by Andrew Zajac

The turnover in the Justice Department's executive suites continues. This afternoon it's Alice Fisher, head of the criminal division, who announced she's leaving, effective May 23.

Departures are expected in the waning days of a lame duck administration, but they began earlier and have been more frequent in the Bush 43 Justice Department, thanks to last year's federal prosecutors firing uproar and mounting discontent on Capitol Hill over DOJ's role in crafting post-9-11 counter-terror policies on surveillance and treatment of detainees.

Fisher, 41, had the kind of political credentials common in the upper reaches of the administration's legal apparatus: Federalist Society, deputy counsel in the Senate Whitewater investigation and the national steering committee of Women for Bush/Cheney, 2004.

But she managed to avoid getting dragged into the contentious Congressional hearings that so badly damaged former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and several other top Justice officials.

Fisher, who served two different stints in the criminal division, oversaw the unit's response to the 9-11 attacks, including advising on the prosecutions of John Walker Lindh, Zacharias Moussaoui and Richard Reid, and she had a hand in carrying out provisions of the Patriot Act.

Here's DOJ's announcement of Fisher's pending departure:

by Andrew Zajac

Downstate Illinois Republican powerbroker Robert Kjellander stoutly denies going to the White House to try to get Chicago federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald fired. But former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, who recommended Patrick Fitzgerald for his Chicago post in 2001, said there's no doubt in his mind that top White House political operative Karl Rove knew of his long-time pal Kjellander's unhappiness with the prosecutor.

According to Peter Fitzgerald, Rove, in late 2003, told him that "Kjellander felt that I was out to get him through my U.S. attorney appointments."

Fitzgerald said he's baffled by that perception. "What would any law abiding person have to worry about from a U.S. attorney?" he said.

Yes, but was Peter Fitzgerald using his prosecutorial picks to get fellow Republican Kjellander? Peter Fitzgerald said that's a 'when did you stop beating your wife' question and declined to answer directly. "I brought in U.S. attorneys who I thought would be independent and aggressive...and would be the best possible U.S. attorneys in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois," he said.

by Mark Silva and Andrew Zajac

Karl Rove, the president's former political "architect,'' did not have designs for the removal of Chicago-based U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, Rove's lawyer said today.

Prosecutors in the trial of Antoin "Tony' Rezko in Chicago suggest differently - telling the judge this morning that they want to call to the stand Ali Ata, a former member of the Blagojevich administration who pled guilty to corruption. Assistant U.S. Att'y Carrie Hamilton said she believes that Ata will testify to conversations with Rezko about trying to stop the criminal investigation of him in 2004.

"He (Ata) had conversations with Mr. Rezko about the fact that Mr. (Bob) Kjellander was working with Karl Rove to have Mr. Fitzgerald removed," Hamilton told U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve today. Kjellander, Republican superlobbyist, is a longtime Republican National Committeeman from Illinois who was an occasional business associate of Stuart Levine, who has pled guilty to conspiring with Rezko to rig state boards for contracts.

Ata would testify about trying to have Fitzgerald replaced by someone else, Hamilton said, "so individuals who have been cooperating in this investigation will be dealt with differently."

The judge did not issue a ruling on whether Ata will testify.

But Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, today issued an unequivocal statement about all of this to the Tribune on behalf of Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President Bush, architect of Bush's presidential campaigns and a private consultant in Washington now.

"Karl has known Kjellander for many years,'' Luskin said, "but does not recall him or anyone else arguing for Fitzgerald's removal. And he (Rove) is very certain that he didn't take any steps to do that, or have any conversations with anyone in the White House -- or in the Justice Department -- about doing anything like that.''

There were stirrings at the Justice Department, however, and Kjellander's possible involvement is consistent with earlier revelations.

by Andrew Zajac

Alberto Gonzales stepped down as Attorney General more than seven months ago, but controversies from his troubled stewardship of the Justice Department still reverberate.

Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, who was convicted of influence-peddling, recently was released from prison pending appeal of his case. Siegelman claims that his prosecution was politically motivated and that former White House advisor Karl Rove had a hand in it.

Siegelman would be much easier to dismiss as an embittered partisan pol if the Justice Department on Gonzales' watch hadn't been tainted by politics in a variety of decisions including the dismissal of nine U.S. attorneys, and by a lack of candor from the attorney general on subjects ranging from warrantless domestic wiretapping to the circumstances surrounding the prosecutors' departures.

(Don Siegelman addressed the media after release on an appeal bond from federal prison on March 28 AP Photo by Butch Dill)

Andrew Zajac

A day after indicted Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson won a victory when the Supreme Court decided not to review a lower court decision limiting evidence seized from his House office, Jefferson's brother, Mose, was indicted for bribery.

Mose Jefferson, 65, of New Orleans, is accused of paying off an Orleans Parish school board member to support and approve educational software contracts with the district.

Andrew Zajac

Earlier today, the FBI press operation unveiled a link to publicity materials in anticipation of the bureau's 100th birthday in July.

Admire them or despise them, G-men have a rich history and much of it's laid out in various stories, archived press releases, photos and old case files on the new web site.

The selection of material underscores the bureau's conflicted view of itself.

Andrew Zajac

Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the nearest the feds come to a celebrity prosecutor, gets the profile treatment in the alumni magazine of his alma mater, Amherst College.

As with nearly all such efforts to draw a portrait of Fitzgerald, most of the information comes from carefully spooned out anecdotes from Fitzgerald himself or from a handful of friends, so there's not a lot new in the piece.

Slightly more revealing is Fitzgerald's speech last May at Amherst's commencement, where he was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree.

(U.S. Att'y Patrick Fitzgerald. Chicago Tribune photo by Candice C. Cusic)

Andrew Zajac

It's the last year of a lame duck presidency, high season for sitting on the president's judicial nominees, the better to give a new commander-in-chief (presumably) of the opposing party a chance to fill more slots.

The idea, as demonstrated by a missive today from Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy, D-VT. (pictured right), is to make the case that the panel is efforting mightily to confirm nominees, could do better with just a little more cooperation from the administration, and in any case, is doing far more than it did when roles were reversed and a Republican congress passed judgment on a Democratic president's picks.

Who is on the federal bench has been a huge deal during the Bush years, particularly for post-9-11 maneuvering on issues like torture, warrantless surveillance and detention of enemy combatants.

The conservative leanings of the DC Circuit and Richmond-based 4th circuits have made them venues of choice for the current administration. The 2nd Circuit, headquartered in Manhattan, and the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, not so much.

The case of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, the Qatari man who is the only enemy combatant still held in the U.S., is illustrative.

(Photo of Al-Marri, right, by Reuters / Peoria County Sheriff's Office)

Andrew Zajac

FBI Director Robert Mueller was on Capitol Hill this morning for an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee and made news, telling lawmakers that breaches of privacy in counter-terror investigations, which were known to have occurred from 2003 through 2005, also occurred in 2006.

Mueller said a pending report will detail the FBI's continued misuse of national security letters -- administrative subpoenas that require banks, telecoms, Internet service providers and other businesses to produce records in suspected espionage and terror cases without court orders.

by James Oliphant

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, will prevent the nomination of Chicago federal judge Mark Filip as the Justice Department's No. 2 official from reaching the Senate floor for an up-and-down vote until the department satisfies Democrats on a number of fronts.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, of which Durbin is a member, is scheduled to vote on Filip's nomination this afternoon, and he is expected to win approval. But Durbin (with the blessing of majority leader Harry Reid) will prevent Filip's nomination from a final floor vote.

Wednesday, a number of Senate Democrats on the Judicary Committee were unhappy with responses given by Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey on the legality of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding. Mukasey essentially punted during his testimony, saying he wouldn't declare the practice illegal because the Central Intelligence Agency isn't currently employing it.

At his confirmation hearing, Filip, too, demurred, saying he would defer to Mukasey on the issue.

The deputy attorney general is a key position at Main Justice. His office functions essentially as the nerve center for the sprawling agency. The job has been vacant since the resignation of Paul McNulty last summer. Filip was Mukasey's hand-picked choice.

Members of the Judiciary Committee are also pressing for responses from Mukasey on a variery of oversight requests, including information about the department's investigation into videotapes destroyed by the CIA of interrogations of suspected high-risk terrorists.

by James Oliphant

We’ve noted earlier the pro-Ohio bias at Swamp HQ, even as we noted the difficult year the Ohio State University endured at the hands of the Southeastern Conference.

Today, one man stood up for Ohio State. Indeed, one man stood up for the entire state of Ohio – and he even isn’t from the Buckeye State. He’s from Arkansas, and he gets this correspondent’s vote for Courageous Legislator of the Year.

The House of Representatives Tuesday entertained a resolution congratulating Louisiana State University for its 38-24 trashing of Ohio State Jan. 7. The measure passed 409 to 1. Who was that one lonely voice? Rep. Marion Berry, a 1965 graduate of the University of Arkansas.

We don’t know, exactly, why Rep. Berry took his Braveheartian stand, but we can guess that, as a graduate of a fierce SEC rival in a border state, he wasn’t about to grant LSU anything. Well done, Rep. Berry.

(The image above comes courtesy of fans of LSU -- obviously.)

Andrew Zajac

Attorney General Michael Mukasey is stoutly conservative in the mold preferred by the Bush Administration, but he has a better knack for explaining himself than did his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, or at least for accepting responsibility for the positions he's taking, however unsatisfying they might be.

That's the impression Mukasey left in his first on-the-record press briefing last Friday, and in the advance copy of testimony he is slated to deliver Wednesday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Here's a copy of his remarks: Download file

Andrew Zajac

More evidence that new Attorney General Michael Mukasey is running a more transparent and inclusive shop than his predecessors John Ashcroft and, especially, Alberto Gonzales:

Mukasey announced today that he's appointing Chicago federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to the Attorney General's advisory committee of U.S. attorneys.

Fitzgerald was on the committee from 2001 until 2005, but his appointment to it preceded his service as special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation.

by Frank James

It's not quite the outside-the-government special prosecutor some congressional Democrats have demanded, but today Attorney General Michael Mukasey said he asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to launch a criminal investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency's destruction of video tapes of the harsh interrogations of two high-value al Qaeda detainees.

The probe will be headed by John Durham, First Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Connecticut. Normally, the U.S. Attorney for Northern Virginia would handle a CIA case of this sort.

But an "abundance of caution," led the abundantly cautious Mukasey to look to New England for a senior government lawyer to oversee the investigation. Lessens the chances for any real or apparent conflict of interest.

The widely held suspicion is that the CIA got rid of the tapes because they showed the detainees being waterboarded, the torture technique that simulates drowning.

And this was despite some CIA officials being told by the then-director, Porter Goss, that in Washington, it was usually a very bad idea to destroy tapes, a lesson everyone was supposed to have learned after the Watergate scandal.

Did the tapes' destruction amount to obstruction of justice, that's the question the probe will seek to answer.

Here's Mukasey's statement:

“Following a preliminary inquiry into the destruction by CIA personnel of videotapes of detainee interrogations, the Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation as outlined below.

Ashcroft once insisted on a coverup for "Minnie Lou," the Art Deco sculpture in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice, seen here at Atty Gen'l Michael Mukasey's swearing in. AFP photo.

by Andrew Zajac

It's been a busy month for former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

On Nov. 5, an op ed under his name in the New York Times argued that telecoms, including his client, AT&T, should be immunized from liability for cooperating with government intelligence operations.

Andrew Zajac

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is fond of saying that he has lived the American Dream.

Now more than ever, perhaps.

Forced to quit his office by the uproar over the dismissal of nine federal prosecutors plus other alleged missteps relating to surveillance and the treatment of detainees, Gonzales now commands a cool $40,000 on the speakers circuit, according to recent news accounts.

by Frank James

When the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued its hate-crimes report this morning, a document which indicated a nearly eight percent increase in 2006 in such crimes compared with the year before, more than a few suspicions were aroused.

Why did the agency wait until the Monday morning of Thanksgiving week to issue the report and not do it last week when Congress was still in town, as were thousands of mostly African American marchers led by Rev. Al Sharpton marched around the Justice Department to demand more federal action against hate crimes?

Was the FBI trying to keep from further riling up the demonstrators who visited Washington on Friday to express their anger at the Jena 6 and other racial incidents?

Absolutely not, said FBI spokesman John Miller. Here's what he said at length.

Rev. Al Sharpton (C) and Martin Luther King III (C-R) march around the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. to protest hate crimes, November 16, 2007 (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

by Frank James

New Attorney General Michael Mukasey, just a week into the job, got a visit from a welcome wagon committee of a few thousand people led by his fellow New Yorker, civil-rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton.

Sharpton was in Washington to lead a protest march that was essentially a continuation of the march that occurred in Jena, La. last month to protest the harsh sentences meted out to six young African American men who beat a white youth in retaliation for anti-black acts that took place during a period of escalating racial tensions in Jena.

It's unclear how many protesters showed up for today's demonstration which was publicized on popular black radio shows like those hosted by Tom Joyner and Steve Harvey. The organizers said they had 100 busloads. Suffice it to say it was enough people to leave an impression.

The marchers called for stronger hate-crime enforcement against acts like noose-hangings, a spate of which has caught the attention of the media whose focus is likely spurring some copycat attention.

Stronger federal-hate crime enforcement probably wouldn't have accomplished much in Jena, however, since the nooses were hung by juveniles who were too young to be susceptible to federal law anyway.

by James Oliphant and Andrew Zajac

The White House has nominated a Chicago federal judge to take the No. 2 post at the Justice Department under new Atty Gen. Michael Mukasey.

If confirmed, Mark Filip, who has been on the bench since 2004, would become the deputy attorney general, a critical postion that typically acts as the “nerve center” for the sprawling agency. Prior to his judgeship, Filip served as a prosecutor in the Chicago U.S. attorney’s office for five years and then joined the megafirm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Chicago. The Harvard Law graduate also clerked for conservative Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, who swore him in as a judge in 2004.

Interestingly, however, Filip recused himself in 2004 from a challenge brought by independent candidate Ralph Nader to get on the Illinois ballot, because Filip said he signed a nominating petition for Nader while attending a Cubs game.

by Mark Silva

President Bush complains that, "inside the Beltway,''' too many people have interpreted the Senate's constitutional authority of advise and consent in the confirmation of federal judges as the power to "search and destroy.''

The president will deliver this message tonight to the Federalist Society, meeting in Washington. In prepared remarks for tonight's address, Bush complains that judicial nominees are being asked to "guarantee specific outcomes of cases that might come before the court.'' When they fail to comply, he complains, their nominations often end up "in limbo.''

And conversely, Bush will complain, "activist judges'' who have taken it upon themselves to write law rather than interpret it have posed as much of a threat to the constitutional balance of the branches of government as senators holding nominees to unfair standards. "Such judicial lawlessness is a threat to our democracy,'' he will say, "and it needs to stop.''

Bush, who has faced tough fights over many of his judicial nominees, still has 23 appointees -- for 14 federal district seats and nine federal circuit seats -- awaiting confirmation.

"President Bush's Federalist Society speech tonight sets new standards for hypocrisy on the judicial nominations wars that he has needlessly and deliberately provoked for political reasons,'' says Glenn Sugameli, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice

"All too often, President Bush’s previous and current nominees for lifetime federal judgeships have been chosen precisely because their extreme records will reignite ideological battles, ensuring they will not be confirmed at all or without a major fight,'' says Sugameli , calling the speech "gasoline on the simmering embers of the judicial nomination wars.''