John Walsh (Hill & Robbins, P.C.)

The Republican former U.S. Attorney in Colorado is pushing Denver lawyer John Walsh for the state’s top federal prosecuting job, The Denver Post reports.

Troy Eid, who served as U.S. Attorney during the Bush administration, wrote Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) that Walsh is “ethical and a person of unimpeachable character and integrity.”

Walsh, a white-collar criminal and civil attorney with the Hill & Robbins law firm, has re-emerged as a candidate for U.S. Attorney after President Barack Obama’s original nominee, Stephanie Villafuerte, withdrew on Monday, citing “political attacks” by Republicans.

Walsh and Villafuerte were recommended to the White House earlier this year by Udall and then-Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), who is now Interior secretary. Their other recommendation was Bill Thiebaut, a district attorney for Pueblo, Colo.

Stephanie Villafuerte (handout via Denver Post)

In his letter to the senator, Eid said: “I know from my own experience that United States Attorneys are entrusted with tremendous power over life and property,” adding, “Colorado’s chief law enforcement leader must act in an ethical and nonpartisan way that’s beyond reproach. Our civil rights and community safety are at stake.”

Walsh also had worked previously for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Former state Sen. Norma Anderson (R) also reached out to Udall on Walsh’s behalf. Anderson told The Post she has known Walsh for a number of years and believes he is “unbiased (and) open- minded and works well with both parties.” She added, “We’re not going to get a Republican appointed, so why not take the best of the Democrats?”

In a Wednesday email to The Post, Walsh wrote, “I was deeply honored to be on the list sent by Sen. Udall and then-Sen. Salazar to the President in January to be considered for nomination as U.S. Attorney for the District of Colorado,” adding,  “I am deeply honored to be considered now.”

Bill Thiebaut (gov)

Thiebaut, also in a Wednesday email to The Post, wrote that “everyone has a reason to support or to not support their favorite candidate.” He added, “I am sure that the President will make the right decision in selecting a new nominee after vetting potential candidates.”

Udall spokeswoman Tara Trujillo told The Post she does not expect that anyone other than Walsh and Thiebaut will be recommended to Obama.

Villafuerte, a longtime aide to Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D), was nominated Sept. 30. She withdrew from consideration following a controversy about whether she accessed a law enforcement database in connection with Ritter’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Villafuerte has denied the allegations.

For the first time in this administration, Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys nominated by President Barack Obama outnumber Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys nominated by former President George W. Bush.

As of the end of November, more than 10 months into Obama’s presidency, the score was 24 Obama U.S. Attorneys to 21 Bush U.S. Attorneys, according to a review of Justice Department and congressional records. And of the 48 acting and interim U.S. Attorneys, just seven were appointed during the Bush administration.

Stephanie Villafuerte (gov)

The figures represent a watershed for the Obama administration, which has made halting progress filling the nation’s 93 U.S. Attorneys positions amid political resistance and a crowded legislative agenda.

On Monday, the U.S. Attorney nominee for Colorado, Stephanie Villafuerte, pulled her name from consideration, offering a public view of one of several nomination battles unfolding in districts across the country. Villafuerte, the first Obama U.S. Attorney nominee to withdraw, faced questions from Republicans over whether she accessed a restricted federal database for political purposes.

Meanwhile, in Mississippi’s Northern District, Oxford-based criminal defense lawyer Christi McCoy’s candidacy has foundered. People in Mississippi legal circles said Republicans raised questions about her affiliation with a private investigator under investigation for allegedly padding his bills and submitting false claims. (McCoy, like many other defense lawyers in Mississippi, used the P.I. in her practice.)

McCoy was recommended for the U.S. Attorney post by Mississippi Reps. Bennie Thompson and Travis Childers, both Democrats.

Leura Canary (gov)

And in Alabama, Montgomery criminal defense lawyer Joe Van Heest appears to be out of the running for Middle District U.S. Attorney after objections from Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), one person familiar with the situation said. Van Heest, who was recommended by Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), had been fully vetted by the White House months ago. But the administration never went forward with a nomination.

As a result, a controversial Bush-holder U.S. Attorney, Leura Canary, remains in charge of the Montgomery-based office. Democrats have criticized Canary for prosecuting former Gov. Don Siegelman (D) on public corruption charges. The Justice Department opposes Siegelman’s Supreme Court appeal of his 2006 conviction.

The White House has shown little appetite for these and other feuds, preferring to reservoir political capital for legislative goals such as health-care reform.

Attorney General Eric Holder has said the Obama administration is treading cautiously in nominating U.S. Attorneys, in part because of lingering sensitivities to politicization in the Justice Department. In an October interview with National Public Radio, Holder said he hoped the offices would be filled by the first part of 2010, but that appears unlikely, with fewer than one-third of the U.S. Attorneys confirmed heading into the New Year.

Eric Holder (Photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice)

One administration official said Holder is frustrated with the pace of the nominations, which thus far has been set by the White House. And several Justice officials are now privately questioning the wisdom of leaving Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys in place until their successors are confirmed, a tack Obama took to preserve continuity and avoid political pitfalls after the scandal over prosecutor firings.

More than twice as many Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys were in place by this time in the first year of the previous two administrations. In the Bush administration, the Senate had confirmed 58 U.S. Attorneys by the end of November 2001, congressional records show. President Bill Clinton, by comparison, had moved 57 U.S. Attorneys through the confirmation process by the end of November 1993.

Nominations, too, have been slow in coming, reinforcing the notion that the top rather than the bottom of the process is knotted. Obama has sent 34 U.S. Attorney nominations to the Senate to date. Bush had nominated more than 60 U.S. Attorneys and Clinton more than 70 U.S. Attorneys by this time in their first terms.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the figures, referring a reporter to Holder’s previous statements on U.S. Attorney nominations.

To read our previous most recent accounting of U.S. Attorney nominees, click here. And to view our interactive U.S. Attorney chart, click here.

Below are lists of Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorneys.

Nominated by Obama:

• Timothy Heaphy (Western District of Virginia)
• Karen Loeffler (District of Alaska)
• Brendan Johnson (District of South Dakota)
• Paul Fishman (District of New Jersey)
• Kenyen Brown (Southern District of Alabama)
• Stephanie Rose (Northern District of Iowa)
• Nick Klinefeldt (Southern District of Iowa)
• Benjamin Wagner (Eastern District of California)
• Ed Tarver (Southern District of Georgia)
• Carmen Ortiz (District of Massachusetts)
• Joyce Vance (Northern District of Alabama)
• B. Todd Jones (District of Minnesota)
• John Kacavas (District of New Hampshire)
• Preet Bharara (Southern District of New York)
• Tristram Coffin (District of Vermont)
• Dennis Burke (District of Arizona)
• Daniel Bogden (District of Nevada)
• Steve Dettelbach (Northern District of Ohio)
• Carter Stewart (Southern District of Ohio)
• Peter Neronha (District of Rhode Island)
• Neil MacBride (Eastern District of Virginia)
• Florence Nakakuni (District of Hawaii)
• Deborah Gilg (District of Nebraska)
• Jenny Durkan (Western District of Washington)

Nominated by Bush:

• Leura Canary (Middle District of Alabama)
• Joseph Russoniello (Northern District of California)
• A. Brian Albritton (Middle District of Florida)
• Leonardo Rapadas (Guam & Northern Mariana Islands)
• Thomas Moss (District of Idaho)
• Patrick Fitzgerald (Northern District of Illinois)
• Jim Letten (Eastern District of Louisiana)
• David Dugas (Middle District of Louisiana)
• Donald Washington (Western District of Louisiana)
• Rod Rosenstein (District of Maryland)
• Jim Greenlee (Northern District of Mississippi)
• William Mercer (District of Montana)
• George E.B. Holding (Eastern District of North Carolina)
• Anna Mills S. Wagner (Middle District of North Carolina)
• Sheldon Sperling (District of Oklahoma)
• William Walter Wilkins III (District of South Carolina)
• James Dedrick (Eastern District of Tennessee)
• Edward Meachan Yardbrough (Middle District of Tennessee)
• Brett Tolman (District of Utah)
• James McDevit (Eastern District of Washington)
• Kelly Rankin (District of Wyoming)

And here’s a list of Obama nominees who have not been confirmed:

• Christopher Crofts (District of Wyoming)
• Thomas Walker (Eastern District of North Carolina)
• James Santelle (Eastern District of Wisconsin)
• Barbara McQuade (Eastern District of Michigan)
• Mary Elizabeth Phillips (Western District of Missouri)
• Sanford Coats (Western District of Oklahoma)
• Michael Cotter (District of Montana)
• Richard Callahan (Eastern District of Missouri)
• Michael Moore (Middle District of Georgia)

Anwar al-Awlaki

The interim U.S. Attorney for Colorado, David Gaouette, rescinded a felony arrest warrant in 2002 for the radical Islamic cleric who has emerged as a focus of investigators in the Nov. 5 shooting deaths at Fort Hood, according to ABC News.

Gaouette was an assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of terror cases in the state when the warrant for Anwar al Awlaki was rescinded, ABC said.

The day after the warrant was canceled, federal authorities detained the U.S.-born Awlaki at New York’s JFK airport as he arrived on a flight from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. After questioning, Awlaki was released and continued on his way to Washington, D.C., where he was an imam at a suburban mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhamzi and Hani Hanjour.

Awlaki also had met in 2000 with Alhamzi and another future 9/11 hijacker, Khalid Almihdhar, at a mosque in San Diego.

Members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in San Diego, speaking anonymously, told ABC News they were “disappointed and shocked” by Gaouette’s decision not to arrest Awlaki in 2002. “This was a missed opportunity to get this guy under wraps so we could look at him under a microscope,” a JTTF source told ABC. It isn’t clear why the warrant was canceled. A spokesperson for Gaouette said he was “unfamiliar with the particulars of the Awlaki case, and would have to research it before he could comment,” ABC reported.

The cleric had first come under FBI scrutiny in 1999. The Bureau found that Awlaki had been in contact with an associate of “blind sheik” Omar Abdel Rahman, whose followers were convicted of attempting to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993, ABC News said. Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, runs a Web site that promotes violent jihad against the West. He was in email contact last year and this year with Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused of killing 13 people in a shooting spree at the Fort Hood military base in Texas.

After looking into the email contacts, the FBI decided they didn’t merit further investigation. The Bureau missed information in Hasan’s training file at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington that would have shown his colleagues were troubled by views the Army psychiatrist expressed about Muslim conflict with the West. The apparent failure to connect the dots — reminiscent of pre-9/11 intelligence lapses — is the subject of congressional investigations.

Awlaki praised suspected Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan on his blog earlier this month.

Read the full report here: How Anwar Awlaki Got Away – ABC News.

Stephanie Villafuerte (gov)

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) on Monday defended his aide, Stephanie Villafuerte, whose nomination to be the state’s next U.S. Attorney is under attack from Republicans, The Denver Post reports.

“I believe Stephanie did nothing wrong,” Ritter said during a radio interview on  The Mike Rosen Show on KOA-AM.

Republicans have questioned whether Villafuerte asked employees of the Denver district attorney’s office — which Ritter had once headed — to access a restricted government database to help his 2006 campaign for governor. Asking someone to access the National Crime Information Center database for non-law enforcement purposes can be a crime, according to The Post.

In 2007 Villafuerte told the FBI she had “no conversations” with the DA’s office about Carlos Estrada-Medina, an alleged heroin dealer who had struck a plea deal when Ritter was Denver’s top prosecutor. Ritter’s Republican opponent for governoer, Bob Beauprez, had featured Estrada-Medina in a campaign ad against Ritter.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Cory Voorhis was charged with accessing the NCIC to check the alias of Estrada-Medina – and providing information about it to Beauprez’s campaign for the 2006 ad. A federal jury acquitted Voorhis in the matter, but he was fired from his job.

Gov. Bill Ritter

“[A]s a person working for the campaign [Stephanie] did a host of things to try to independently verify this identity of Carlos Estrada-Medina and could not do it,” Ritter told the radio host. “She had people who were getting public records. We as a campaign employed individuals — interns — to go to the courthouse and get the records. We got nothing from the DA’s office.”

When asked about a voice mail Villafuerte left for the DA’s office’ spokeswoman about Estrada-Medina shortly someone in the office accessed the NCIC records on him, Ritter said: “I think it’s dangerous to just actually take it from logs. Those are one- to two-minute calls, and if you leave a message with somebody it’s logged as a one-minute call,” adding, “They may not have talked at all.”

Villafuerte is nominated to replace Troy Eid, who resigned in January as the U.S. Attorney for the  District of Colorado

Stephanie Villafuerte (gov)

Stephanie Villafuerte (University of Denver, UCLA School of Law) is nominated to replace  Troy Eid, who resigned in January  as the U.S. Attorney for the  District of Colorado.

Her vitals:

• Born in Omaha, Neb. in 1965.
• Has been Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s (D) deputy chief of staff since January 2007.
• Headed Ritter’s transition team following his November 2006 election.
• Worked in the research/response unit in the Ritter for Governor campaign from July 2006  to November 2006.
• Was Chief Deputy District Attorney in the Denver District Attorney’s office from January 2001 to July 2006.
• Served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Colorado from May 1998 to January 2001.
• Worked as Deputy District Attorney in the Denver District Attorney’s office from October 1991 to May 1998.
• Handled approximately 75 jury trials, all of which she was the lead chair.

Click here for her full disclosure.

UPDATE: On her Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure Villafuerte reports earning a salary of $130,000 in Ritter’s office. On her Senate Judiciary financial disclosure she reports assets of $1,246,200 and liabilities of $151,500 for a net worth of $1,094,700.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a 2008 Republican presidential candidate and fierce opponent of illegal immigration, is criticizing the nomination of Stephanie Villafuerte for District of Colorado U.S. Attorney.

Tom Tancredo (gov)

President Barack Obama officially nominated Villafuerte (University of Denver, University of California at Los Angeles) on Sept. 30. The deputy chief of staff to Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) would be the first Latina to serve as Colorado’s top federal prosecutor.

In a column on the conservative WorldNetDaily Web site, Tancredo cites a controversy from Ritter’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign against Republican Bob Beauprez that resulted in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent losing his job.

The agent, Cory Voorhis, was acquitted of charges he improperly accessed a federal crime database for information the Beauprez campaign used to make a campaign ad that attacked Ritter for reaching plea agreement with illegal immigrants when he was the Denver District Attorney. One of those undocumented immigrants was Carlos Estrada-Medina, an accused heroin dealer.

Stephanie Villafuerte (gov)

After the ad was released, Villafuerte called a staffer at the DA’s office and apparently asked about Estrada-Medina. The DA’s office also accessed the same information as Voorhis in the National Crime Information Computer database.

The DA’s office said that the check on Estrada-Medina was done in response to media calls. But records released by the DA’s office in response to a request by The Denver Post “show no such media deluge. Instead, they indicate that the DA office’s work on Estrada-Medina also had its roots in a campaign,” the newspaper reported in 2008.

Voorhis lost his job over the matter. Tancredo thinks there’s a double standard.

“As the U.S. attorney, will Stephanie Villafuerte offer help in investigating the corruption, perjury and malfeasance rampant in the Denver regional office of ICE?,” writes Tancredo. “Will she be an advocate for the effective enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws after participating in the disgusting vendetta against ICE agent Cory Voorhis? The answer to those questions is probably … no se puede,” wrote Tancredo.

WND is home to conservative conspiracy theories on everything from Obama’s citizenship to the belief that health care reform would lead to “concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.” Recent headlines include “Will your thoughts be subject to hate crime laws?” and “How to survive the coming martial law in America.”

If confirmed, Villafuerte would replace Acting U.S. Attorney for Colorado David Gaouette, who has been in the position since Jan. 10 after Bush appointee Troy A. Eid resigned. Gaouette’s current 120-day extension expires on Dec. 8, at which point the U.S. District Court for Colorado would appoint a interim U.S. Attorney until a presidential nominee is sworn in.