Posted on 02/15/2007 5:08:03 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The Justice Department announced temporary replacements Thursday for two recently ousted U.S. attorneys in San Diego and San Francisco.
Outgoing San Diego chief federal prosecutor Carol Lam will be succeeded by Karen Hewitt, a career federal prosecutor who is currently the executive assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California.
In San Francisco, U.S. Attorney Kevin Ryan will be replaced by Scott Schools, a career federal prosecutor who currently works for the Justice Department overseeing legal guidance and personnel matters for all 94 U.S. attorney's offices across the country.
Hewitt's appointment was announced as staff and local law enforcement personnel gathered for a simple office farewell party just hours before Lam was due to leave her post. Ryan was scheduled to depart on Friday.
Both Hewitt and Schools will serve on an interim basis until new U.S. attorneys are nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate.
Lam and Ryan were among more than seven federal prosecutors recently fired, some without cause, by the attorney general under, under a little-known part of the Patriot Act.
Federal prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the president, subject to Senate confirmation.
Democrats contend that prosecutors were forced to resign to make way for Republicans' political allies and that the White House slipped the provision into the Patriot Act to permit such indefinite appointments.
Lam's dismissal, in particular, prompted criticism from Democrats who questioned whether her departure was linked to the prosecution by her office of disgraced former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican who is currently serving more than eight years in federal prison after pleading guilty to accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors.
On Tuesday, Lam's office won a pair of long-awaited indictments against a former top CIA official and a defense contractor implicated Cunningham case.
Also on Thursday, San Diego-based wireless technology giant Qualcomm, Inc., announced that Lam will join its legal department as senior vice president and legal counsel starting on Feb. 26.
The chip maker is currently embroiled in a global web of lawsuits with Nokia Corp. and other major equipment makers claiming that Qualcomm levies unjust, inflated licensing fees to use its patented technologies in their products. Regulators in Europe, South Korea and Japan are probing Qualcomm's business practices as the company trades lawsuits with rivals across the U.S. and Europe.
"From our perspective, she's the ideal person," said Louis Lupin, Qualcomm's general counsel. "She's got experience managing large and very complex cases and a very large staff, and she'll be involved on a global basis."
The Jacobs who are Qualcomm are big money Democrats.
These are 2 that the President actually did appoint, but I agree on failing to flush the system, poor Scooter Libby wouldn't have had to go thru this farce of a prosecution..
You are absolutely CORRECT!! BJ Billy did do as you said and look at the way things have been going in the courts too. The Republicans said nothing about it at the time, but the Dummo's sure are raising cane about these changes because they know why they did it.
It's the same all over, the Dummo's put in their people and cut the funding for the CIA. Then they bitch about the poor intellegience of the CIA. They work in concert, both parties. I am looking for an AMERICAN on the ticket, but havn't seen one yet.
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