Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a NAFUSA member, and DHS general counsel Stevan Bunnell have been named by DHS head Jeh Johnson to take over the investigation of the White House intruder investigation from the Secret Service. Their report is due November 1.
On September 19 a man scaled the White House fence and was able to penetrate far into the interior of the White House before he was apprehended. This incident, along with other recent security breaches led to the resignation of the head of the Secret Service on September 29.
Mayorkas served as the United States Attorney for the CD of California (1999-2001) and is currently the deputy secretary of DHS, the second-ranking official of that agency. He previously served as the director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) from 2009-2013. He was a participant on the NAFUSA panel on immigration at the Atlanta conference in 2012. Mayorkas and Bunnell were both partners in the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP prior to their service at DHS.
The Mayor’s Commission on The Department of Licenses and Inspection (L&I) issued its final report on September 25, 2014. NAFUSA member Peter F. Vaira, was appointed by Mayor Nutter as the executive director of the Commission. The Commission, consisting of 20 experts in construction and demolition, and the government supervision of these activities was directed to look into the L&I’s oversight of a building collapse in June 2013 which killed six persons in a Salvation Army thrift store next door. One of those killed was the daughter of the Treasurer of Philadelphia.
After 10 months of active investigation, the Commission recommended some of the most dramatic changes in Philadelphia government in 50 years. The Commission recommended that the Department of L&I, be abolished and replaced by a Department of Buildings and and a Department of Business Compliance. The Department of Buildings is to be headed by a licensed engineer or a registered architect, will have public safety in construction and demolition of private and public buildings as its primary mission and will have direct supervision of 25,000 vacant buildings in Philadelphia. The Department of Business Compliance will have the responsibility of licensing and permitting all activities that do not fall under construction or demolition.
Upon receiving the report, the Mayor immediately placed L&I under the supervision of the
Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, along with the Police and Fire Departments. The Mayor also directed the formation of an implementation group to begin studying how the recommended changes could be made. That group will convene in October and will report to the Mayor by December 31, 2014.
For a copy of the report contact p.vaira@gpeff.com
NAFUSA Executive Director Rich Rossman is one of the organizers of the James K. Robinson Scholarship Event to be held on Friday, September 26 at the London Chop House in Detroit. The purpose of the event is to raise additional funds for the endowed scholarship that Robinson created to help students at the Wayne State Law School, where Robinson, a past president of NAFUSA, had served as dean. Robinson passed away in 2010 after a three year bout with cancer.
On September 8, 2014, the Detroit Legal News profiled Rossman’s career. He served as Robinson’s chief assistant when Jim was the United States Attorney in Detroit (1977-1980). Rich then succeeded Jim in 1980. Rossman followed Robinson to Washington and served as Jim’s chief of staff in the Criminal Division, 1998-1999.
The Legal News points out that Rossman will be attending his 50th law school reunion this weekend at The University of Michigan Law School and will be among the 50 year honorees at the Michigan State Bar Association the following weekend in Grand Rapids. In a year of 50s, Rich and Patty will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in January.
On September 2, 2014, Baker Donelson announced the addition of NAFUSA member Joe D. Whitley and Jason R. Edgecombe to the Firm’s Government Regulatory Actions Group.
Whitley joins Baker Donelson as chair of the Firm’s White Collar Practice and a shareholder in Baker Donelson’s Atlanta and Washington offices, where he represents clients nationally and internationally in white collar criminal matters and regulatory enforcement, corporate internal investigations, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and U.S. export controls and compliance. He also advises on corporate compliance, health care fraud and FDA-related matters. Whitley has had a wide-ranging career in the Department of Justice, having served as the Acting Associate Attorney General during the George H.W. Bush administration, and being appointed by Presidents Reagan and Bush, respectively, to serve as the United States Attorney in the Middle and Northern Districts of Georgia. In 2003, he was appointed by George W. Bush as the first General Counsel of the United States Department of Homeland Security and served in that position for two years before returning to private practice.
A frequent speaker and lecturer on white collar, compliance and corporate governance issues, Whitley has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America since 2001 in the area of Administrative/Regulatory Law and in Chambers USA since 2014 in the area of White-Collar Crime and Government Investigations. He has also been listed in Georgia Super Lawyers since 2010 and in Washington, D.C. Super Lawyers since 2012. Whitley is an active member of the American Bar Association and currently chairs the ABA’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, and is a member of the Criminal Justice Section.
“Mr. Whitley and Mr. Edgecombe are respected practitioners in the area of white collar criminal matters and government investigations,” said Gary C. Shockley, leader of Baker Donelson’s Government Regulatory Actions Group. “Joe’s extensive legal practice and background in public service and Jason’s experience with internal investigations make them excellent additions to our team. I am pleased Joe will be our new leader as chair of the Firm’s White Collar Group.”
Whitley called his move to Baker Donelson a great opportunity. “Baker Donelson has a wonderful Southern footprint,” he said. The firm, based in Memphis, has 700 lawyers, mostly in the Southeast, Texas and Florida. Whitley said the firm’s institutional clients, particularly in health care, were a draw. “The firm has a large presence in Nashville, the epicenter of health care in the United States, which was an important factor in my decision,” Whitley said.
Julie Myers Wood at the Atlanta conference in 2012
Julie Myers Wood, C.E.O of NAFUSA sponsor Guidepost Solutions, is featured in today’s New York Times column in the Sunday Business Section, Corner Office by Adam Bryant: Eat Your Sushi, and Expand Your Horizons. Wood served as the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for nearly three years in the Bush administration and previously as the assistant secretary for Export Enforcement at the Department of Commerce, chief of staff for the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice, and deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department. She also served as an assistant United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.
Wood was a participant on the panel on immigration at NAFUSA’s Atlanta conference in 2012 and is married to NAFUSA member John Frederick Wood, who served as the United States Attorney in the Western District of Missouri, 2007-2009. She will be attending the Boston conference in October.
The secret to NAFUSA’s member Robert Morgenthau’s long life may have been disclosed. The 95 year old former United States Attorney in the Kennedy Administration who served 34 years as the Manhattan district attorney, is the subject (or co-subject) of his wife’s new book, Timeless Love, Morgenthau, and Me, by Lucinda Franks. Sara Crichton Books/ Farra, Straus & Giroux. $28.
Franks and Morgenthau were married in the 70s, when Franks was a 26 year old former New York Times reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner. As Kati Marton put it in her book review, May Loves December in The New York Times, “The secret to a long and passionate union is to marry someone almost 30 years your senior.”
In an interview published today in Corporate Crime Reporter, Davis Polk Partner Neil MacBride On the Shift of Prosecutorial Power from New York to DC, NAFUSA member Neil MacBride, who served as the United States Attorney for the ED of Virginia 2009-2013, talks about his perception that the center of the corporate crime universe is shifting from New York to Washington and northern Virginia.
In MacBride’s view, a paradigm shift occurred in the national security area with 9/11and the Patriot Act and other statutes began to tear down artificial walls and federal agencies began to share information. According to MacBride, the shift spilled over into the enforcement and regulatory space.
The result has been a consolidation of enforcement authority in Washington. You have this proliferation of regulatory and enforcement agencies that just didn’t exist a decade ago.
When I was U.S. Attorney, I created the Virginia Financial Securities Fraud Task Force. That brought together criminal law enforcement agencies like the FBI, the Postal Inspection Service, the IRS on the one side. And then we brought in civil regulators like the SEC, the CFTC, state securities commissions. We brought them together in a way that allowed them to share information with the goal of detecting and disrupting financial frauds when they were relatively small, before they ballooned into Madoff style billion dollar ponzi schemes.
We stole the playbook from the national security counterterrorism side and have now applied it in the financial fraud and regulatory space. Companies increasingly have a sense that the locus of power has shifted from New York to Washington and northern Virginia. The regulators and enforcers here are much more active and will soon, if they haven’t already, eclipse New York as being the center of the U.S. government’s efforts against financial fraud.
The interview also discusses the “rocket docket”in the Eastern District of Virginia- rules created to speed cases on both the civil and criminal side. MacBride also discusses his view that the pendulum is swinging back from deferred and non prosecution agreements toward more guilty pleas in corporate cases. He is also quoted on the “rocket docket” in the July 15th posting of Legal Bisnow (DC).
According to a report in Reuters on Sunday, June 22, 2014, NAFUSA member Dick Thornburgh, a former U.S. attorney general, two-term Pennsylvania governor, and U.S. Attorney for the WD of Pennsylvania, 1969-1975, has been hospitalized in Pittsburgh.
Thornburgh, 81, who served as U.S. attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and President George H.W. Bush, suffered a mild stroke on Saturday, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported, citing Thornburgh’s wife, Ginny Thornburgh.
“He is resting comfortably and receiving excellent care at UPMC Presbyterian,” Thornburgh’s family said in a statement released through the hospital. “He is awake, alert and looking forward to a full recovery.”
On July 10, 2014, Dick Thornburgh’s assistant at K&L Gates provided this update:
Dick Thornburgh is undergoing rehab at UPMC/Mercy hospital in Pittsburgh. He is doing well and he is receiving excellent care from dedicated and caring professionals and his condition appears to be on an upward trajectory. Within the next ten days or so he expects to have a better fix on his future prospects.
NAFUSA member Peter F. Vaira (E.D. Pennsylvania, 1978-1983) joined the Philadelphia law firm of Greenblatt, Pierce, Engle, Funt & Flores (GPEFF) in March, 2014. Vaira will serve as special counsel. In announcing his joining the firm, GPEFF stated:
Peter’s over 50 years of practice, during which he has handled the most complex criminal and civil matters in state and federal court, has earned him a reputation as one of the most respected attorneys in the region. Mr. Vaira is also a widely sought after arbitrator, mediator, special master, and independent hearing officer with numerous years of experience in the field of alternative dispute resolution.
Mr. Vaira will direct GPEFF’s alternative dispute resolution practice while also working alongside Michael J. Engle who leads our white collar practice group. We are honored to have such a tremendously accomplished attorney practicing law with our talented team of trial lawyers.
Founded over 20 years ago as an aggressive criminal defense law practice, GPEFF has since become an established, full-service law firm, with offices in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. www.gpeff.com.
Vaira has written many fine articles in The Legal Intelligencer. Click here The Legal Intelligencer, June 17, 2014 (1) to read his most recent, Protecting Law Firms From Increasing Cyberattacks.
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