats said. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also opposed Nicrosi.

Then, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Birmingham-based Northern District briefly emerged as a front-runner, only to be shot down by Alabama Democrats who said her past work on politically controversial prosecutions disqualified her.

Last month, Main Justice provided an accounting of U.S. Attorney nominations. The figures — President Barack Obama has nominated 42 U.S. Attorneys, and 31 have been confirmed — painted a picture of a process beset by political interference and a White House counsel’s office in flux. (The latter problem may be solved, with the arrival of White House counsel Bob Bauer, but only time will tell.)

Alabama’s Middle District provides an interesting case study: Republican and Democratic opposition, combined with a hands-off White House, has so gummed up the process, there have been four U.S. Attorney front-runners since the summer – but zero nominations.

Shelby’s objections to Van Heest, as we reported in July, appeared to be related to his efforts to promote the daughter of a political supporter for the job. Shelby pushed Anna Clark Morris for the prosecutor post,  Alabama officials and lawyers told Main Justice over the summer. Morris, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Middle District, is the daughter of influential trial lawyer and Shelby supporter Larry Morris. Neither Shelby’s office nor Van Heest returned phone calls seeking comment.

Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) (Getty Images)

Both Nicrosi and Van Heest enjoyed the support of  Rep. Artur Davis, the state’s senior congressional Democrat, and they both reached the interview-at-the-Justice-Department stage of the process before the White House eliminated them. Nicrosi was the first choice of a selection committee formed Davis; Van Heest was the second. Click here and here for a more background on their candidacies.

After Van Heest, according to the Democrat with knowledge of the selection process, several individuals were approached about the job, including two state circuit judges, a former federal magistrate judge, and a former president of the Alabama state bar. All declined to throw in their hats — though it’s not clear why. (An indictment of the current process, perhaps?)

At one point, there was an effort to build some support around Montgomery-based lawyer Ed Parish Jr., the knowledgeable Democrat said. But Davis and others raised objections about Parish’s lack of criminal experience.

In the fall, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tamarra Matthews Johnson, 35, of Alabama’s Northern District, emerged as the new front-runner. It’s not clear who recommended her for the post. The knowledgeable Democrat said she applied directly to the White House. Johnson declined to comment.

In any event Johnson, a former clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, wasn’t expected encounter opposition from Sessions and Shelby, the knowledgeable Democrat said.

But she could not overcome her work on corruption cases against Democrats, including the prosecution of Siegelman for alleged bid-rigging. The case, which was overseen by Birmingham-based U.S. Attorney Alice Martin, another villian of the Left, was eventually thrown out. (Siegelman was later indicted and convicted in the Montgomery-based Middle District, on Canary’s turf.)

Democrats have long-maintained the Siegelman cases were politically motivated.

Johnson also worked on the Justice Department’s case against Richard Scrushy, the former chief executive of HealthSouth, who was acquitted in 2005 of masterminding a $2.7 billion accounting fraud. But in 2006, Scrushy was convicted in the Middle District of paying $500,000 to Siegelman in return for a seat on the state hospital regulatory board.

Amid a groundswell of Democratic opposition – Johnson was referred to as a “rabid, right-wing Republican” in one anyonmous quote that gained purchase in the blogosphere, though she and her husband are Democratic donors  –  Davis approached the White House. The congressman warned that her nomination would generate a backlash, the knowledgeable Democrat said.

The White House, which thus far has been loath to mix it up with Republicans over U.S. Attorney nominations, tread at least as carefully with Democrats, and Johnson’s candidacy dissolved.

The new front-runner, the official said, is George Beck Jr., 68, a white-collar defense lawyer at Capell & Howard and former state prosecutor. Davis recently passed his named to the White House, the official said, but it appears his candidacy will be anything but tidy.

Even if he satisfies the state’s Republican senators, he’ll have to assuage Democrats. Like Johnson, he also was involved in the Siegelman case as a lawyer for government witness Nick Bailey, an ex-aide to the governor who was sentenced to 18 months in prison on bribery-related charges. Bailey, one of the government’s star witnesses, testified in three trials and submitted to more than 40 interviews with federal investigators.

Beck, others noted, also defended Guy Hunt, the first Republican governor of Alabama since Reconstruction, who was convicted of illegaly diverting and spending money raised for his 1987 inauguration.

Michel Nicrosi (courtesy Trinity Episcopal Church)

Former federal prosecutor and tax-fraud expert Michel Nicrosi on Thursday will file papers with the Alabama Secretary of State to run for the Democratic nomination for state Attorney General, The Associated Press reports. She told The AP she wants the job because the office needs a prosecutor and not a politician.

Nicrosi had been mentioned earlier this year as a possible nominee for U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Alabama. She was the first choice of a selection committee formed by Democratic Rep. Artur Davis. But she didn’t have the support of Alabama Republican Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby.

The White House instead has vetted Joseph P. Van Heest, a criminal defense attorney in Montgomery, for the job. Van Heest was Davis’s second choice. But his nomination has been held up for months over objections from Shelby, who reportedly supports the daughter of a friend and political support for the Middle District instead.

Check out our previous report here.

Nicrosi, who previously was an assistant U.S. Attorney in Mobile, where she is now in private practice, successfully defended a top aide to former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) against racketeering charges.

The only other Democrat to announce a Secretary of State candidacy is former state Democratic chairman Giles Perkins. Two other Democrats have been mentioned as possible candidates for the nomination: attorney James Anderson and Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall.

On the GOP side, current Attorney General Troy King plans to run for re-election. He will face Luther Strange, a Republican activist who also sought the post in 2006.

After Main Justice broke the news last month that the White House was vetting an obscure Capitol Hill staffer for U.S. Attorney in Alabama’s Southern District, Rep. Artur Davis diplomatically declined to comment.

Artur Davis (gov)

The White House’s elevation of House ethics committee staffer Kenyen Brown for the post was a diss to Davis. The Harvard-educated African-American pol is trying to modernize Alabama and move beyond its polarizing racial politics. As he gears up to run for governor next year, aiming to break his own racial barrier in the Deep South state, Davis has also tried to professionalize the U.S. Attorney selection process, moving away from the rank partisan politics that defined it during the Bush administration.

Toward that end, Rep. Davis formed a highly credentialed search committee, and ultimately recommended Vicki Davis (no relation), an African-American Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District as his first choice for the Southern District; and a white former magistrate judge named Patrick Sims, now in private practice at at Cabaniss, Johnston, Gardner, Dumas & O’Neal in Mobile, as his second choice.

But after Davis ran into vetting problems (click here for our previous report), the White House completely skipped over Sims. It’s our information that Sims wasn’t even called to Washington for an interview. The view of many in the Alabama legal community is that Sims was simply the wrong color. Alabama’s other two prosecuting districts are slated to be filled by whites (Joyce Vance in the Northern District and Joe Van Heest in the Middle District). The White House, it appears, was bound and determined to have at least one black U.S. Attorney in Alabama. And the 39-year-0ld Kenyen Brown – although he has few ties to the Alabama establishment – fit that bill: He is African-American.

Nothing againt Kenyen Brown, who by all accounts is a fine fellow.

But now, the Mobile-Press Register reports that Artur Davis has broken his silence. In an interview with the newpaper’s Sean Reilly, Davis came out publicly swinging for Vicki Davis, saying:

“There is certainly nothing that has surfaced that in any way suggests that Vicki Davis is not qualified to be the U.S. Attorney or has anything other than the highest level of character and integrity.”

Moveover, Mobile attorney Tom Haas wrote in a letter to Obama yesterday that the 50 members Mobile Area Democratic Association support Vicki Davis.

“Her credentials are so outstanding that we cannot believe that there is any individual more qualified,” he wrote in the letter obtained by The Press-Register.

Haas told the Press-Register that his group doesn’t have any hard feelings towards Brown. They just don’t know much about him, he said. Brown worked for the Senate Ethics Committee from 2000 until last year, when he took a job with the House ethics panel, officially known as the Committee on Standards on Official Conduct. He was an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District and a prosecutor in the Montgomery County district attorney’s office before coming to Washington.

The irony here is great. The country’s first African-American president, who hardly talked about racial issues in his campaign, is now undermining the fellow African-American Democrat on a racial issue, even though Davis headed up the Obama campaign in Alabama. What’s more, Attorney General Eric Holder’s own sister-in-law, Vivian Malone Jones, played a storied role in Alabama’s civil rights struggles. Jones, who is now deceased, was one of two of the first African Americans to enroll at the University of Alabama in 1963, only to be blocked by then-Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

Is the White House’s thinking here that Alabama will never vote for a Democrat for president, so it’s okay to treat Davis like this? Politics sure ain’t for the faint-hearted. Artur Davis told The Press-Register that the White House will likely nominate a U.S. Attorney in the next few weeks to fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Deborah Rhodes in April.

Former federal prosecutor and tax-fraud expert Michel Nicrosi is out of the running for the U.S. Attorney position in the Middle District of Alabama, in part because she was opposed by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), say people with knowledge of the situation.

Michel Nicrosi (courtesy Trinity Episcopal Church)

The leading candidate now appears to be Joseph P. Van Heest, a criminal defense attorney in Montgomery.

Nicrosi, a lawyer now in private practice in Mobile who successfully defended a top aide to former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) against racketeering charges, was the first choice of a selection committee formed by Rep. Artur Davis, the state’s senior congressional Democrat. Van Heest was Davis’s second choice for the job. Read Davis’s January news release about his recommendations here.

Davis is in charge of making judicial and U.S. Attorney recommendations to the White House because Alabama’s two senators – Sessions and Richard Shelby — are both Republicans.  What’s interesting is how much political weight in this process the White House apparently is giving the GOP senators over Davis, an African-American who was an early supporter of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in heavily Republican Alabama.

The conservative Sessions was U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1981 to 1993 and is said to remain keenly interested in matters down in Mobile. And now, of course, he wields particular influence with the White House because as the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, he has the power to rough up or even block President Obama’s judicial selections. Moreover, it’s not a time when the White House wants to cross Sessions, with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings set to begin July 13.

And, unfortunately for Nicrosi, there is some bad blood between her and a good friend and protege of Sessions named Richard Moore, say people familiar with the Southern District.

Richard Moore (TVA)

In the 1990s, Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorney Don Foster in the Southern District of Alabama chose Nicrosi over Moore to head the office’s criminal division. Moore was a prosecutor in the office who’d been hired by Sessions. Then as criminal division chief, Nicrosi required prosecutors to create standard plea bargain language and write prosecution memos – professional practices that the office had neglected, say people familiar with the Southern District. The extra work load didn’t sit well with some veterans in the office, the people say.

A spokesman for Sessions, Stephen Miller, said he wasn’t able at this time to gather enough information to comment about Nicrosi or what role Sessions is playing in the U.S. Attorney selection process in Alabama. The senator and his staff have been consumed by preparations for the Sotomayor hearing, Miller said. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Melissa Schwartz, said the administration’s policy is not to comment on internal deliberations regarding U.S. Attorney selections. A spokesman for Rep. Davis also declined to comment. 

As for Moore, he went on in 2003 to be named Inspector General of the Tennessee Valley Authority, thanks to a recommendation from Sessions. In a sign of the high esteem Sessions holds for Moore, the senator appeared in person at Moore’s 2003 confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

In testimony that can be read here, Sessions called Moore his “good friend” and said:

“Richard Moore, I think, is one of America’s finest public servants. … He is a churchman, and a man of integrity and ability. … He has a wonderful wife, Elizabeth Ann. I am proud of them… I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity to say something about my good friend, Richard Moore. He is the kind of person that you would be proud to have in your home for supper with your family and the kind of person all of us are proud to see in public service.

Moore added in his own statement to the committee: “I would also like to thank Senator Sessions for his kind remarks this morning and for his sponsoring my nomination for this position.”

But opposition from the Sessions camp wasn’t the only issue that doomed Nicrosi for the Middle District job, say people familiar with the situation. The hard-charging ex-prosecutor also rubbed some luminaries in Alabama’s close-knit legal community the wrong way by speaking out forcefully against a Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney embroiled in a sex scandal. The U.S. Attorney, David York, resigned his leadership of Alabama’s Southern District in 2005 amid allegations of an improper relationship with an assistant U.S. Attorney under his supervision.

There’s more. A state Democratic patronage committee had recommended the daughter of a major Democratic donor who is close to Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala) for the job. Shelby, a former Democrat and trial lawyer, is said to be close to Larry Morris, father of Anna Clark Morris, an assistant U.S. Attorney in Montgomery. A spokesman for Shelby didn’t return a phone call seeking comment.

Upshot: Nicrosi appears to have been done in by some combination of Shelby promoting his friend’s daughter for the job, the Sessions camp opposing Nicrosi, and lingering bad feelings in the Alabama judicial community about Nicrosi’s outspokenness against ex-U.S. Attorney York’s improper relationship with the AUSA.

An earlier version of this post was published on June 10. 

Capitol Hill staffer Kenyen Brown, a lawyer for the House ethics committee, is being vetted by the White House for the Southern District of Alabama U.S. Attorney position, according to people familiar with the process.

In a brief telephone interview Friday, Brown, 39, confirmed to Main Justice that he is under consideration for the job. He is a 1991 graduate of the University of Alabama and received his law degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Brown was an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1996 to 1999 and a prosecutor in the Montgomery County district attorney’s office from 1995 to 1996. He worked for the Senate Ethics Committee from 2000 until last year, when he took a job with the House ethics panel, officially known as the Committee on Standards on Official Conduct. His position advising House members and staff on ethics compliance isn’t a partisan appointment.

Artur Davis (gov)

It isn’t clear who promoted Brown for the post. He emerged as the leading candidate after the White House apparently rejected the first choice of Rep. Artur Davis, the senior Democrat in the Alabama congressional delegation, and passed over – at least for now — Davis’s second choice.

It’s a somewhat strange way for the nation’s first African-American president to treat a prominent African-American politician from the Deep South. Like President Obama, Davis is aiming to break a racial barrier: He is running next year to be the first African-American governor of Alabama. And Davis had headed the Obama campaign in Alabama, calling the Illinois Democrat’s election a “remarkable inspiration” that “crossed a psychological threshold.” But the politics in the Alabama U.S. Attorney selections are complicated — with racial issues playing out in ways both predictable and unexpected.

Jeff Sessions (gov)

Looming over it all is Alabama Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III – the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and a key player in Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Sessions was also the U.S. Attorney in the Southern District from 1981 to 1993, and his tenure was marked by accusations of racial insensitivity and bias.

 We don’t claim to understand all the nuances, so please send any insights you might have to tips@mainjustice.com.

With that disclaimer, here’s what we know of the backstory:

Rep. Davis in January announced that he’d recommended Vicki Davis (no relation), an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District, to be nominated to head the office. Davis’s second choice was former federal magistrate judge Patrick Sims, now in private practice at Cabaniss, Johnston, Gardner, Dumas & O’Neal in Mobile. Read Davis’s news release announcing his recommendations here.

 But Vicki Davis appeared to run into myriad problems – including her political relationship with a circuit court judge charged with sexually abusing young men who appeared before his court, and with the family of long-time bitter foes of Jeff Sessions.

 Sims, on the other hand, appears to have suffered from being the wrong race (white) and wrong gender (male.) Vicky Davis, by contrast, is African-American and female. The need to find a black prosecutor to head up the Southern District became more urgent, because the leading candidates for Alabama’s other two prosecuting districts are also white. They are Joyce Vance, who’s been nominated to head the Northern District; and Joe Van Heest, who appears to be the frontrunner now for the Middle District.

 Reached by phone on Friday, Vicki Davis declined to comment. A spokesman for Rep. Davis, Alex Goepfert, directed questions to the White House. The White House spokesman for judicial and U.S. Attorney appointments, Ben LaBolt, was traveling Friday and unavailable for comment. Melissa Schwartz, a spokewoman for the Justice Department, said she could not comment on candidates whom the White House hasn’t formally announced.

But Davis’s problems with the White House appeared to stem in part from her political relationship with a Mobile circuit court judge named Herman Thomas, said people familiar with Alabama legal politics. Thomas was arrested in March and charged with sexually abusing young men who came before his court. This story in an Alabama alternative magazine, Lagniappe, described allegations the judge took his victims into a special room assigned to him in the courthouse and paddled their bare bottoms while he masturbated. The publication said Thomas had been a mentor to Vicki Davis and managed a campaign she ran for a state judgeship.

A Web-based publication, the Mobile Bay Times, published this blog item speculating that Davis also faced problems over a lenient sentencing recommendation she gave for the son of state senator Vivian Figures. The son, Akil Figures, was charged with a drug offense and had also been one of Judge Thomas’s alleged victims. Vivian Figures’s campaign committee had donated $500 to Vicki Davis’s 2000 campaign for the state judgeship. And Figures ran for Senate against Sessions last year. 

 There’s more. Bear with me. Vivian Figures is the sister-in-law of Thomas Figures, a black former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District who helped sink Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship in 1986.

Thomas Figures told the Senate Judiciary Committee that during a 1981 murder investigation involving Ku Klux Klan members, Sessions was overheard telling colleagues that he “used to thinkâ€� the Klan was “okayâ€� until he discovered some of them smoked pot. Figures also said Sessions called him “boyâ€� and that he’d called the NAACP “un-American.â€� Sessions admitted to making some of the remarks but said they had been in jest. As for Thomas Figures – he was charged in 1992 with trying to bribe a drug dealer to help a client of his. Black Alabama Democrats claimed the charge’s against Figures were payback for his sinking of Sessions for the federal judgeship.

Upshot: It’s clear why Vicki Davis didn’t make it through the vetting process. What’s less clear, though, is how much weight the White House is giving Sessions’s views – or whether the Alabama Republican has weighed in. There is no doubt, though, that the White House wouldn’t want to antagonize Sessions at this critical juncture, with the Sotomayor nomination pending and other judicial appointments to come. Still, we wonder if Sessions promoted Brown for the post? The senator is known to remain keenly interested in what goes on in his old office down in Mobile. 

As for Artur Davis, he seemed stoic about the turn of events in this interview published last month in Lagniappe:

L: Back in January, you headed a committee that made recommendations to Obama’s transition team for the next U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Alabama – Vicki Davis and Patrick Sims. What’s the latest on that and are you sticking with those recommendations?

AD: I’ve submitted my recommendations for all three districts to the White House. The White House and the Justice Department have been vetting candidates and it’s always been their choice. No one should have ever had any illusion the choice was going to rest with anybody other than the Attorney General of the United States and the President of the United States, in conjunction with the White House counsel. I believe there will be announcements soon about U.S. attorneys in the state of Alabama and I think we’ll have a good crop of U.S. attorneys. I put my list forward. Obviously it’s up to people here in Washington to decide who they want.