Paul Coggins

NAFUSA President Paul Coggins announced the scheduling of a NAFUSA Webinar for Wednesday, October 28, 2020, from 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM ET. It has long been a NAFUSA tradition to invite the Director of the Executive Office of United States Attorneys (EOUSA) and the Chair of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC) to our annual conferences. As the 2020 conference has been cancelled due to the Covid 19 pandemic, a one hour webinar has been scheduled for a dialogue with Erin Nealy Cox, Chair, AGAC and Corey Frazier Ellis, the Senior Official performing the duties of the Director of EOUSA. The dialogue will be moderated by Paul Coggins. Invitations will be emailed in October to all NAFUSA members, sponsors and Friends of NAFUSA.

Erin Nealy Cox

 

Sworn into office on November 17, 2017, United States Attorney Erin Nealy Cox is the chief federal law enforcement officer in the Northern District of Texas, which covers 100 counties, more than 96,000 square miles, and a population of approximately eight million.  Appointed by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she is responsible for all federal criminal prosecutions and civil litigation involving the United States in her district. As U.S. Attorney, Ms. Nealy Cox oversees a staff of approximately 120 attorneys and a similar number of non-attorney support personnel assigned among five division offices.

In March of 2018, Ms. Nealy Cox was appointed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to be a member of the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC). Created in 1973, the AGAC is a group of 15 U.S. Attorneys advising the Attorney General on matters of policy and substantive issues affecting the Justice Department. In Feburary 2020, Ms. Nealy Cox was promoted by Attorney General William Barr to Chair of the AGAC.

Prior to her appointment as U.S. Attorney, Ms. Cox worked as a Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Co. in the cybersecurity and risk practice. She also served on the Board of Directors of Sally Beauty Holdings, a large retailer on the NYSE. From 1999 to 2008, Ms. Nealy Cox served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Northern District of Texas, where she prosecuted cyber crimes, white collar crimes, and general crimes. In 2004 and 2005, she served at Main Justice as chief of staff and senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy. From 2008 to 2016, Ms. Nealy Cox was a member of the executive leadership team at Stroz Friedberg, a cybersecurity and investigations consulting firm, ultimately leading the firm’s global incident response business. Ms. Nealy Cox clerked for the Honorable Henry A. Politz, when he served as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Honorable Barefoot Sanders, United States District Judge in the Northern District of Texas.

Ms. Nealy Cox received her J.D., magna cum laude, from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and her B.B.A. in finance from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a member of the Texas and New York Bar Associations.

Corey Frazier Ellis

Corey Frazier Ellis is the Senior Official performing the duties of the Director for the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA).  The Executive Office, created in 1953, provides general guidance and support to more than 11,000 employees in 94 United States Attorneys’ offices located throughout the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. As Senior Official, Corey oversees EOUSA and serves as the principal staff officer for the Deputy Attorney General for all matters related to the United States Attorneys, as well as the primary liaison between the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, and the United States Attorneys.  Corey provides executive assistance and supervision for the United States Attorneys, including legal education, administrative oversight, technical support, security, policy, and regulation to ensure the effective advancement of DOJ priorities throughout the United States Attorneys’ offices.

Attorney General William P. Barr appointed Corey to the position effective September 16, 2019.  Prior to this appointment, Corey served in several leadership roles in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General including Chief of Staff to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein.

Before joining the Deputy Attorney General’s office, Corey was the First Assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina.  While an Assistant United States Attorney, Corey handled a wide range of criminal investigations including public corruption, white collar fraud, securities fraud, and cybercrime.  Corey began his career as a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office in Hendersonville, North Carolina and has tried more than 100 jury trials.

Corey received his undergraduate degree from Brown University and his J.D. from the University of Memphis, School of Law.

The Webinar is sponsored by King & Spalding LLP.

 

GlassRatner has been a NAFUSA sponsor since 2017. Bert Lacativo has been a regular at our conferences and a long time friend of NAFUSA. Approximately two years ago GlassRatner merged with B. Riley Financial and on August 10, 2020, GlassRatner announced it will become B. Riley Advisory Services.  They will continue as a NAFUSA sponsor through 2021 under the new name.

With Covid-19 having brought the nation to a virtual standstill, the NAFUSA board of directors was forced to cancel their Spring board meeting in Austin, Texas. Instead, President Paul Coggins led the board via Zoom with it’s first virtual meeting on April 18, 2020. After reviewing the current state of the nation’s health and economic concerns, it became clear that holding our annual conference in New York City on September 30-October 2 would be impossible. Therefore, by an unanimous vote, the board decided to postpone this year’s conference and attempt to reschedule in New York in the fall of 2021.

Discussions have begun with the New York Hilton Midtown, which was planned to be the situs of this year’s conference, to schedule new dates in 2021. We also hope that the speakers we have lined up so far will join us in 2021. They include Ted Olson, Neal Katyal, Bob Fiske, Ken Starr, Charlie Savage, Chuck Rosenberg, Jay Stephens and Larry Thompson. The planning committee was also charged by the board to consider organizing a webinar in the fall, hopefully with CLE credits.

NAFUSA will offer our sponsors a choice of taking a refund of their 2020 contribututions or else carrying contributions over to the 2021 conference. Those who carry over their contributions will be listed as 2020 and 2021 sponsors. Any additional sponsors who join in 2020 will also receive the benefit of being listed for both years. Guidepost Solutions has already committed to continue as the sponsor of the opening reception in New York in 2021.

The board also agreed unanimously to recommend to the membership at large that the current slate of officers and directors be frozen through the annual conference in 2021.

Chuck Rosenberg

NAFUSA life member Chuck Rosenberg (ED Virginia 2006-2008, Texas 2005-2006) and the former Acting Director of DEA), will return to present the 2020 ethics lecture at the annual NAFUSA conference in New York City, September 30-October 2. Chuck was scheduled to give this lecture last year at the San Francisco conference but had to cancel due to an appendectomy attack. Chuck will speak on “The Korematsu Story–The Duty of Candor to The Court”. Registration for fall conference is expected to begin in June.

Here is his preview:

In early 1942, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, enabling west coast military commanders to set up curfews and exclusion zones, ostensibly to protect the US against sabotage by Japanese Americans.  More than 110,000 Japanese Americans on the west coast were relocated to internment camps, primarily in the mountain west.  However, two reports – one commissioned by the State Department and one conducted by the Naval Office of Intelligence – showed that there actually was not a significant threat from Japanese Americans living on the west coast.  Indeed, for the most part, those reports showed quite the opposite and, to the extent there was a threat from Japanese Americans, it was confined to a small group of individuals largely known to the FBI and national security officials, many of whom were already under surveillance or in custody.  Further, at least two DOJ attorneys knew about the Munson and Ringle reports and believed – and put it in writing – that withholding the findings from those reports from the Supreme Court in connection with the litigation of the Hirabayashi (curfew) and Korematsu (exclusion) cases amounted to a suppression of evidence.  Those DOJ attorneys lost an internal debate to the Solicitor General, who concealed the information from the Court and misled it in oral argument in response to a direct question about the views of the USG on the threat posed by Japanese Americans.  About seven decades later, the SG’s office (led, at the time, by Neal Katyal) confessed error, acknowledging that the reports had been suppressed and that providing truthful information to the Court was not only required but might have affected the outcome.

Click here to view hundreds of photos from the 2019 NAFUSA conference at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco California.

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San Francisco Conference Photos

Fred Wyshak

Each year, NAFUSA recognizes an Assistant U.S. Attorney for outstanding performance through the J. Michael Bradford Memorial Award. The award is named after J. Michael Bradford, who served as a U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Texas from 1994 to 2001. Bradford, who died in 2003, had a distinguished career in public service, including successfully defending the government against lawsuits stemming from the 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian’s compound in Waco, Texas. NAFUSA annually solicits nominations from current U.S. Attorneys for the Bradford Award. Typically, the recipient has handled a significant investigation and prosecution or a series of prosecutions which has had a significant impact and merits special recognition.

Once again, a number of exceptional nominations were made by U.S. Attorneys around the country. The J. Michael Bradford Award Committee was chaired by NAFUSA Vice President Karen Hewitt. Its members included Bob Balfe, Shari Potter, Paul Coggins, Ron Machen, and John Brownlee.

This year, the NAFUSA Board of Directors voted to give the award to AUSA Fred M. Wyshak, Jr.  of the District of Massachusetts, nominated by U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling. His nomination and selection was based upon Fred having  “quite literally- taken down the Boston mob.” Over the past 25 years, Wyshak has prosecuted Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, a former mobster who killed dozens of people; James “Whitey” Bulger; and former mob boss Frank Salemme and his co-defendant Paul Weadick. In addition, in 2018 Fred was lead counsel in one of the most signficant criminal health care fraud trials in the country, the Insys Therapeutics case involving Subys, a dangerous opioid. Finally, Fred, as chief of the district’s Public Corruption Unit, supervised the prosecutions and convictions of eight Massachusetts State Trooper for fraudulently obtaining thousands of dollars for overtimes shifts they did not work.

Other nominees for the Bradford Award were:

Each of the nominees will receive recognition from NAFUSA for their exemplary service.

The San Francisco conference will include a dialogue with the leadership of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee (AGAC). It will be held on Thursday morning, September 26, 2019, at The Westin St. Francis. It will be moderated by NAFUSA Board Member Donna Bucella, who served as the Executive Director of EOUSA (1997-1999). She also served as the United States Attorney for the Middle District of Florida (1999-2001). She is currently Vice President and Chief Compliance Office at 7-Eleven Inc.

Joining Donna will be Jessie Liu, the Chairwoman of the AGAC. Jessie was confirmed on September 14, 2017 as the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. She last appeared at the NAFUSA conference in Washington in 2017, welcoming us as the local United States Attorney.

On behalf of EOUSA, Norman Wong, the Principal Deputy Director will join the dialogue. Norm began his career at the Department of Justice in 2000.

On Thursday, September 26, 2019, the Annual NAFUSA conference will feature a panel discussion on “Artificial Intelligence, Privacy and the Law.” It will be moderated by NAFUSA Board Member Anne Tompkins, a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft in the White Collar Defense and Investigations Group. Anne served as the United States Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina (2010-2015).

The three panelists will be:

Courtney Bowman, Director of Privacy & Civil Liberties Engineering, Palantir Technologies. His work addresses issues at the intersection of policy, law, technology, ethics and social norms.

Scott Schools, Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer at UBER, and a NAFUSA member (U.S. Attorney for Northern District of California and the District of South Carolina).

Eric Vandevelde, a litigation partner in Gibson Dunn’s Los Angeles office and a member of its White Collar Defense & Investigations, Privacy & Cybersecurity, Intellectual Property, and Crisis Management groups. He has also served 7 years as an AUSA in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California.

Register Now

This year’s NAFUSA annual conference will be held in San Francisco September 25-27 at The Westin St. Francis. The deadline to obtain the group rate is September 3. There is no guaranty rooms will be available after that date. If you any difficulties reserving a room, contact Lisa Rafferty.

The conference will open on Wednesday, September 25, with a welcome reception at the hotel sponsored by Guidepost Solutions. In honor of NAFUSA’s 40th anniversary, the opening reception will recognize and honor the founding members, past presidents and executive directors. Golf will be available on Wednesday morning at Presidio Golf Course.

On Thursday and Friday mornings, the CLE programs will feature:

• a panel on artificial intelligence/technology with Courtney Bowman of Palantir Technologies, Scott Schools of UBER and Eric Vandevelde of Gibson Dunn, moderated by NAFUSA Board Member Anne Tompkins
• a dialogue with EOUSA and the AGAC with Jessie Liu and Norman Wong, moderated by NAFUSA Board Member Donna Bucella
• a presentation on the United States Supreme Court by Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkeley Law
• a presentation by Professor Jennifer Eberhardt of Stanford University on “Unconscious Bias in Law Enforcement” with NAFUSA member Carol Lam
• and an ethics presentation by Stanford Law Professor Deborah Rhode.

On Thursday afternoon, there will be a luncheon and harbor cruise on SanFrancisco Bay. Thursday evening is reserved for class reunions at various off-site locations. On Friday afternoon following the CLE, there will be a luncheon at the hotel, followed by a tour of the Historic Browning Courthouse courtesy of Hon. Michael Hawkins, U.S. Circuit Judge (9th Circuit). The conference will close on Friday evening with dinner and a general membership meeting. Our keynote speaker on Friday night will be Hon. Christopher Wray, Director of the FBI.

Click here to view the San Francisco program.

Click here to read the biographies of our 2019 conference speakers.