Tag Archives: U.S. Department of Justice

Invoking “Nuremberg”—Calling “Nazi,” Really—Too Flippantly in Chicago

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During Chicago’s recent mayoral campaign, the Chicago Tribune published an article on the career of candidate Lori Lightfoot, a lawyer.

The article recounted, among other details, an incident when Lightfoot, serving in 1999 as an Assistant United States Attorney, allegedly misled a federal judge.  This resulted in her later reprimand by another federal judge, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner.

In her defense, Lightfoot explained that the incident occurred when she was “a junior lawyer following the advice of people who were much more experienced than me [sic],” and that a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry had determined that she had not “engaged in professional misconduct or exercised poor judgment.”

In response to the Tribune’s article, Scott Cisek, a senior aide to Lightfoot’s opponent Toni Preckwinkle, posted on Facebook a photograph of nine former Nazis sitting in the dock as defendants before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg during 1945-46.  The photo had a top caption ” ‘JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS’ ” and, at bottom, “HISTORICALLY THAT EXCUSE HASN’T WORKED OUT SO WELL.”

Cisek soon deleted his post and apologized.

Preckwinkle fired Cisek from her campaign.

Lightfoot, in the end, defeated Preckwinkle.

The enormous crimes of true Nazis, as proven and adjudicated in the Nuremberg trials, are matters to study, learn, and teach, with accuracy and a sense of proportion.

William P. Barr & Robert S. Mueller, Working Together in the Department of Justice, 1989-1993

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(Also on Twitter–)

1/ Short thread: William P. #Barr has a history of working closely with Robert #Mueller in @TheJusticeDept. I think that their #DOJ association is a good basis to presume that Barr thinks highly of Mueller as a law enforcement professional & as a person.

2/ In the #Bush41 administration, beginning in 1989, Barr & Mueller worked under AG Dick #Thornburgh. Mueller was Thornburgh’s principal aide on criminal matters. Barr was Assistant AG heading the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

3/ In 1990, the Deputy Attorney General (Donald B. Ayer) resigned. President Bush appointed Barr to succeed Ayer as DAG.

4/ In that same time period, Asst. AG Edward S.G. Dennis, head of the Criminal Division, also resigned.

5/ President Bush appointed Mueller to succeed Dennis as AAG heading the Criminal Division.

6/ When AG Thornburgh resigned in 1991 to run for the U.S. Senate, Barr became Acting AG. President Bush soon appointed Barr to succeed Thornburgh as AG.

7/ AG Barr & AAG Mueller served together in DOJ until the Bush administration concluded in January 1993.

A Professional Responsibility Exam Question?

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Don (“D”) serves in the District of Columbia as Counsel to the President of the United States.  On January 26, Sally (“S”), the senior federal law enforcement official, contacted D and requested a meeting.  He agreed and they met privately.

In the meeting, S explained to D that:

  • a senior adviser to the President has misled the Vice President of the U.S., and perhaps other government officials as well, about the substance of the adviser’s private communications with a foreign government official;
  • the foreign government is aware of this misleading through its public and private sources of information; and
  • this situation makes the senior adviser extremely vulnerable to influence by the foreign government.

In follow up meetings, S showed D the substantive information underlying her concerns.  D became convinced that this was a serious situation that the President needed to address, probably by dismissing the senior adviser.

During the next few weeks, D discussed this situation a number of times with the President and other officials.  (We do not know what the President responded, including whether he directed D to take any subsequent action.)

On February 17, D arranged for a local reporter to learn that, back in January, S had warned the White House through D that the senior adviser had misled the Vice President and perhaps others, and that this made him subject to influence by the foreign government.  The next day, the reporter’s newspaper published this information.  Public outcry ensued, leading the President to dismiss the senior adviser.

Assume that the foregoing comes to light, and that appropriate authorities are now working to determine if D should be subjected to professional discipline for his conduct.

The question:  Please discuss whether D should be disciplined under D.C. Rule of Professional Conduct 1.6.  Please include assessments based on various assumptions, which you should state explicitly, about what the President decided, ordered, or authorized at various times, including with regard to the D-arranged transmission of information to the reporter.

Extra credit:  If times permits, please also discuss whether, on any set of assumed facts, D and/or whoever transmitted the information to the reporter deserves recognition and praise as a patriot.

 

Respecting Respectful Janet Reno (1938-2016)

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The New York Times Magazine, in its December 25th annual selection of “The Lives They Lived,” highlighted dozens of this year’s departed.

Among all the greats remembered there, only one, Janet Reno, was the subject of two reports.

One showed her rough-hewn Florida bedroom, photographed shortly after her death on the eve of Election Day last month.

The other remembered her during her 2002 near-miss campaign for Governor of Florida, two years after she had finished serving for nearly eight years as Attorney General of the United States.

In 1993 and 1994, as a Main Justice lawyer, I got to see AG Reno in action in a few big-crowd meetings.  She was decency personified, attentive to detail, and concerned only that she and everyone in the Department of Justice was doing their jobs well.

And she was charmingly not hip.  For example, at one of those meetings, held around the time when “dissing” became a word and a thing, the AG began to state her disagreement with someone’s point as follows:  “I don’t want to be ‘dis,’ but…”  (The room then froze for a second, and then exploded in laughter.  The AG, puzzled but knowing she’d said something funny, joined in.)

Janet Reno wasn’t “dis.”  She was exactly, authentically, entirely the opposite.  And her personal goodness moved and lifted people, including throughout the Department of Justice—she led the excellent people of federal law enforcement to do better, including in some hard passages, than they would have without her to follow.

Public life, in Florida and nationally, was better for it.

 

RIP, David Margolis

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Margolis

“Career federal prosecutor,” a phrase that appears in many discussions of crime, justice and law enforcement issues, is a hefty credential.  It refers to someone who was hired by the United States Department of Justice as a young or young-ish lawyer, who then, over many years, worked and was promoted up the line, assigned to and in time handling numerous, increasingly complicated, often controversial, investigations, trials, appeals, and other federal criminal law matters.

Career federal prosecutors are distinguished—descriptively, if in fact not much in their skills, honesty and dedication—from DOJ political appointees, who are appointed and selected by presidential election winners and their nominees, and who often have political party identities and stay in office only as long as their party’s president holds office.  (And “career” prosecutors are also distinguished from non-political appointees who serve as prosecutors for a while but then move on to other employment.)

David Margolis, who just died at age 76, was the quintessential career federal prosecutor.  He worked in the Department of Justice for more than 50 years.  He saw it all and did it all.  He worked closely with and was revered by hundreds, maybe thousands, of DOJ colleagues (I was once one) and others across law enforcement and other government agencies.  He worked well with political appointees from both parties.  They valued his law-smarts, his life-knowledge, and his justice-wisdom; his guidance and criticisms; his guff and his praise; his toughness and courage.  He helped all of them to stand up and perform their responsibilities, as he took the load, and sometimes the heat, of performing his own.

Margolis stories and lessons are and will be, and should be, many.  A personal one is his “death” (heart stoppage) twenty years ago in his DOJ office, and then the miracle of his fall to the floor restarting his heart—Jim McGee & Brian Duffy described that, and a lot of David’s work, in their 1996 book Main Justice.

More of David is captured in this 2011 profile in the Brown University (his alma mater) alumni magazine, and in this Washington Post profile one year ago.

And here are the statements issued today, at this sad moment, by Attorney General Lynch and Deputy Attorney General Yates.

David Margolis, a great guy in addition to being a skilled lawyer, handled big public responsibilities. He worked forward, from matter to matter, giving each his best, usually doing excellent work, maybe sometimes screwing up, staying honest and apolitical, and showing up the next day to give Justice everything he had.

I hope that public service, and especially federal prosecution, continues to see his likes.