NewzIntel.com

Category: Justice

  • MIL-OSI USA: Member of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula Sentenced to 44 Years in Prison for Terrorism Offenses

    Source: US State of California

    Minh Quang Pham, also known as “Amim”, 41, was sentenced today to 44 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for attempted suicide bombing in alliance with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

    “The defendant was sentenced for an attempt to commit an act of terrorism and plotting a suicide bombing on behalf of AQAP,” said Devin DeBacker, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “The Justice Department will not rest in seeking justice for acts of terrorism and will continue to thwart any attempt to jeopardize global security.”

    “Pham coordinated with known terrorist Anwar al-Aulaqi on a plot to conduct a suicide bombing at Heathrow International Airport which could have killed or injured many people, but fortunately that plan was stopped,” said Assistant Director David J. Scott of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “Pham also tried to recruit others to commit acts of terrorism. The FBI will work with our partners to hold accountable those who align themselves with terrorist organizations and attempt to carry out acts of violence.”

    “Minh Quang Pham’s actions were not just an affront to the safety of this country, but to the principles of peace and security that we hold dear,” said U.S. Attorney Danielle R. Sassoon for the Southern District of New York. “Today’s sentencing underscores our collective resolve to stop terrorism before it occurs, and place would-be terrorists in prison.”

    According to court documents, in December 2010, Pham informed others that he planned to travel to Ireland while residing in London. From Ireland, he traveled to Yemen, the principal base of operations for AQAP. Pham traveled to Yemen in order to join AQAP, wage jihad on behalf of AQAP, and martyr himself for AQAP’s cause. After arriving in Yemen, he swore an oath of loyalty to AQAP in the presence of an AQAP commander.

    While in Yemen in 2010 and 2011, Pham provided assistance to and received training from Anwar al-Aulaqi, a U.S.-born senior leader of AQAP. Al-Aulaqi advised Pham to return to the U.K. for the purpose of finding and making contact with individuals who, like Pham, wanted to travel to Yemen to join AQAP. Al-Aulaqi also provided Pham with money, as well as a telephone number and e-mail address that Pham was to use to contact al-Aulaqi upon his return to the U.K. In addition, Pham exchanged his laptop computer with al-Aulaqi, who provided him with a new “clean” laptop to take with him when he returned to the U.K. so that the authorities would not find anything if they searched his computer.

    In or about June 2011, prior to his departure from Yemen, Pham approached al-Aulaqi about conducting a suicide attack whereby he would “sacrifice” himself on behalf of AQAP. Al-Aulaqi personally taught Pham how to create a lethal explosive device using household chemicals and directed Pham to detonate such an explosive device at the arrivals area of Heathrow International Airport following Pham’s return to the U.K. in 2011. Al-Aulaqi instructed Pham to carry an explosive in a concealed backpack and target the area where flights arrived from the U.S. or Israel. During this time, Pham made videos depicting his preparation to carry out that attack. In one video, Pham is shown wiring an electrical device for the use of making an explosive device. In another video, he sketches an explosive device to be contained in a backpack, and in a third, Pham wears a backpack with wiring for explosives on it, which he turns on in the video.

    During this time, around June or July 2011 — shortly before Pham returned from Yemen to the U.K. — Pham recorded a video in which he attempted to recruit and encourage individuals in the West to engage in violent jihad abroad or in their home countries. In this video, he also expresses a desire to martyr himself. At the outset of this video, consisting of an approximately 13-minute-long monologue, Pham states that, “America itself is not fighting a war with a group or an organization, they are fighting with the army of Allah, the believers.” He continues, in part, “We have that opportunity, that ability to be in their midst, in their land . . . and I advise the brothers inshallah to, whatever you can, to gather and prepare and strike the enemy in their own land . . . The saying, a thousand cuts, you hit them with as much as you can until inshallah the enemy will bleed to death.” During his time in Yemen, Pham also assisted with the preparation and dissemination of AQAP’s propaganda magazine, Inspire. Pham, who has college degrees in both graphic design and animation, worked directly with now-deceased U.S. citizen, Samir Khan, who was a prominent member of AQAP responsible for editing and publishing Inspire.  

    Pham also received a six-page document entitled “Your Instructions” from al-Aulaqi in Yemen, which provided detailed instructions on how Pham was to commit his suicide attack at Heathrow. The document from al-Aulaqi instructed Pham, “[d]o not do anything for the first three months” and “[y]ou should target Christmas/ New Year season[.]” The instructions from al-Aulaqi provided explicit direction about the importance of using shrapnel to kill as many people as possible, including that “[t]he proper use of shrapnel is as important as the main charge itself. The detonation wave from a main charge of AP by itself is most likely not going to cause the death of anyone except those who are in its immediate vicinity. It is the shrapnel that would do the job. You may imagine this IED as a shotgun that is firing in all directions.” The document therefore instructed Pham to take “special care” with the “proper arrangement and choice of shrapnel,” and to “poison” it to inflict maximum death.

    On July 27, 2011, Pham returned to the U.K. Upon his arrival at Heathrow, U.K. authorities detained Pham, searched him, and recovered various materials from him, including a live round of 7.62mm caliber armor-piercing ammunition, which is consistent with ammunition that is used in a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a type of weapon for which Pham received training from AQAP in Yemen. U.K. authorities released Pham and cautioned him for his possession of the live round of ammunition, before, in December 2011, arresting him pursuant to their authorities under U.K. immigration law. In searches of Pham’s residence, other locations, and vehicles, U.K. authorities recovered several pieces of electronic media. Among other things, a forensic analysis of Pham’s electronic media showed that he was accessing speeches and writings of al-Aulaqi as late as December 2011 — months after Pham’s return to the U.K.

    On May 24, 2012, a grand jury returned an indictment charging Pham with terrorism offenses and U.S. authorities sought Pham’s extradition from the U.K. He was provisionally arrested with a view towards extradition on June 29, 2012, and he was extradited to the United States on Feb. 26, 2015. On Jan. 8, 2016, Pham pleaded guilty to terrorism offenses related to certain of the same underlying conduct. On May 27, 2016, Pham was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan principally to a term of 40 years in prison. On Sept. 12, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed Pham’s conviction and sentence. Thereafter, Pham made a motion that, based on intervening Supreme Court decisions, resulted in the vacatur of one of the counts of his conviction. Ultimately, the government, with Pham’s consent, moved to vacate Pham’s earlier convictions. On April 8, 2021, a grand jury returned a superseding indictment, reinstating certain charges and filing other new charges against Pham, and which formed the basis for Pham’s May 11, 2023, guilty plea and conviction.

    The FBI Washington and New York Field Offices investigated the case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs, Metropolitan Police Service/SO 15 Counter Terrorism Command at New Scotland Yard, Crown Prosecution Service, and the Home Office provided assistance in the investigation, extradition, and prosecution of the case.

    Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob H. Gutwillig for the Southern District of New York and Trial Attorney John Cella of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section prosecuted the case. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks at Second International Conference on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Jennifer [Smith of the International Legal Foundation] for your kind words. 

    I want to thank Minister of Justice [German] Garavano, Vice-Minister of Justice [Santiago] Otamendi and Chief Federal Public Defender General Stella Maris Martinez of the Government of the Republic of Argentina, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the United Nations Development Programme and the International Legal Foundation, for coordinating this important gathering so that we may, together, explore how to strengthen and improve access to criminal legal aid globally.

    And equally important, I want to thank all of you – the gathered Ministers, Deputy Ministers, Attorneys General, Supreme Court Justices and criminal legal aid providers and experts – for participating in this conference.  All of the leaders in this room – and so many others across the globe – are indispensable partners in our efforts to fulfill the promise of access to criminal legal aid.  Your work is moving us closer to the ideals of equality, opportunity and justice under law.

    The United States participated with enthusiasm at the historic first international convening on criminal legal aid, held in Johannesburg, and it is a privilege to join you in Buenos Aires at the second biannual conference.

    Today, with our Presidential election just concluded, I address you not only as an official of the United States Department of Justice, but also as a representative of American democracy.  Since George Washington first relinquished his office to incoming President John Adams in 1797, a peaceful transition of power has symbolized the stability of the United States government.  On January 20, for the 44th time, a President will transfer his authority and responsibilities to his democratically elected successor.  With that transition may come changes in policies and priorities.  That is normal and in the natural course.  But what will not change – what has not changed for over 200 years, from Administration to Administration – is the promise that all people – regardless of wealth or want, status or stature, color or creed – are entitled to a set of undeniable rights:  equal protection, fundamental fairness and impartial justice.

    This commitment to equal justice is rooted in the founding ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.   It has been enshrined by our Supreme Court in milestone decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down racial segregation in schools, and Gideon v. Wainwright, which guaranteed that a defendant in a criminal case has the right to a lawyer whether or not that person can afford one.  It has been embraced by Presidents of both parties, as exemplified by the creation of the Legal Services Corporation, the largest funder of civil legal aid for low-income Americans, by President Richard Nixon and President Bill Clinton’s signing of the landmark Violence Against Women Act, which provides legal aid for victims of domestic violence.  And it is embodied in the renewed debate on the criminal justice system, in which Americans from a range of backgrounds and political beliefs have come to agree on the need to address persistent inequities and inefficiencies in our criminal justice system, from the fairness of our sentencing laws, to the injustice in imposing fines and fees against those unable to pay, to how we reintegrate into civic and economic life those individuals convicted of crimes who have paid their debt to society.

    Our progress towards fulfilling these promises has not been uninterrupted.  At times, we have made great strides, dedicating resources, energy and ideas to the task.  At other times, we have fallen short of our own ideals.  But with each triumph and setback, we have been reminded that justice is as much a journey as it is a destination – as much a process as it is an outcome – and that the fairest criminal justice system gives equal attention to both.

    Addressing this challenge has been a priority of the Department of Justice in the eight years of the Obama Administration.  In 2010, the department launched the Office of Access to Justice – which I oversee and which seeks to improve access to legal aid to everyone in the United States who needs it.  Much of the Office’s work is directed at strengthening criminal defense for the poor by focusing on many of the same values outlined in the 2012 U.N. Principles and Guidelines on Access to Legal Aid in Criminal Justice Systems.

    Among our most significant accomplishments has been to ensure the reality of Gideon’s promise, for the right to counsel is not only a constitutional imperative but vital to the effective functioning – and legitimacy – of the U.S. criminal justice system.  Fulfilling this promise is not easy.  Between 1999 and 2007, the number of public defenders – the front-line lawyers in our country who provide legal aid to indigent criminal defendants – increased by only four percent while their caseload increased by 20 percent.  When managing such huge caseloads, it is difficult and often times impossible, for public defenders to carry out their legal and ethical duties to their clients.  To help alleviate that problem, the Department of Justice has awarded millions of dollars to cities, states and defense advocacy organizations to support their indigent defense work.  These awards expanded the number of cities that participate in the department’s “Smart Defense” program, where cities use data, research and research partnerships to enhance criminal justice systems and programs.  These funds have also been invested in bringing risk assessment to the pre-trial detention stage, so that judges are making informed pre-trial release decisions that improve cost-effectiveness while protecting public safety and defendants’ due process, and to ensure that our public defenders have the skills necessary to be effective pretrial advocates.   And where states have proven unwilling to dedicate the necessary resources to public defender services, the department has filed amicus briefs in our courts arguing that it is a constructive denial of the constitutional right to counsel for a public defender system to be so under-resourced, so understaffed and so underfunded that an indigent defendant has access to counsel in name only. 
     
    The priority on access to criminal legal aid has extended to forging partnerships with American Indian tribes – our nation’s indigenous communities.  As Robert Kennedy rightly noted when he served as Attorney General, it is a tragic irony that the first Americans have endured a long and painful history of broken promises, deferred action and denied rights at the hands of the United States Government.  As one of many steps taken by the Justice Department to right these injustices, we have authored and supported landmark legislation to expand American Indian tribal governments’ criminal jurisdiction and sentencing authority while at the same time enhancing protections for criminal defendants in tribal courts.  To further that effort, the department has worked hard to support tribes through funding and training that improves the trial skills of tribal public defenders as well judges and prosecutors. 

    Of course, advancing access to justice for all also requires that we look critically at the Justice Department’s own role – and its own responsibility – as a central player in the federal criminal justice system.  Three years ago, the department launched the Smart on Crime initiative – a groundbreaking effort designed to reorient the way we approach criminal justice issues by diminishing the use of harsh mandatory sentences for low-level drug offenses; investing in rehabilitation and reentry programs that can reduce the likelihood of recidivism; and supporting vulnerable communities to prevent them from being caught up in the criminal justice system in the first place.  Additionally, we have embarked on an historic clemency initiative, allowing the President to commute sentences for more individuals than the last 11 Presidents combined.  And we have worked hard to get the incentives right in ensuring access to counsel in the federal system, including no longer requiring defendants in plea deals to waive future claims about whether their counsel was effective, and no longer allowing an immigrant convicted of a crime to be found deportable on the basis of alleged facts never established in the criminal case – a process unfair to immigrants who lack counsel and who may have agreed to plead guilty specifically to avoid immigration consequences. 

    Internationally, we have been proud partners with you on promoting equal access to justice, both in the criminal and civil arenas.  Since the U.N.’s unanimous adoption, just over a year ago, of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, we have been working with the international community to breathe life into Global Goal 16, which calls on countries – including the United States – to “promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.”  To that end, the White House Legal Aid Interagency Roundtable (LAIR) was formally established. 

    The Roundtable works to identify how and when legal aid can improve federal programs that serve our nation’s vulnerable and underserved populations. By integrating civil legal aid into a wide array of federal programs designed to improve access to housing, health care services, employment and education, and enhance family stability and public safety, the programs are strengthened and objectives better met.  This month, the Roundtable will issue its first annual report to the President.  This report will detail the history of this interagency effort and provide concrete examples of how civil legal aid has been integrated into federal programs that support the poor and vulnerable.

    The Roundtable’s report will not be our only effort to track the progress toward fulfilling Goal 16 – and specifically Target 16.3, which calls on countries to “promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all.”  In September, I announced the United States’ commitment to identifying national indicators for Target 16.3, joining other nations around the world, including in the Americas, who have started regional efforts to identify indicators. The United States’ effort, which is being led by the Department of Justice, and includes experts from across the federal government, will help develop national criminal and civil access to justice indicators so that we can rigorously gauge our progress towards the goal of equal justice for all Americans.   While we are still assessing what these indicators might be, we are exploring whether we can track the impact of criminal and civil legal aid on myriad aspects of the justice system.

    And because the United States is so strongly supportive of ensuring quality and effective criminal defense, we introduced the groundbreaking resolution at this year’s United Nations Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (UN Crime Commission) that you heard about yesterday to promote access to indigent defense, including through the creation of national, regional and international networks of legal aid providers.  Resolution 25/2: Promoting legal aid builds on past international activity, including the 2012 U.N.  Principles and Guidelines, and on the common sense idea that the best way to improve defense services across the globe is through peer-to-peer exchanges and learning.  The United States stands ready to share its experiences in promoting indigent defense and to learn from yours.

    Let me end where I began:  by thanking all of you for your participation in this conference, and for your commitment and perseverance to the work of promoting equal access to justice.  When my predecessor Tony West spoke at the inaugural gathering in South Africa, he was clear-eyed about both the progress that had been made in the provision of the right to counsel and the hard work that remained to be done.  Two years later, I echo Tony’s message.  Global efforts to support the right to counsel have never been stronger.  But we have much left to do. 

    Conferences like this one are a beginning not an end.   Long after this conference concludes, after all of us have returned home, after all the keynote speeches have been given and outcome documents adopted, there will remain the work of continuing to build criminal and civil legal systems that deliver the promise of equal justice under law for every individual, regardless of where they were born, their color or class, their religious faith or their sexual orientation.  That work will not be easy.  The progress will not always be uninterrupted.  But rest assured that the United States stands with you in this mutual endeavor.  We will remain an outspoken advocate on the importance of access to criminal legal aid at home and abroad.   We will continue to be a staunch ally in the fight for justice.  And we will remain a steadfast partner in the endeavor to build legal systems that are fair and effective for all.  I look forward to all that we will achieve – together – in the years ahead.  Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Acting Assistant Attorney General Renata Hesse of the Antitrust Division Delivers Remarks at the American Bar Association Fall Forum

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Protecting Competition Across 50 United States: Advocacy and Cooperation in Antitrust Enforcement

    Good morning and thank you for that introduction.  It was an honor to be invited to speak to you all this morning.  Getting to speak to folks like you is one of the benefits of serving as the Acting Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust at the Department of Justice, which is both a challenging and rewarding role.  Wow, have we been busy lately.  In addition to an unprecedented litigation and investigation caseload, with the FTC last month we issued new guidelines for human resources professionals, two weeks ago we proposed revisions to our international guidelines and we’re finalizing revisions to our intellectual property guidelines.  It’s an incredible time at the Antitrust Division.  

    On top of all that, I’ve had a fair number of these speaking opportunities lately, and I’ve been using them to discuss the great work the Antitrust Division has been doing.  A few months ago I spoke about our successes in civil enforcement, and more recently I’ve talked about the tremendous work of our criminal enforcers and the successes we’ve had in building relationships with our international counterparts.  I’ve intended these speeches not as exercises in chest-beating, but instead to be thoughtful assessments of where we are today, looking back over several decades of enforcement as we also look forward to the coming transition.  With this speech, I’d like to complete that retrospective by focusing on two particularly important, related areas of the Antitrust Division’s work: cooperation with our counterpart state enforcers and competition advocacy at the state level.  

    I say state cooperation and competition advocacy are related because they both incorporate the recognition that, notwithstanding the hard work of the Antitrust Division and the FTC, protecting competition is not a job the federal government can or should do alone.  Even as concentration has increased by certain metrics, our economy remains relatively disaggregated and threats to competition come in all shapes and sizes across our country. 

     Instead of just relying on prosecutorial work at the state and federal level, we combine enforcement with advocacy, and we partner with the states, other agencies and the business community to promote a competitive economy.  The states feature prominently in that mission.  As Alexander Hamilton told the New York Ratifying Convention:  The “states must…be considered as essential component parts of the union.”   That’s certainly true in antitrust enforcement, where they are essential component parts of the worthy effort to protect and promote competition throughout the American economy.  

    By the way I was going to do my best Lin Manuel Miranda impression for that Hamilton quote, but Bill MacCleod told me we weren’t allowed to rap at the Fall Forum.  

    Cooperative federalism works best on issues where the state and federal governments have a mutuality of interest, and that is certainly the case for antitrust enforcement.  The states and the federal government each hope to preserve and promote the competitive process that is the central organizing principle of our free market economy—our mutual economic strength relies on competition playing out across connected local and national markets.  While there may be some issues where state and federal goals diverge, antitrust is generally not one of them.  

    Then and Now – Antitrust Division Cooperation with State Antitrust Enforcers

    Although we are united in our goal of promoting competition, I cannot say there are never disagreements on how to achieve that goal.  As I’m sure you’ll hear today there are many perspectives on antitrust policy, and state enforcers share in that debate.  There have been times in the past where those policy disagreements were stark.  At the start of my career at the division, federal and state enforcers sometimes had very different views on how to apply the antitrust laws to promote competition.  In that environment cooperation between state and federal enforcers was less common, and tensions occasionally arose from differing perspectives on how to approach important enforcement decisions.  

    More recently, however, agreement has been much more common than disagreement, and the cooperation between state and federal antitrust enforcers has been excellent.  That success is no accident.  Constant nurturing from a great many hardworking people in state and federal government – and attention at all levels, from our career staffs right up to the top of our organizations – have helped foster the productive working relationships we enjoy today.  

    Christine Varney set a great tone in her 2009 speech on state cooperation, and she advanced that cause when she brought on Mark Tobey as the Antitrust Division’s Special Counsel for State Relations and Agriculture.  I have to give credit to Mark for his tireless efforts to make the partnership work well for the benefit of competition and the American consumer.  I know Edith Ramirez has also helped drive the federal side of the partnership in her role at the FTC.  

    Meanwhile the state attorneys general have contributed to the relationship with a number of important advocates.  I’d like to recognize the contributions of Vic Domen and Kathleen Foote, the current and immediately prior leaders of the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) Multistate Antitrust Task Force, who are both here today, along with many others working through the Task Force and in the antitrust sections of State Attorneys General throughout the country.    

    Successful Cooperation in Civil Antitrust Enforcement  

    These consistent efforts to nurture the federal-state relationship have paid real enforcement dividends.  We’re proud at the division of our record of success.  As I’ve talked about before, our civil program is going strong, blocking 43 anticompetitive deals in important consumer industries like wireless, broadband, software, and appliances.  And we’ve brought a number of conduct cases in industries from publishing to high tech hiring to health care.  Our state partners have featured prominently in many of those cases.  I can fairly say that if you’ve recently used a health insurer, flown on a commercial airline, or paid a cell phone bill, then you’ve directly benefitted from cases where state cooperation played an important role.     

    The numbers bear out the level of cooperation we’ve enjoyed with our state partners.  Each of the six civil trial sections in the division has worked on enforcement matters with the states; collectively we have worked with all 50 States plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico.  In the last seven years we have brought 25 cases with the states resulting in settlement or final disposition after trial.  Five others are pending.

    The Apple e-books case is a remarkable example of effective federal-state cooperation.  The Texas Attorney General’s Office opened the original investigation into the conduct of the e-book publishers and Apple and investigated for a period of time before calling the Antitrust Division.  Early fact investigation work by Texas and Connecticut enabled the division to get up to speed quickly about the nature of the industry and the anticompetitive conduct that occurred.  In fact, some testimony from early depositions taken by Texas and Connecticut proved to be very important in the liability phase of the trial.  And, as a further result of productive coordination, the states’ economist testified at trial about price and output effects of the alleged conspiracy, testimony which worked in tandem with expert testimony from the division’s retained economist to tell a compelling economic story.

    A short anecdote from that case illustrates quite concretely the benefits of federal-state cooperation.  One of the best documents that provided evidence of the conspiracy to raise e-book prices – a document that wound up being featured in the opening paragraph of the Government’s Trial Brief – was found during document review by a staff attorney from the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.  

    No less significant in e-books, the states, using their parens patriae authority, along with private class counsel, negotiated monetary relief totaling over $500 million from the publishers and Apple, returning over 200% of overcharges to e-book buyers.  A novel feature of the relief is that consumers who purchased e-books during the damages period could opt to have their payouts transferred directly to customer accounts at the various online e-book stores.

    The New York City tour buses case is another noteworthy example of federal-state cooperation.  In that case, the division teamed up with the New York Attorney General’s Antitrust Bureau to examine the combination of the two largest hop-on, hop-off sightseeing tour bus companies in New York City at the time – the red buses and the blue buses.  The merged entity, called Twin America, had an effective monopoly and seemed determined to try to evade antitrust scrutiny.  At various points in time over a period of nearly three years Twin America tried to maneuver the case away from the New York Antitrust Bureau, such as by filing an application for transfer of federal licenses which would be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Surface Transportation Board.  The New York Antitrust Bureau kept the matter alive over the course of these gyrations by filing opposition papers every step of the way.  

    Because of the New York Antitrust Bureau’s work, after the parties removed the jurisdictional impediment, our teams were in a position to conduct a brief investigation and then file a lawsuit in 2012 to unwind the combination and obtain disgorgement of profits obtained from a ticket price increase imposed on consumers by the merged firm.  As it happens, that was one of my first matters in my first stint as Acting Assistant Attorney General, back before Bill Baer arrived in 2012.  In 2015, after nearly three years of litigation, the parties entered into a joint federal-state settlement that provided substantial disgorgement under state and federal law and forced the parties to give up scarce tour bus stop authorizations from the City so that other firms could compete in the market.    

    A further illustration of how the division has opened up new and productive relationships with the states, in order to take advantage of unique state statutory powers, involves an initiative one of our Washington, D.C. criminal sections is now taking with the Georgia Department of Law.  Under this plan, the division will work with the Consumer Protection Unit of the Georgia Department of Law to distribute nearly $1 million in restitution funds to victims of the real estate foreclosure auction bid-rigging cases brought in the Atlanta area.  The Consumer Protection Unit has a long and successful record of returning overcharge damages to victims of all manner of consumer fraud cases and we sought to take advantage of those capabilities by partnering with them.  A joint letter from the division and the Department of Law will soon go out to the first group of victims.  

    Formal Guidance to Shape Conduct and Foster Cooperation 

    Our cooperation on civil enforcement is bolstered by the formal and informal guidance the division provides through guidelines, workshops, and speeches, to name a few examples.  This guidance helps illuminate our current practices and our thinking about critical issues of law and economics, and fosters communication between the division and our state counterparts.  Plus, we think it’s just good government to be as transparent and predictable in our approach as possible—it’s the right thing to do.     

    Over the past several years, our non-litigating sections have been busy updating guidelines and developing new guidance to help educate and inform industry and fellow antitrust enforcers.  

    Two weeks ago, we released proposed updates to the International Guidelines.  We added a chapter on international cooperation to reflect the growing importance of antitrust enforcement in the globalized economy, updated the discussion of the application of U.S. antitrust law to conduct involving foreign commerce, and provided examples that address the issues we most commonly encounter in our international efforts.  We’re also updating our IP Guidelines, and are in the process of finalizing them based on the feedback we received through a public comment process.  

    About a month ago, we released new guidance for human resource professionals to educate them about how the antitrust laws apply to their job responsibilities and inform them of the division’s recent enforcement actions.  As part of this guidance, we made clear that going forward employers who conspire to hold down wages or restrict hiring of each other’s workers will be investigated criminally and, if appropriate, prosecuted criminally.  Naked “no-poaching” agreements or agreements to fix wages stamp out competition just like agreements to allocate customers or to fix product prices, violations of the law that the division has traditionally investigated criminally and prosecuted as hardcore cartel conduct.  We hope this guidance will help HR professionals implement safeguards to prevent inappropriate discussions or agreements with other firms seeking to hire similar employees.   

    We expect these updates will facilitate even greater coordination with state enforcers in our efforts to protect competition.

    State Legislative Efforts and Competition Advocacy 

    In addition to working with our counterpart antitrust enforcers in the offices of the State Attorneys General, we also work productively with state legislatures and regulatory bodies.  Later today I understand there will be discussion about how state law and regulation can work to open, and unfortunately sometimes close, markets.  It is important that state lawmakers are mindful of the consequences on competition of their actions and understand how legislation or policies can enhance or cripple competition. 

    The landscape within which state enforcers operate is different from the federal environment.  State attorneys general face the challenge of balancing their role as enforcers of state and federal competition law with the obligation to counsel professional licensing and regulatory agencies about the potential to displace competition.  They must balance their institutional role as advocates for free and fair markets with occasional pressure from state lawmakers to restrict markets and insulate local firms from emerging technologies and non-traditional competitors.  Recognizing this tension, it can be helpful for the federal antitrust agencies to weigh in regarding proposed state and local legislation to seek to vindicate competition principles.  

    State officials sometimes seek our views on the competitive significance of state legislation and policies.  We welcome those requests and are eager to share our expertise in a way that can help advance both legal frameworks and policies in the direction of more efficient and well-functioning markets, or to shape corporate behavior away from harmful anticompetitive conduct.  Additionally, inherent in these competition advocacy efforts is fruitful dialogue and learning that advances the division’s expertise.  

    States can play a critical role in addressing and preventing anticompetitive conduct through their own legislative efforts.  For example, in 2010 the Division sued Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan alleging that “most favored nation” provisions in its agreements with hospitals raised prices, discouraged discounts, and prevented competitive insurers from entering the market.  About two years later, Michigan enacted a law that banned these harmful clauses.  This move alleviated our concerns and now benefits competition and consumers throughout the state of Michigan.  Several other states have also enacted similar legislation. 

    We have also weighed in over the years on how state regulatory or legislative actions can sometimes close markets off from competition.  For example, the division, together with the FTC, has long supported repealing or scaling back state certificate of need laws.  These laws typically require certain health care providers to obtain state approval before establishing new facilities, providing new services or making certain large capital expenditures.  This can create barriers to competition by delaying or prohibiting entry and, as a result, can limit consumer choice and stifle innovation.  We’ve shared these views most recently with officials in South Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Illinois and Florida. 

    The division, often with the FTC, has also been active in educating legislatures about how scope of practice laws, which define the set of professionals allowed to perform particular services, can limit competition for consumer services.  For example: 

    • In Massachusetts and Puerto Rico we advocated for legislation expanding the scope of practice laws to permit optometrists to provide certain treatments for glaucoma, thereby expanding competition and access to care.  
    • In the legal services realm, we have discouraged overly broad practice of law definitions that limit competition from non-lawyers for services that are not necessary to address legitimate and substantiated harms.  In July, the division and the FTC encouraged the adoption of legislation in North Carolina that would provide consumers with the ability to use interactive software programs to fill out legal forms.  
    • Similarly in the real estate industry, we’ve weighed in on the benefits of competition from brokers who offer “fee-for-service” options for consumers and have cautioned against restricting these new consumer-friendly competitive choices.  

    The division also recently submitted a statement on the potential anticompetitive effects of certain legislative proposals in California that would ban or limit contracts between court reporters or service firms and third parties, such as insurance companies, for multi-case contracts.

    Whether advocating in favor of state laws that help keep markets open, or working to help state legislatures understand the negative impacts on competition their laws might cause, we have great respect for the state legislative process.  While we as antitrust enforcers have a singular goal of competition, legislatures have to balance a host of potentially competing public policy goals that aren’t squarely in our purview.  All we can hope to do is foster an increased understanding and a deeper appreciation for the competition dimension of those decisions.  That’s the same approach we take in all the advocacy we do with other federal agencies and international enforcers as well.  
     
    Looking forward

    I hope that what you’ve heard in these remarks is that the Antitrust Division works hard to promote competition not only in our own cases, but also through our cooperation with and advocacy before our state counterparts.  And I also hope you’ve gotten some sense for the sustained commitment that this work requires from a great many talented people.  

    Our work advocating for competition with our state partners is never done.  In just four days, trial will start in the Anthem/Cigna merger challenge brought by the division alongside 11 states and Washington, D.C.  I won’t comment on pending cases, but we look forward to working with the states as that important matter proceeds.  

    With an eye toward the future, allow me to conclude with some suggestions on federal-state cooperation in the cases to come.

    For practitioners, I suggest embracing federal-state cooperation.  It’s not in anyone’s interest to have divergent federal and state investigations and enforcement outcomes.  Grant waivers early in investigations, and encourage state participation in Civil Investigative Demand (CID) depositions and party meetings.  These steps will often reduce the investigative burdens on your clients and foster a dialogue that will simplify resolution or settlement if possible under the circumstances.    

    For the federal and state enforcement agencies, I’d encourage continued investment in the relationships that make cooperation work.  As I mentioned earlier, those relationships were not always as strong as they are today, and I really believe they benefit from constant nurturing.  Today’s event provides a perfect opportunity for the kind of engagement that keeps our organizations connected, and I see many of our state counterparts out in the audience.  I look forward to catching up with you all today—enjoy the Fall Forum.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at a Naturalization Ceremony Held at the Department of Justice

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you for that kind introduction, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez.  And thank you, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, for your wonderful remarks and for your extraordinary service at the helm of our Civil Rights Division.  I am so thrilled to welcome so many Justice Department colleagues and honored guests to the Great Hall.  And I want to extend my warmest welcome to all of you, our newest American citizens.  It is a true honor to be among the first to congratulate you on taking the oath of allegiance.  You come to us from 40 nations around the world, from Sierra Leone to South Korea, from Pakistan to Portugal, from Mexico to Malaysia.  From so many places and through so many paths you have come here to be with all of us – illustrating this country’s motto of “E Pluribus Unum” – out of many, one.  You come to us with hopes and dreams as diverse as the paths you took to get here: hopes for economic and professional possibility, dreams of a better life for your children, and expectations about the freedoms and privileges of citizenship.  And in turn, we look to you with gratitude.  We are so glad you are here.  In joining us, you sustain one of the richest traditions of our nation, which is indeed a nation of immigrants. 

    To say that immigrants have been a core part of our American narrative would be a great understatement.  Immigrants played a critical role in the founding of our country; many of our roads and buildings and businesses were built by immigrants; and our society continues to be powered by the ingenuity, diligence and drive of immigrants.  Sometimes, it even seems as if we have taken more than we have given, as immigrants have fought and died to preserve our freedoms, and they have toiled and struggled to enrich our society.  From the military to government; from academia to the arts – in every sector of every industry, we are stronger because of the diversity and talent of Americans with immigrant roots.  And so we celebrate all of the richness you bring to our tapestry.  We celebrate the foods you eat, the languages you dream in, and the religions you practice.  We celebrate the wealth of skills and perspectives you have chosen to bring to our shores – attributes that have always made us a stronger, wiser and better people. 

    We are also humbled by your careful study of our institutions and our government – and your deliberate choice of our systems and our values.  I know that the process has not been easy, quick, or casual.  Some of you have waited and worked for years to achieve this goal.  You have learned about American history and you have internalized the civic responsibilities that accompany citizenship.  And in doing so, you have learned that ours is a nation that upholds liberty and equality for all; that defends the freedoms of religion, press and assembly; and that strives against prejudice and discrimination. 

    Of course, observing actual democracy in action reveals it to be a tumultuous process, as our recent election has shown.  The rhetoric and the tone around so many issues can lead to fear and uncertainty and may have caused some of you to question whether the country you have seen over recent weeks and months is indeed the same one whose founding principles you’ve been studying so diligently.  Yet the history you learned gives us the answer to that question.  Over 200 years ago, we decided what kind of a country we wanted to be.  We’re not there yet and we have had challenges at many points along the way.  Our path forward to realizing our founding ideals has had twists and turns and outright reversals, yet we have continued to push ever onwards towards them. 

    And the lesson for every generation of Americans is the need and the obligation to pick up the challenge of making the American dream real for our own time and beyond.  That is why it is so wonderful, so vital and so important that you are all here today.  Joining this young, opinionated, vibrant country, because we need your vision and your voice, your tenacity and your resolve.  Some of you have lived in nations that do not enjoy our rights and liberties; we need you to help remind us of how precious our freedom is.  Some of you have felt the sting of discrimination; we need you to show us the value of tolerance.  And some of you have lived in societies that did not allow citizens a voice in their government; we need you to help bolster our participatory democracy.

    And so as we conclude today, I ask that you give your voice, your passion, and your energy to the work of building a country that keeps faith with our founding promises.  I hope you will choose to vote in every election.  I hope we will see and hear you in a range of settings – from school board meetings to charity fundraisers, from Little League games to political debates.  I hope that you will share your rich perspectives and talents with those in your communities.  And I hope you will never lose sight of the ideals of this country and the way ordinary citizens have, throughout our history, been the ones who have made them real for all.  These are the ways we shape the country we leave for our children.  We depend on you – as we depend on all of our citizens – to help safeguard our shared values.  I am confident that you will rise to this challenge, as you have already risen to so many, and I look forward to all of your wonderful contributions.

    In a moment you will take the Pledge of Allegiance for the first time as citizens of this great country.  I want you to truly listen to those words as you make that pledge.  Your allegiance, your commitment and your drive is pledged not to any one person or agency of our government, but instead to the symbol of our country’s perseverance in the face of challenge and struggle — “the flag of the United States of America.”  And even more than that, “to the Republic for which it stands,” that brave, wonderful experiment we began over 200 years ago.  And the simple yet eloquent words, describing us as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” are both the challenge and the commitment for every citizen of this great country.  And now, my fellow Americans, let us ever work together to make it so.

    Congratulations on this great achievement. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks at 2016 American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month Observance Program

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Tracy [Toulou], for your kind words and for the contributions you and your dedicated team at the Office of Tribal Justice (OTJ) have made to promote tribal justice and public safety in Indian country.  And thank you to Director Richard Toscano and the Justice Management Division (JMD) Equal Employment Opportunity Staff (EEOS) for organizing today’s observance program and to Gina Allery and the DOJ Native American Association for their support as well.  

    In the month of November, we honor the history and traditions of America’s indigenous peoples.  We join together today to celebrate American Indian and Alaska Native Heritage Month and to welcome our keynote speaker, Tracy Canard Goodluck, to the department. 

    The theme this year – “Serving Our Nations” – captures the work that we together are doing here at the department.  That shared commitment to improving the daily lives of tribal communities has made and will continue to make a difference.  Here are just a few highlights: 

    • We worked across components to secure passage of landmark legislation with the Tribal Law and Order Act (TLOA), which reaffirmed our commitment to building and sustaining healthier, safer tribal communities and renewed our enduring promise to respect sovereignty and self-determination.  Our efforts also helped secure passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization, which recognizes tribes’ inherent power to exercise “special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction” over certain defendants regardless of their Indian or non-Indian status.
    • We built and began implementing the Tribal Access Program for National Crime Information (TAP), which provides federally recognized tribes access to national crime information databases for both civil and criminal purposes.  Just last month, we announced an expansion of TAP incorporating feedback from participating tribes who identified and shared best practices to further strengthen tribal institutions’ ability to keep communities safe.
    • Over the past seven years, the department has awarded over 1,650 Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) grant awards to American Indian tribes, Alaska Native villages, tribal consortia and tribal designees to improve public safety in Tribal communities and to strengthen tribal justice systems.  These figures include 236 CTAS grants totaling more than $102 million that were awarded in the recently completed 2016 grant cycle.
    • We established the Gaye Tenoso Indian Country Fellowship.  The program honors a former 30-year Department of Justice attorney by creating public service opportunities in Indian country for young lawyers with expertise and a commitment to federal Indian law, tribal law, and Indian country issues.
    • We published the Department of Justice Consultation Policy and the Attorney General’s Statement of Principles for Working with Federally Recognized Indian Tribes, both of which are intended to guide the work of this department in Indian country going forward.
    • We created the Tribal National Leadership Council, a democratically-elected group of tribal leaders responsible for advising the Attorney General.
    • We established the National Indian Country Training Initiative to ensure that the department prosecutors, as well as state and tribal criminal justice personnel, receive the training and support needed to address the particular challenges relevant to Indian country. 
    • And we built law enforcement partnerships between the FBI and sister agencies and identified tribal liaisons within each U.S. Attorney’s Office that has Indian country within its jurisdiction.  Indeed, I was privileged to meet many of these dedicated Assistant U.S. Attorneys (AUSAs) in a recent visit to the Flathead Reservation in Montana.
    • We have shown that we can collaborate effectively across the department and across the federal government to better serve Indian country.  The department’s work on the Indian Child Welfare Act—involving the Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Office of Tribal Justice, the Civil Rights Division, and the Office of Justice Programs, as well as the Departments of the Interior and Health and Human Services—is just one example.  Our efforts have promoted compliance with this important federal law that seeks to keep Indian children with their parents, extended families, and tribal communities. 

    We can point with pride to the Environment and Natural Resource Division’s (ENRD) work to protect tribal resources, water rights and treaty hunting and fishing rights and to its defense of the Department of the Interior’s authority to acquire land into trust for tribes.  Recent victories in both the district court and the court of appeals helped preserve the treaty fishing rights of Pacific Northwest Tribes by removing barriers to salmon passage.  ENRD’s efforts recognize the importance of protecting the environment and natural resources of the First Nations, who were also the first environmental stewards of this great land and from whom we still have much to learn.

    I am pleased to report that the department has continued to make progress in resolving long-standing tribal trust cases.  In 2016 alone, we reached settlements with 17 tribes for almost $493 million.  Since the start of the Obama Administration, the department has settled the claims of 104 tribes for a total of $3.35 billion.  These settlements represent a significant milestone in improving the government-to-government relationship between the United States and Indian tribes, and allow the federal government and the tribal nations to move beyond tensions that were exacerbated by litigation.

    Even as we celebrate the progress we have made, we must acknowledge that our work is far from finished.  We have all been watching events in North Dakota over the weekend.  History teaches that we make progress in the face of conflicting views where we honor the right to disagree peacefully with one another.  The Justice Department has been in communication with local law enforcement, as well as tribal representatives and protesters, to promote communication and lower tensions.  We will continue those efforts. 

    There are a lot of challenges in Indian country, and it continues to be the responsibility of those of us at the department to identify and correct the injustices that persist.  I am proud to be affiliated with a department that does not shy away from tackling those challenges, and embraces the opportunity to work directly with Tribes across the country.

    Before we move on to the next part of our program, I would like to recognize the work of Lorraine Edmo, the Deputy Director for Tribal Affairs at the Office on Violence Against Women and a member of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.  She has dedicated her decades-long career to seeking out and correcting injustice in Tribal communities. 

    Lorraine is retiring soon and will be greatly missed.  Her sustained dedication to supporting Tribal communities has been an inspiration.  Thank you, Lorraine, for your tremendous service.  We are grateful that your husband, Jerry Cordova of the Department of the Interior, is also participating here today.  We especially respect public service when it’s a family affair, and we wish you both well.  

    I now turn to the privilege of introducing our keynote speaker, Tracy Canard Goodluck of the Oneida and Mvskoke Creek Nations.  Her passion for education and improving outcomes for students in tribal communities has made her a role model to many.  In her current role of Senior Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs, Tracy serves as a key liaison to tribal communities for the Administration.  Previously, she was a policy advisor at the Domestic Policy Council and, as a Presidential Management Fellow, handled the legislative portfolio for Indian affairs at the U.S. Department of the Interior.  We are honored to have her here today.  Please join me in welcoming Tracy Canard Goodluck.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Funeral for U.S. Marshals Service Deputy Commander Patrick Carothers

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good afternoon, everyone. To the pastor and members of the Buford Church of God – the spiritual home of the Carothers family; to the President and staff of the Greater Atlanta Christian Academy – the educational home of the Carothers family, who have come together and given us this beautiful service in this special place; Deputy Attorney General [Sally] Yates; Director [David] Harlow; distinguished guests; family and friends; and, most importantly, Terry, Michael, Matthew, Paul, Jessica, and Connor: 

    I bring you condolences from the entire Department of Justice family, of which Patrick Carothers was a beloved member. And I also bring you condolences from the President and First Lady of the United States, which I will share with you now.

    We gather here today with bruised spirits and broken hearts. Whether we knew Patrick Carothers as a colleague, a friend, a father – even if we did not have the privilege of knowing him personally – we feel his loss deeply. And we feel his presence still. I did not have the privilege of meeting Deputy Commander Carothers, but after meeting with his teammates and family today, I feel as if I knew him.  

    I see him in the heartfelt regard and honor and loyalty of his colleagues; I see him not just in the faces but the faith, the fortitude, and the light in the children he was raising and the family he loved so much. And we all see him in the respect and regard and love of the people whose lives he touched, so many of whom are here today to honor him.

    For he was the kind of person we hope our children will grow up to become. He was a person of integrity, who loved his family, strengthened his community, and served his country.  He was a person of strength, possessed of quiet courage and deep compassion. And he was a person of action, who chose a career in law enforcement in order to protect the vulnerable and help those who cannot help themselves.  

    Deputy Commander Carothers represented the very best that our country has to offer. That someone like him should be taken from us in such a senseless way shocks our conscience. It chills our hearts. And it can shake our faith.  

    I do not claim to have any answers for why this horrible deed happened. Nor do I pretend that our pain can be erased with a few words; true comfort comes only through time and the grace of God. But I do know that Deputy Commander Carothers did not die in vain. For he served the cause of justice. Where justice is present, we glimpse a gentler and more peaceful world, one where every person lives in safety and dignity. Justice challenges us to do our part to bring that world into being. It challenges us to close the gap between the world as it is and the world as it should be. It calls each of us to devote our lives to something larger than ourselves.  

    Patrick Carothers accepted that challenge. For 26 years, he answered that call. He pledged his energy, his talent – and, if necessary, his life – to the safety and well-being of the American people. Taking that pledge made him a U.S. Marshal – a proud member of the nation’s oldest law enforcement agency. Keeping that pledge until his last breath made him a hero. He can stand before his maker and echo Paul’s words to Timothy: “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

    To Deputy Commander Carothers’ fellow Marshals: I want you to know that as your Attorney General, there is nothing more difficult than burying a member of our department – our family. The dangers that you and your fellow law enforcement officers face; the sacrifices that you make; the hazards that you accept: these are never far from my mind and I want you to know how humbled I am by your valor and dedication.

    To Deputy Commander Carothers’s relatives and loved ones: my heart aches for you. I can only imagine the depth of your sorrow and the intensity of your pain. Terry, you were clearly Patrick’s light and his strength. And the children that you raised together are a testament to the bond you shared. I especially want to say to Michael, Matthew, Paul, Jessica, and Connor that your father lives on in you. You have clearly inherited his spirit, his strength and his compassion, and he will continue to shape and improve our world through your lives. Please know that the entire Department of Justice family grieves with you and is here for you. In the days ahead, we will strive to honor his legacy not only with our words, but with our deeds; not only by remembering his name, but by continuing his work – his work for a stronger, a safer and a more just United States.

    May God bless the memory of Deputy Commander Patrick Carothers, and may He grant him eternal rest and peace.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks Highlighting Elder Justice at the State Of Financial Fraud in America Event

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you Robert for that kind introduction and for your leadership and dedication as CEO of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).  And thank you to the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, for hosting this conference and for the great work that you do.  It is an honor to join with the many people in this audience who dedicate their lives to combatting financial fraud and protecting elderly Americans.  This is a noble and enduring effort.   

    As many people here know, financial fraud targeted at the elderly is a serious problem.  At the beginning of 2011, the first Baby Boomers reached the age of 65.  I reached that milestone myself just last year.  Indeed, 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day, and the percentage of Americas over 65 is growing.  5.8 percent of this group experiences identity theft in a given year.  I had that ugly experience just last month. 13.8 percent experiences consumer fraud in a given year.  4.5 percent of people over 50 experience financial fraud in a five-year period.  While there are varying accounts about how much the overall financial loss is, it is well into the billions of dollars.  

    Statistics aside, we are here together because we know all too well that this is a problem that takes a personal toll.  Almost all of us know someone who has been the victim of financial fraud.  And while it affects people of all ages, it can be especially devastating for elderly people, many of whom are dependent on their savings and are concerned about their own mental decline or other people’s perception of their mental decline.  

    I recently saw letters written by the victims of a set of schemes that we took action against.  One described having sent “hundreds of checks” for a company’s “great offers” and tried to explain to the fraudster that “due to bad eyes, [he] has to use magnifying glasses to read” and had “been caught paying many times for th[e] very same offer.”  Another, believing that the con men would send him a promised gift, tried to explain that he had sent his prior payments by money order and was now enclosing cash, “all [he] can send.”  Another explained that when she gets the vast inheritance she’d been promised, she would use it to help her family, the homeless and needy children.   

    The nature and scope of elder fraud varies tremendously.  At the Department of Justice, we see small, family based schemes, such as caregivers tricking elderly victims out of their savings or abusing powers of attorney.  We see institutional schemes, such as nursing homes that provide unnecessary services or bill for services never provided.  And we see global fraud networks that are—quite literally—organized crime.  These schemes involve networks of businesses with careful divisions of labor.  They target millions of Americans, maintain lists of victims, and, once someone has been duped, target those people again and again. One recent victim wrote a letter explaining: “Each day I keep getting more and more offers and it’s almost impossible for me to keep up with them.” 

    Large and diverse problems like this require broad based solutions.  We at the Department of Justice know we can’t solve this problem alone.  Coordination is essential not only with our federal partners, but with local, state and international authorities.  And public and private partnerships are key to our understanding of the scope of the problem and to the lasting success of any solution.

    Research into basic questions, such as why are elderly people vulnerable, and how can we detect fraud and abuse, is critical to attacking the problem.  The FINRA Foundation and Stanford Center on Longevity launched the Financial Fraud Research Center five years ago.  As some of your ongoing research has demonstrated, there is a natural decline in cognition as people age, especially ability to think fast and process new information.  The elderly are sometimes lonely or otherwise socially isolated. Some are uncomfortable with technology.  Many have pools of relatively liquid retirement assets.  Some are dependent on caregivers.  All of these factors make the elderly particularly susceptible to certain schemes. 

    There is much more to learn.  The Department of Justice has invested in partnerships to help us all better understand the causes and risk factors associated with elder financial exploitation.  For example, just a few weeks ago, we announced an award of nearly $800,000 to the Urban Institute and the University of Southern California to develop and test prevention programs that will address elder abuse, neglect and financial exploitation.  To enhance our understanding of financial exploitation by conservators and guardians, last year our Office for Victims of Crime funded a project to search for innovative, evidence-based programs and practices that successfully detect and remedy conservator fraud.  And people like you are furthering our understanding.  This conference is highlighting emerging research on susceptibility to fraud and fraud prevention.

    Beyond efforts to understand how and why elder fraud occurs, continuing dedication to enforcement is required to stop it.   This is not a partisan issue.  We have seen Democratic and Republican administrations alike express a shared commitment to using all tools in the Department of Justice’s enforcement arsenal.  Back in the 1990s, under Attorney General Reno, the Department of Justice created the Elder Justice Initiative to centralize information, facilitate training, and coordinate within the Department and across the federal government.  During the Bush Administration, the Department of Justice initiated an elder mistreatment research grant program, funding cutting edge research on elder abuse and financial exploitation that continues today.

    During this Administration, Congress created the Elder Justice Coordinating Council as part of the Affordable Care Act to facilitate interagency cooperation at the highest of levels.  At the Department of Justice, we formed the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee’s Elder Justice Working Group, which is comprised of U.S. Attorneys from across the country who are dedicated to improving our information sharing on financial scams targeting the elderly.  And just this year, we created ten regional Elder Justice Task Forces that operate throughout the country, partnering with state and local law enforcement and prosecutors to enhance our collective response to elder financial fraud and abuse. 

    Our Elder Justice Initiative has also been assisting with community capacity building.  This includes supporting the training of local law enforcement and prosecutors.  And to enhance civil legal aid to seniors, in June 2016, the Department of Justice, in collaboration with the Corporation for National and Community Service, launched the Elder Justice AmeriCorps, the first-ever army of lawyers and paralegals to help elderly victims of abuse and exploitation.  The program will support 300 AmeriCorps members throughout the country and is expected to reach over 8,000 older adults over the next two years.

    A multi-faceted problem requires coordination between different federal agencies; it demands a whole of government approach.  Mail is involved; we must coordinate with the Postal Inspection Service.  Money is involved; we must coordinate with the Treasury Department.  People target the elderly; we must coordinate with agencies that serve the elderly, such as the Social Security Administration.  

    And more and more, we are seeing schemes that are highly complex and global.  Stopping these schemes require extensive cooperation—not just with state and local authorities, but also across the federal government and with our international counterparts.  For example, the Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Branch co-chairs the International Mass-Marketing Fraud Working Group, a network of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Europol, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.  

    We can point to meaningful progress.  In the past several years, we have successfully shut down several international lottery scams where con men and women have contacted elderly victims in the United States, told the victims they won cash and prizes, and persuaded them to send thousands of dollars in fees to release the money.  Of course, the victims never received cash or prizes in return.  In a series of cases, perpetrators made calls from Jamaica using Voice Over Internet Protocol technology that made it appear as if the calls were coming from the United States.  They convinced victims to send money to middlemen in South Florida and North Carolina, who forwarded the money to Jamaica.  We have had great success breaking up these networks through joint efforts between Jamaican law enforcement and U.S. agencies including the Postal Inspection Service, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Marshals Service, Federal Trade Commission and Internal Revenue Service.  Since 2009, the Department of Justice has prosecuted or is prosecuting over 100 individuals linked to such lottery schemes, and has convicted and sentenced over 40 defendants.

    We have had similar success going after global “psychic schemes.”  Con men and women send letters purportedly written by “world-renowned psychics” stating that they had a vision revealing that the recipient has the opportunity to obtain great wealth.  The letters appear personalized, refer to the recipient by name, and often contain portions that appear handwritten.  The solicitations urge victims to purchase products and services that will ensure this good fortune.  Investigations by the Department of Justice and Postal Inspection Service, among others, revealed the complexity of these schemes.  Not only were there the fraudsters themselves, but there were separate companies performing different roles, such as processing victim payments and maintaining databases of consumers who responded to solicitations.  In a two-week period, one company in the United States processed as much as $500,000 in payments for just one psychic scheme.  We have discovered similar companies in Quebec, Hong Kong, Switzerland and France.  

    Perhaps the most significant example of cooperation to date were our wide-ranging enforcement actions taken in September of this year to dismantle a global network of mass mailing schemes targeting elderly and vulnerable victims.  The schemes involved a network with components in Canada, France, India, the Netherlands, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.   The network included an India-based printer that manufactured solicitations and arranged for bulk shipment to U.S. victims; a mailer in Switzerland; list brokers in the United States who bought and sold lists of victims so that once victims had fallen prey, others could target them; a “caging” service in the Netherlands that collected money; and a Canadian payment processor that, for more than 20 years, helped dozens of international fraudsters gain access to U.S. banks and take money from Americans.  Stopping this network involved coordination between the Department of Justice, Department of Treasury, Postal Inspection Service, Federal Trade Commission, Iowa Attorney General’s office and counterparts in other countries.  Just to give you a sample of the coordinated actions, on Sept. 22, 2016: 

    • The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blocked assets from the Canadian payment processor and a network of individuals and entities across 18 countries.
    • The Justice Department filed criminal charges and a civil injunction against a Turkish mass mailer. 
    • The Justice Department brought a series of civil actions to shut down companies based in the United States, India, Switzerland and Singapore.  These companies were responsible for mailing millions of multi-piece solicitations to potential victims throughout the United States.  
    • The Justice Department entered into a consent decree with two Dutch “caging” businesses that collected and forward money.  Our efforts were coordinated with Dutch authorities who executed search warrants on the businesses and took control of the Dutch post office boxes used to receive victims’ funds.   
    • The Federal Trade Commission filed a case against a related mass-mailer, printer, and list broker.  
    • The Iowa Attorney General negotiated a compliance agreement with two firms that brokered victim lists.

    Of course, what matters even more than going after these schemes is preventing people from falling prey in the first place.  Here too, federal agencies are working in cooperation and dedicated to the effort.   The Department of Justice has distributed educational materials about these kinds of scams, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has developed an electronic press kit for media outlets, my former colleagues at the Federal Trade Commission operate a “Pass It On” campaign that encourages people to share information about frauds that affect older Americans, the Social Security Administration is educating beneficiaries through its network of over 1,200 field offices nationwide, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has produced a mail fraud alert placemat in coordination with Meals on Wheels America to distribute to seniors nationwide.  Similarly, private organizations that work in the area of elder justice and consumer protection are doing their part.  For example, AARP will be posting information through its Fraud Watch Network.  And the Consumers Union, the policy arm of Consumer Reports, is alerting consumers about a variety of elder scams.  

    Going forward, the Department of Justice will continue to work with private, local, state, federal and global partners.   And we urge all of you to tell us where the Department can do more.  The federal government’s work on behalf of the elderly began long before this Administration, and it will continue long after.  I expect that my successors, and my successors’ successors, will share our commitment to making sure our parents, grandparents and friends age with grace and dignity.  And I look forward to all of you, who have worked so hard in this area, working with the next Administration to combat financial fraud and protect elderly Americans.  Thank you again for having me here today.  

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at United States Military Academy

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for that warm welcome.  I am so grateful to be here today.  I also want to thank Lieutenant General [Robert] Caslen and Brigadier General [Diana] Holland for their tremendous leadership here at West Point, and for their gracious invitation to address the Cow Class of the Corps of Cadets.  And I want to acknowledge my colleague, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General [Bill] Baer, who is here with me today.  Bill does a tremendous job of leading the Justice Department’s Servicemembers and Veterans Initiative, which is our most important program to secure the rights of our men and women in uniform.

    What an honor it is to stand before you today in this venerable place.  This campus is unlike any other in the United States – and not just because it’s the only one that Benedict Arnold once tried to sell to the British.  Few institutions have had a greater hand in molding the United States into the nation it is today than West Point.  Your fellow alumni include two distinguished presidents: Dwight Eisenhower, who I believe said that failing to make the West Point baseball team was one of his life’s greatest disappointments, and Ulysses S. Grant, who wrote in his memoirs that each year at West Point “seemed about five times as long” as a year back home.  They may have grumbled about their time here by the Hudson – something I am sure you have never done – but this much is clear: the path that led them to the highest office in public service began right here at West Point.

    There is no doubt that this institution has a proud and rich history.  But West Point is not simply a monument to the past.  It is a gateway to our future.  And that is why I look on each of you with such great pride and excitement.  Because each of you has taken that future into your hands.  When you were not yet 18, you made a choice.  You chose to embark on an education that demands more of you than almost any other institution demands of students your age. You made a choice to forego many of the traditional comforts of college for a more challenging path.  Before you could even vote, you made a choice that for at least the next nine years, the watchwords of your life would be “Duty, Honor, Country.”  That is an enormous testament to your character.  And that is a tremendous gift to our nation.

    I am moved by the sacrifices that you have made, and that you will make.  The conflict of my childhood was Vietnam, a place that meant nothing to me until it reached into my world and took my family members away.  It’s a history lesson now, but I still vividly remember my cousins and uncle going off to Vietnam, when I was a young girl.  My father, a minister, had a family prayer service for them the night before they left.  I remember being struck by the magnitude of their sacrifice.  It was the first time I ever really knew someone who was prepared to give his or her life for an ideal – for someone else’s freedom.  Their country had called and they had answered, and that was more important than their own comfort or safety.  Over the years I watched as other family members, including my own brother, made the choice to serve their country in the armed forces.  Their example has stayed with me throughout my life, and it has never been far from my mind during my years with the Department of Justice.   That sense of sacrifice and devotion to a greater mission – which was instinctive to my family members who served, and which has brought all of you to West Point – is perhaps the most important ingredient I can think of in the creation of a leader.  As a famous graduate of this school, General [Norman] Schwarzkopf, once said: “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character.  But if you must be without one, be without strategy.”

    And that is what I want to talk to you about today: why we need your character more than ever.  It seems that our news cycles too frequently feature stories of rancor and division.  Many of those stories give voice to those raising the question of what kind of leadership we want for our nation.  I believe the answer to that question can be found here at West Point.  And not simply because of your substantive knowledge, or your training to lead one of our most vital institutions in the most difficult of situations.  Rather, it is because a West Point education is concerned not only with what you know, but with who you are.  It is concerned not only with your mastery of strategy, but with your empathy and ability to understand those who are starkly different from you – whether they serve in your platoon or sit across from you at the negotiation table.  It is concerned not only with your physical prowess, but with the resilience of your moral core.  It is concerned not just with your sterling credentials, but your resolve to use those abilities to serve others.  In short, I believe that your West Point education is giving you the very tools we need in all walks of life, military and civilian alike: the ability – and the responsibility – to bridge the gap among our fellow Americans.  

    It is clear why you are receiving this important and rigorous education.  You will lead men and women through the most trying of circumstances.  It will be up to you to show those in your command that their common goals transcend their individual differences.  It will be up to you to ask them to do things they may not believe themselves capable of doing.  It will be up to you to bring out the best in those you lead.  And you will only be able to convince them to do those things if you do them yourself – exactly as you are learning to do here.  And when you do that – when you realize that leadership is the ultimate form of service to and for others – then those in your command will surprise you, and themselves, with their selflessness, with their decency, and with their ability to join in a common cause.  This is precisely the leadership that we also need, at this moment, in our national discourse, in our communities, and in our homes.  Because as challenging as your military career will be, some of your greatest leadership challenges will come when you are out of uniform, in a world that doesn’t always exemplify the lessons you have learned here.  How will you lead when a child you know is being bullied for being of a different race or religion?  How will you lead when someone with whom you disagree needs your help?  How will you lead when someone feels ignored or even targeted by the very government we are all sworn to serve?  People will listen and look up to you.  What will you say to them?  Those are the times when you will truly lean on the lessons of this great institution – that true leaders speak up for those whose voice cannot be heard, protect the weak from the strong, and always focus on the common goals and principles that overcome our differences. 

    Being a leader often brings fulfillment, recognition and rewards.  But it also brings unexpected moments.  People once your peers may surprise themselves and you by not being completely happy for you, and that will hurt.  Along with the acclaim you will also receive criticism, questioning your decisions, your motives, even your integrity, and that will sting.  And, although it may be hard to believe – especially for you engineers out there – there will come a time when you will make mistakes, and disappoint others and yourself.  We all fall down.  It’s how you get up that tells the world who you are, even more than the rank on your sleeve.  And how you respond to these challenges will confirm or deny everything that you have said about leadership in less fraught times.  Because these are the times you show the content of your character.  These are the times you must summon what is best in you – your courage, your integrity and your honor.  These are the moments that count.  These are the moments when you realize that true leadership focuses not on you, but on the institution you lead and the mission it serves.  

    In my life, I have been fortunate that that institution is the Department of Justice, and the mission is the protection of the American people and the upholding of the rule of law.  And in my most difficult moments, first as a U.S. Attorney, and now as Attorney General of the United States, I have always been well served by reminding myself that my first responsibility is not to what others think of me, but to what my institution can do for others.

    You have also committed to serving an institution: the U.S. military.  I have no doubt that you will use your talents to uphold its proud traditions and to leave it an even stronger institution than you found it.  We will be a safer and better people for your service defending our country and its values.  But I also ask you to consider yourselves servants of these United States.  The motto of this institution is not “Duty, Honor, Army” – although it will be, for a brief moment, on December 10.  The motto is “Duty, Honor, Country.”  And I want you to take that motto seriously.  Because the division and disunity that we now see too often is symptomatic of a deeper pain in our people – pain that we must learn to heal. At a time when rhetoric and ideology divide us, and bitterness and mistrust tear at the fabric of our democracy, we need you to model service to a larger cause.  We need you to remind us that our responsibility as Americans is to promote the welfare of all our people; to protect the vulnerable and the weak; and to ensure that the nation we leave for our children is better than the one our parents inherited.   We need you to bring us back to the heart of our greatness, the beauty of our different voices, paths and faces coming together as one people.  We need you to remind us of what we have achieved together, in the early motto of this great country:  E pluribus unum.  Out of many, one.

    That is my challenge to you today: be leaders not just of our military, but of our country.  Wherever life takes you beyond West Point – whether you stay in the armed forces for life, or whether you choose a different path – I challenge you to continue to be servant leaders.  Inspire others to serve causes larger than themselves.  Bring the lessons of sacrifice and selflessness that you have learned to our boardrooms, our classrooms, to the halls of Congress.  Show the American people that “Duty, Honor, Country,” is a motto not only for the proud few who pass through West Point, but for every person, in every community.  You are uniquely positioned to perform this essential work, and as I look out over this exemplary group of men and women, I am filled with hope: hope that we will continue marching together toward a brighter future; hope that we will transcend our divisions and bridge our divides; and hope that our nation’s best days still lie ahead. 

    I want to thank you all for having me here.  I look forward to seeing everything you will achieve as you assume the heavy – and honorable – mantle of leadership. 

    May God bless you all, and shelter your dreams with his everlasting grace.  May God bless all of our men and women in uniform, and hold their safety in the palm of his hand.  And may God continue to bless the United States of America.

    Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Head of the Civil Rights Division Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks at University of North Carolina Center for Civil Rights Conference

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Ted [Shaw], for that warm welcome.  I want to thank the University of North Carolina’s Center for Civil Rights for organizing this energizing conference and inviting me to join you today.  It’s humbling to be part of a program with such a distinguished group of civil rights leaders.  I see many dear friends and colleagues in this room.  Through advocacy and academia, through service and leadership – you have devoted your careers to the cause of justice and the fight for equality.                                                                                                                                    

    For just over two years, I’ve had the enormous privilege and great honor to lead the Civil Rights Division’s work in that fight.  At times, my tenure has been filled with moments of tragedy and anguish.  And there is no doubt that events in recent years have exposed and exacerbated stark divisions of ideology and open wounds of racial tension across America.  I’ve sat with grieving families who lost their loved ones in officer-involved shootings.  I’ve attended funerals of officers killed in the line of duty.  I’ve seen how the inequities in our criminal justice system can destroy lives and derail futures.  And I’ve been all too aware of how some of the most vulnerable among us encounter a real gap between what the law guarantees, on one hand, and what they experience in their daily lives, on the other – from courtrooms, to voting precincts, to public bathrooms.

    Yet I firmly believe that these are also times of possibility, of opportunity and of hope.  Because amidst the tragedies and divisions, I’ve seen police officers and residents working together to promote community-oriented policing strategies.  I’ve seen firsthand these past two years – in meetings, conferences and roundtables around the country – law enforcement leaders stand up and speak out to transform the profession, embracing de-escalation tactics, procedural justice and a smart-on-crime approach.  And I’ve seen how people from different walks of life can come together to engage in America’s imperfect, but unyielding journey of progress towards a more inclusive country and a more just union.

    For nearly six decades – from prosecuting the 1964 murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi; to combating segregation in education; to enforcing the Fair Housing Act; to preventing discrimination in lending, whether in redlining or underwriting; to defending the civil rights of LGBT men and women here in North Carolina – the division’s career lawyers have played a pivotal role in our country’s quest for justice.  The division vigorously enforces civil rights laws to make the promises of equal justice, equal protection and equal opportunity real for all.  We work to restore faith in the legitimacy of our justice system.  And we work to defend the integrity of our democracy.  Because discrimination, inequality and injustice don’t only harm individuals.  They threaten entire communities.  They breed cynicism and despair.  And they erode trust in our public institutions – trust essential to upholding the rule of law, to advancing public safety and to engaging in our centuries-old democratic experiment of effective self-governance.

    In stark terms and in real time, we’ve seen this connection between discrimination and distrust play out around the country through the lens of community-police relations.  Sometimes, a particular incident ignites public outrage and unrest.  And let be me clear: when law enforcement officials flout the law, the Civil Rights Division works to prosecute criminal misconduct and hold them accountable.  But I’ll be honest with you, the federal statute that applies is narrow.  In use-of-force cases, federal law requires us to prove both that the officer used “objectively unreasonable” force and that she or he acted willfully – “for the specific purpose of violating the law” – the highest standard of criminal intent in the federal code.  Mistake, misperception, negligence and poor judgment are not prosecutable at the federal level.  That said, during this administration, we have charged more than 580 law enforcement officials for committing willful violations of civil rights and related crimes.

    But we know that the true causes – the real reasons – for unrest run far deeper than any individual incident.  And we know that while public attention to these issues might be new, these causes are long-standing and systemic.  We’ve found these causes time and again through several of the 23 civil pattern-or-practice investigations we’ve opened into local police departments during this administration.  These cases focus not on individuals but on systems.  Broken systems – plagued by unlawful practices and tainted by bias – can devastate a community and corrode public trust, letting down not just the victims of police misconduct but the officers who seek to proudly wear the badge.

    We saw the impact of broken systems in Baltimore, where a “zero tolerance” street enforcement strategy became a quest to produce numbers – pedestrian stops of African Americans in particular – regardless of their limited impact on solving crime and the damage they did to community relationships.  Officers routinely arrested people for loitering or trespassing if they could not provide a “valid reason” for standing on the sidewalk or near a public housing development.  In one instance, a shift commander emailed a template for describing such trespassing arrests.  The template had blank fields.  Except that it had the words “black male” pre-filled for the suspect description.  Blanket assumptions and stereotypes about certain neighborhoods and certain communities led many residents to see the justice system as illegitimate and authorities as corrupt. 

    We saw the impact of broken systems in Ferguson, where the criminalization of poverty – and intentional racial bias in police and court practices – eroded public trust.  The city relied on enforcement strategies “to fill the revenue pipeline” without due consideration for whether officers could better protect the city by focusing on neighborhood policing, rather than debt collection.  We found the city issuing multiple citations with excessive fines and fees for minor violations – $302 for jaywalking, $427 for disturbing the peace and $531 for allowing high grass and weeds to grow on your lawn – and then arresting and even jailing residents when they couldn’t afford to pay.

    We saw the impact of broken systems in New Orleans as well, where officers lacked the ability to effectively communicate with immigrant communities.  At the time of our investigation, the New Orleans Police Department relied primarily on just two officers – one fluent in Spanish and one fluent in Vietnamese – to assist on all service calls and investigations involving limited English proficient residents.  As one Spanish-speaking immigrant testified, “[W]e don’t feel safe, we don’t feel supported.  We, the immigrants don’t feel support from them [the police].  We cannot call them for any kind of problem for help.”

    And we saw the impact of broken systems in Seattle, where the use of excessive force against individuals in crisis left families dealing with mental illness or addiction with nowhere to turn for help, without access to services and too fearful to call the police when the denial of treatment created dangerous situations for themselves and their loved ones.

    While each of these communities struggled with unique problems, the broken systems and police misconduct caused residents to view the police, the courts or even government itself as arbitrary, biased and unfair.  And when residents didn’t trust law enforcement, they became less willing to share information – information critical to solving and preventing crimes.  Entire communities felt that the justice system was not protecting or serving them, perpetuating disillusionment and exacerbating tensions.  Simply put, unconstitutional policing threatens the security and well-being of our communities.  And that hurts us all. 

    Of course, broken systems and unconstitutional policing practices don’t operate in isolation from other inequities in our justice system.  Indeed, throughout the justice system – from arraignment to sentencing – when people experience a two-tiered system of justice that stacks the deck against those living in poverty, these broader failures erodes trust, too.  The entire Department of Justice – including our team at the Office for Access to Justice, led by Director Lisa Foster – has helped lead the charge against criminal justice policies that punish poverty.  We’ve sent a dear colleague letter to state and local judges to help end unlawful fine and fee practices that result in inescapable cycles of debt and incarceration.  We’ve shined a light on the right-to-counsel crisis by filing briefs around the country – arguing that if due to underfunding and high workloads, public defenders can’t meaningfully test the prosecution’s case, that violates the Sixth Amendment.  We’ve taken on the criminalization of homelessness, arguing that because every human being must sleep at some time and in some place, arresting and punishing a person for sleeping in public – when there aren’t enough shelter beds in the city and she has nowhere else to go – criminalizes the status of being homeless.  We’ve addressed unlawful bail practices that result in jailing presumptively innocent people solely because of their poverty, without consideration of their ability to pay or alternatives to incarceration, causing people to lose their jobs, their health benefits or their homes without any benefit to public safety.  As with the issue of systemic police misconduct, addressing these issues – by preventing the punishment of poverty and by ensuring access to justice for all – is critical to restoring and maintaining the public’s faith in the legitimacy of our institutions and the integrity of our democracy.

    The integrity of our democracy also depends on ensuring that every eligible voter can participate in the electoral process.  Voting forms the bedrock of our democracy.  In our democracy, no matter what policy issue we care about most, we get closer to these goals through the ballot box.  The Justice Department works to ensure that every eligible voter enjoys the full range of voting rights protected by federal law.  It makes no difference to us what candidate a voter selects or what party she supports.  But we fight day-in and day-out, in elections big and small, not just in November but throughout the year, to protect her right to have a say.  Even with the severe setback of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, we’ve continued to use every tool at our disposal, including the Voting Rights Act, to protect voters from discrimination and provide the opportunities federal law guarantees.  And when it comes to protecting the process, we have been winning.

    This year, courts around the country issued pivotal rulings to protect the franchise, including in landmark cases brought by the Justice Department and private plaintiffs in North Carolina and Texas.  In July, a federal appeals court ruled that “because of race, the legislature enacted one of the largest restrictions of the franchise in modern North Carolina history,” striking down a law that “target[s] African Americans with almost surgical precision.”  And after years of litigation prolonged by Shelby County, in July the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down a Texas voter ID law for violating the Voting Rights Act.  Roughly half a million Texans lacked the form of ID needed to vote.  As Sammie Louise Bates – an elderly African American woman living on a fixed income of $321 per month, who lacked the birth certificate she needed to get a Texas ID – testified, “I had to put the $42 [I needed to get the birth certificate] where it was doing the most good … because we couldn’t eat the birth certificate … and we couldn’t pay rent with the birth certificate.”  From Alabama to Connecticut, we’ve also reached critical settlements to ensure that eligible voters can register with the ease and access that federal law requires.

    In the general election last month, the Justice Department sent more than 500 personnel to 67 jurisdictions in 28 states to monitor polling places in the field.  Of course, no matter how vigorously and effectively we protect this most fundamental right – through enforcement and monitoring, with government action and support from private plaintiffs – eligible voters need to go out and exercise it.  Democracy requires active participation.  Self-government, after all, doesn’t happen by chance.  But I recognize that people need to believe in the legitimacy of government – in the guarantee that government will treat them fairly, with dignity and decency – in order to participate in the process.

    Defending the integrity of our democracy also requires protecting all people – no matter who they are, what they look like, whom they love or where they worship – from harm.  Violence against people based on their identity not only violates the law and harms individuals.  It also denies entire communities the promises of equal protection and true freedom.  Following recent heinous acts of terrorism and divisive rhetoric – we’re combating a backlash of religious discrimination targeting Muslim communities and others perceived to be Muslim.  Just two days ago, we convicted a Minneapolis man of a hate crime for writing and mailing a threatening letter to a local Islamic Center, where he threatened to “blow up your building with all you immigrants in it.”  Beyond hate crimes, this discriminatory backlash also includes bullying in schools and unlawful barriers to building houses of worship.

    For the past eight years, the Civil Rights Division has also worked tirelessly to make the promise of equal protection real for gay, lesbian and transgender individuals.  Just last month, we celebrated the seventh anniversary of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.  This law expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to include protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity or sexual orientation.  It marked the first time that the words, “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” appeared in the United States Code.  It enhanced the legal toolkit available to prosecutors.  And it increased the ability of federal law enforcement to support our state and local partners.  In the years since, the Civil Rights Division has vigorously enforced this landmark statute.  And we continue to work with our partners on the federal, state and local levels to ensure the robust enforcement of hate crime statutes.

    Hate violence may mark the most severe form, but discrimination anywhere – and in any form – offends the Constitution and corrodes the ideals of our democracy.  In United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges, the Justice Department argued successfully that our Constitution guarantees the equal protection of the law to all people.  In citing the Supreme Court’s previous decisions – and in recounting America’s painful history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals – we explained that bans on same-sex marriage “exclude a long-mistreated class of human beings from a legal and social status of tremendous import” and are “incompatible with the Constitution.”  And then in June 2015, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that here in America, our Constitution guarantees all people “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”  The Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell stands as a beacon of light – not only for gay and lesbian individuals but for the cause of justice itself.

    The cause of justice is never static.  It is always searching for the next barrier to dismantle, for the next right to vindicate and for the next freedom to secure.  Earlier this year, I joined Attorney General [Loretta] Lynch to announce our lawsuit against North Carolina for violating the civil rights of transgender individuals.  Just like Obergefell was about more than just marriage, our challenge to H.B. 2 was about more than just bathrooms.  Justice [Anthony] Kennedy wrote in Obergefell that gay men and women have a right to “dignity in their own distinct identity.”  And, in 1964, in a case vindicating the Justice Department’s efforts to enforce the Civil Rights Act against the Heart of Atlanta Motel, which refused to let African Americans use its facilities, Justice [Arthur] Goldberg wrote that the “primary purpose” of our nation’s antidiscrimination laws “is the vindication of human dignity.”  Laws like H.B. 2 force transgender people to choose between their dignity and basic participation in public life.  The humiliation, frustration and embarrassment transgender people feel when they are denied access to a facility others of their gender are free to use – when they receive the message that they are less worthy of equal status and dignity than their peers – is the pain of discrimination and always has been.  Fighting discrimination is the mission of the Civil Rights Division, and it always has been. 

    In all of the areas I spoke about today, we – as a nation and as a people – have far more work to do.  Whether it’s in North Carolina or in countless other places across America – from rural towns to large states – this fight is centered around the cause of hope.  To me, civil rights work has always been built upon a foundation of hope.  It’s the hope that despite the zigs and the zags of our nation’s history, we have been marching forward, imperfectly yet inexorably.  The long struggle for equal justice and equal opportunity in this country has always required a deep and abiding reservoir of hope.  Hope gives us the struggle and the struggle gives us hope.  It’s the hope that this work transforms the nation, fulfills dreams and changes lives.

    While we will face new and emerging challenges to equality in the days ahead – just as we always have – civil rights work has always been designed to endure, to build new, infectious momentum in both public and private action.  And when I look at the distinguished leaders in this room, I know that with your determination, your creativity and your compassion, together we will continue to advance America’s march for progress and quest for justice.  Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at the Dedication of Ariel Rios Federal Building

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Deputy Director Thomas Brandon, for that kind introduction, and for your outstanding leadership of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).  I also want to acknowledge my colleagues from across the Department of Justice who are here today, as well as the many current and former federal and local law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces who have taken the time to join us.  And, of course, I want to thank the family of Special Agent Ariel Rios – especially his wife, Elsie, his son Frank and so many other members of the Rios family.  You honor us all with your presence.

    We are here today to rename a building.  But more importantly, we are here to honor a man.  Thanks to the tireless efforts of lawmakers, law enforcement officers, and members of the public, the headquarters of ATF will once again bear the name of Special Agent Ariel Rios. 

    This is as it should be.  In an agency known for bravery and dedication – and in the rich history of the Department of Justice – Special Agent Rios stands out for his intrepid courage, total selflessness, and steadfast integrity.  At the age of just 27, he accepted an assignment as an undercover narcotics agent in south Florida, subjecting himself to extreme stress and harrowing danger on a daily basis.  Those of you who have done undercover work know the stress, the danger, the loneliness of the work as well as the strain it places on one’s family.  Ariel Rios did that work and did it well.  He did not do it for reward or recognition – or even to have a building named after him, but because he believed in the cause of justice, a cause that he served with commitment and skill.  When he saw the challenges facing South Florida at that time and learned the task force was seeking agents, he joined, because he knew he had the skill, the experience and the judgment needed – but more importantly because he knew that he could help.  It is especially fitting that we are here on Dec. 2, because it was 34 years ago today that Special Agent Rios gave his life for that cause, when he and his partner, Special Agent Alex D’Atri, were executing an undercover operation in Miami.  Special Agent D’Atri suffered serious wounds in that operation, but he survived.  He is here with us today, and I ask all of you to join me in recognizing his valor and heroism. 

    This is the second ATF headquarters building to be named for Special Agent Rios.  By consecrating this site in his memory, we give public expression to our private feelings: our gratitude for his service; our admiration for his bravery; and our awe at his sacrifice.  The granite and steel within this foundation symbolizes his strength and determination.  The soaring glass of the atrium echoes his open heart and generous soul.  And the public-facing sign we will soon dedicate illustrates his commitment to the protection of the American people.  With this building naming today, we ensure that future generations of ATF agents and employees will be inspired by the life and example of Special Agent Ariel Rios.  And we show our determination to continue the work for which he gave his life. 

    Ultimately, that work is the most fitting memorial we can offer to the memory of Ariel Rios.  Naming this building in his honor is indeed a high tribute, but the memory of Ariel Rios lives on not simply in a structure, but in his enduring spirit – a spirit of devotion to duty; service to others; and fidelity to the law.  That spirit animated Ariel Rios in life, and it led him to keep his oath unto death.  It represents the highest aspiration of our profession – the standard by which law enforcement officers measure themselves each and every day.  And so, on this solemn occasion, let we who are gathered here today resolve to honor the memory of Special Agent Rios not only by bestowing his name upon this building, but by emulating his spirit in our work.  Let us reaffirm our commitment to the ideals he served so well.  And let us continue to build the more just, the more peaceful – the more perfect – union for which he gave his life.

    May God bless the memory of Special Agent Ariel Rios, and shelter his family in his everlasting grace.  May He bless all the fallen in our law enforcement family and protect all those who continue to serve.  And may He continue to bless the United States of America.    

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Head of the Civil Rights Division Vanita Gupta Delivers Remarks at the Civil Rights Division’s Annual Awards Ceremony

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good afternoon, everyone.  I want to start by thanking Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General [Bill] Baer and Deputy Attorney General [Sally Q.] Yates for joining us today and for their wise counsel and outstanding support of the Civil Rights Division.  I also want to thank Attorney General [Loretta E.] Lynch – who I know wanted to be here today and sends her regards – for her unwavering support of the division’s work.  And I want to thank all of you – the men and women who carry out the division’s work, day-in and day-out, with the utmost integrity.  For nearly six decades – during Democratic and Republican administrations, with resilience and resolve, in times of tumult and triumph, against threats of billy clubs and bullets – the Civil Rights Division has advanced America’s highest ideals of freedom, justice and equality for all.   

    In 1957 – in an era with open wounds of racism and hate, against fierce opposition and after a more than 24-hour filibuster by Senator Strom Thurmond – Congress passed the first piece of civil rights legislation since Reconstruction.  Focused almost exclusively on voting rights, the legislation didn’t provide the tools to address widespread discrimination in employment, housing, education and other important areas.  But it did create a framework to enforce the protections that Congress would pass, that courts would defend and that America would support in the years to come.  That framework was the Civil Rights Division.  And over time those protections went into law – protections centered around the most fundamental of human aspirations: the notion that all people deserve to be treated fairly, with dignity and with decency.  They were protections designed to advance the cause of justice. 

    The cause of justice is never static.  It is always searching for the next barrier to dismantle, for the next right to vindicate and for the next freedom to secure.  That’s what President [Lyndon B.] Johnson meant when he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and said, “those who founded our country knew that freedom would be secure only if each generation fought to renew and enlarge its meaning.”  That’s what President [George H.W.] Bush meant when he signed the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 and declared: “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down.”  And that’s what Justice [Anthony] Kennedy meant when he wrote last year in Obergefell v. Hodges that our Constitution guarantees all people “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

    For the past eight years, this Civil Rights Division has answered that same call to make the promise of justice real for every person in every community.  During a time when civil rights are at the forefront of our national public discourse, you have made extraordinary contributions.  From policing and criminal justice reform, to LGBT rights and voting, you have fought discriminatory barriers and opened doors of opportunity for some of the most vulnerable among us: people with disabilities, people of color, people living in poverty and people who speak English as a second language.  Your work has transformed the nation, fulfilled dreams and changed lives.  And in doing this work, from Appellate to Policy, you’ve showed an amazing capacity to work across section boundaries.

    You helped Hugo Ramirez – who lost his job, and then his savings and his car, because of an error with E-Verify – resolve the issue and find a new job as director of business development for a California health care provider.  In his words, you “gave me my livelihood back.”

    After Police Officer Lyndi Trischler suffered complications from a high-risk pregnancy and the city of Florence, Kentucky, denied her request for light duty, you brought a case, reached a critical settlement, won her thousands of dollars in relief and changed the policies and training for protecting future female employees of the city. 

    In a case that captured the attention of people all over the world, you brought a groundbreaking lawsuit against the state of North Carolina over H.B. 2 to vindicate the rights and defend the dignity of transgender individuals. 

    Your Olmstead enforcement helped Gabrielle – who dreamed of buying a home – find work as a grooming assistant at a dog day care and boutique, earning more than $9 per hour.  As she said, “I feel better about my life and … I ended up buying that house.”  

    A consent decree you reached with Wells Fargo created a program called CityLIFT that changed Monica’s life.  After she couldn’t buy a home for her family and lost her deposit, she felt like she “had lost everything.”  But once she learned about CityLIFT, which provides down payment assistance grants, she used the program to fulfill her dream and buy a home.  As Monica explained, “I needed for my children to know they can do anything, and for my mother to know she’s done well.”

    You changed norms in our justice system by advancing language access in state courts around the country.  Because of your work, a low-income LEP woman in Michigan no longer needs to struggle through her child custody hearing or use her son as the court interpreter.  
                                                                                               
    You won two landmark voting rights cases in Texas and North Carolina.  In Texas, Sammie Louise Bates was one of roughly half a million Texans who lacked the form of ID needed to vote.  Bates – an elderly African-American woman living on a fixed income of $321 per month – lacked the $42 for a birth certificate she needed for a Texas ID.  As she testified, “I had to put the $42 where it was doing the most good … because we couldn’t eat the birth certificate … and we couldn’t pay rent with the birth certificate.”  Now, thanks to you, Bates can vote without paying money she doesn’t have for a card she can’t afford.  
                                                                                                                        
    You supported and implemented an election monitoring program that mobilized the division and department to make sure we didn’t miss a beat – and based on your effort, we sent more than 500 personnel to 67 jurisdictions in 28 states during last month’s general election. 

    You reached a settlement agreement so that thousands of kindergarteners in Arizona will have the chance to learn English and reach their full potential.

    You negotiated a consent decree with Ferguson and released our findings letter on Baltimore – two cases that shaped a national dialogue around the devastating connections among race, poverty and injustice in policing.

    Your work brought transformative change to Ohio’s juvenile corrections system.  One young person explained the system’s “drastic change” that helped transform her from one of the worst-behaved kids to one of the best.  She went on to describe the powerful lesson of self-confidence: “When I get home I know I’m going to be able to use my new thought process because it feels so much better than doing what I used to do, being in trouble.”  

    From filings on bail reform and the criminalization of homelessness to a letter to state and local judges about the unlawful imposition of fines and fees, you have sought to ensure that no one is punished for their poverty.

    You stood up for a black gay man in Corpus Christi, Texas, who was viciously beaten because of his race and sexual orientation.  You prosecuted hate crimes targeting Muslim Americans and other vulnerable groups.  You convicted a defendant for recruiting foreign students from Kazakhstan by falsely promising clerical jobs at a made-up yoga studio and then forcing them into prostitution.  And you vindicated the rights of inmates and civilians abused and assaulted by officers who flouted the law. 
                                               
    You did extensive outreach to combat religious discrimination.  And you helped advance diversity in law enforcement by identifying common barriers and promising practices to employment in the profession.

    For just a few minutes, I want to talk about what your work has meant to me, and I want to emphasize that for the next several weeks, we still have work to do together.  During the past two plus years, you have given me the experience of a lifetime – the privilege to advance the cause of justice, to lift up the amazing work of the outstanding career men and women in the division.  It has been the most incredible two years of my life.  I cannot thank you enough – for your leadership, for your friendship and for your service to our country.  You have transformed the landscape of civil rights work in America irrevocably.  And you have done it all with grace and resolve, with compassion and empathy, with unyielding drive and relentless focus.  

    You have also given me hope.  This work is never easy.  And I know that we – as a nation and as a people – have far more work to do.  Congress didn’t create the Civil Rights Division in 1957 to solve the easy problems.  Congress created this division to tackle the toughest issues, to serve as an independent and forceful agency of justice and hope.  You cannot be an agent of change without a deep reservoir of hope.  It’s the hope that men and women today can build a more just, more inclusive and more free future for the children of tomorrow.  It’s the hope that thanks to all of you in the Civil Rights Division, people will reap the benefits of this work for generations to come – in safer streets, in desegregated schools, in fair markets and in stronger communities.  It’s the hope that despite the zigs and the zags of our nation’s history, you will continue to ensure that America marches forward, imperfectly yet inexorably.  Hope fuels the struggle and the struggle fills us with hope.

    While we will always face new and emerging challenges to equality, civil rights work is designed to endure and build momentum.  It is ironic but true that we learn the depth of our resiliency when tackling the greatest challenges.  The nation needs the Civil Rights Division and all of you to continue to make equal justice and equal opportunity a reality for all who live in the country.  Thank you for driving progress in our country.  It has been such an incredible privilege to lead this division that I love so very much working alongside such a distinguished and exemplary team of colleagues. 

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates Delivers Remarks at Civil Rights Division Awards Ceremony

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Vanita [Gupta], for that kind introduction – and for your extraordinary leadership of the Civil Rights Division. I so admire your confidence and clear vision for what the Division is and should be, and you’ve made the last two years some of the most impactful in the Division’s long history.

    It’s a privilege to stand with you today, and it’s a pleasure to welcome all of you to the Department of Justice – not only today’s honorees, but also the many proud friends, family members and colleagues who have joined us to celebrate this special occasion. You know better than anyone what this job entails – both the passion it inspires and the dedication it demands. Your loved ones have accepted the formidable challenge of defending – and expanding – the civil and constitutional rights of everyone who calls this nation home. Thank you for sharing them with us as they pursue that vital mission and thank you for joining us today to help honor this outstanding group of attorneys, investigators and support staff.

    Today’s awardees stood out in a crowded field of accomplishment in the Division this year – a level of accomplishment that is both wildly impressive and precisely what we have come to expect from the Civil Rights Division. I am incredibly proud of what this Division has achieved, not just in 2016, but from the earliest days of the Obama Administration. In fact, since this will be my last opportunity to speak to all of you as a group, if you’ll indulge me for a few minutes, I’d like to take a step back, and take stock of some of the many ways that this Division has used its inimitable strengths and boundless talent to write a new chapter in our nation’s history. This was already a storied Division. But these last eight years have added to that story in once-unimaginable ways.

    When former Attorney General [Eric] Holder and former Assistant Attorney General [Tom] Perez arrived in 2009, they came ready to rev up the engine of the Civil Rights Division – and many of you were ready to be empowered, too. It took a serious commitment to restoring this Division’s traditional role as the conscience of the Justice Department. AG Holder liked to refer to the Civil Rights Division as the “crown jewel” of the Department, but you all know that that reputation didn’t come easily. It was hard-earned and painstakingly built by many of the people sitting in this hall today.

    In 2009, it was impossible to imagine just how far we’d come, just how far you would take us, in eight short years. For example, at the dawn of this Administration, only two states – Massachusetts and Connecticut – allowed same-sex couples to marry. But in the years that followed, thanks to the courage and struggle of leaders both within and far beyond these walls, we saw that number climb rapidly to 50 – and 50 is where it will stay.

    Building on that success, the Civil Rights Division took a groundbreaking stance this year in support of the fundamental equality and dignity of the transgender community. That’s exactly what the Civil Rights Division was created to do. And if you ask me, in the not-too-distant future, the nation will look back on our position and wonder how this issue could ever have been so fiercely contested.

    Of course, adversity often comes with the job. On voting rights, we all remember the day in 2013 when the Division and the country suffered a major setback in the protection of the most fundamental of all rights in the Shelby County case. While the Supreme Court eliminated our most powerful tool to combat discrimination in our voting laws, true to the spirit of this Division, you absorbed the blow, sharpened our remaining tools and stood ready the next day to fight even harder to combat voter suppression. And with what feels like new assaults every day to the voting rights that are at the very foundation of our democracy, the potentially disenfranchised need you now more than ever.

    In recent years, as the interaction between the police and the communities they serve has revealed a festering distrust that threatens the safety of those communities and our police officers and undermines confidence in law enforcement, the nation has looked to the Civil Rights Division for leadership born of experience, and guidance born of expertise. You have taken up the charge and while there is still much to be done, you have offered a blueprint for moving forward with mutual trust and respect.

    And, when it comes to our nation’s criminal justice system, this Division has done vital work to ensure that we treat all our citizens with the fairness and compassion they deserve. Whether it’s scrutinizing bail practices, making our legal views known in local courts, or giving guidance on courthouse fines and fees, you are lighting a path forward for courts and law enforcement bodies nationwide and demonstrating how critical it is that we end the criminalization of poverty once and for all.

    In these and so many other ways, this Division has made a powerful difference by fighting for the core rights and freedoms of every individual – no matter where they live, who they are, or how much money they make. These are not just theoretical concepts. In every corner of our country, from schools to mosques, in housing and lending markets, from border areas to boardrooms, you have made real – and lasting – differences in the lives of the people of our country.

    Recounting these past victories, I know that many of you are thinking of the future, as well. With change on the horizon, you might be uncertain about whether these accomplishments will last. But I don’t believe that these achievements are as precarious as you might assume. The progress that you have forged is now woven into the fabric of our country. The Supreme Court has held that the right to marry the person you love is protected within the timeless words of our nation’s founding document. The injustices of poverty that you’ve brought to the nation’s attention will not be soon forgotten. Transgender Americans will always remember the recognition and validation they felt when the Department of Justice stood with them. And the citizens of this country will demand that every American’s right to vote is not something merely recited in our Constitution, but rather that this cornerstone of our democracy lives and breathes in every community.

    One of the promises we make to young people who come to the Department – whether as interns, paralegals, assistants, or attorneys – is that, if they’re here long enough, they’ll get their chance to touch history. It’s no secret that, in the Civil Rights Division, that chance can come around more often than elsewhere. But what distinguishes all of you is not that you had a chance to touch history – but that, when you did, you grabbed hold of it with confidence and bent it, inexorably, toward justice.

    Not long ago, I was drawn to visit the Lincoln Memorial again. I stood on that step where Dr. King stood for the March on Washington and looked out over the reflecting pool. And I thought about all of you. You are civil rights leaders in our day; you are trailblazers. You open minds and change hearts through your unshakable commitment to fairness and justice, to opportunity and equality. That commitment is contagious – and your voice  as the protectors of our fundamental rights is every bit as potent now and in the years to come as it has been over the years that have passed.

    Come January 20th, political appointees like Vanita and I will be private citizens. But the fact of the matter is that political appointees are just a tiny fraction of this legendary workforce. It’s you, the career men and women of the Department of Justice, who have always defined this Department –  defined who we are and what we stand for. So even though I will no longer be a part of this Department, I, like millions of your fellow citizens, will be counting on you going forward – counting on you to continue to bend the arc toward justice. And I know that responsibility couldn’t be in better hands. I take heart in that. And you should take heart in yourselves. 

    I know that you have fought hard battles. But progress without resistance is just inevitability – simple and easy.  But nothing you have achieved in these eight years was simple or easy. None of it was inevitable. It happened because you made it happen. Because you made it happen.

    Thank you once again for allowing me to join you on this important occasion and for allowing me the privilege, for a moment in our nation’s history, of standing shoulder to shoulder with you. It’s an honor to count you as colleagues and friends.

    At this time, I’ll turn things over to your truly fearless leader, Vanita Gupta.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell Delivers Remarks Highlighting Cybercrime Enforcement at Center for Strategic and International Studies

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, and thank you, Jim [Lewis], for that kind introduction.  I am pleased to be here speaking to you today, and I want to thank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) for having me.  

    Over the past two and a half years, I have had the honor of serving as the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division – and with that, the responsibility of ensuring that the division and its over 700 prosecutors have the support and authorities they need to fulfill their responsibilities to the American people.  I have also had the opportunity to see first-hand the dedication, rigor, intelligence and respect that America’s prosecutors bring to their work every day.  As my time as the Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division comes to a close, I am incredibly proud of where the division stands today and all that we have accomplished together.

    One constant truth about investigating and prosecuting crime is that it is never without its challenges, although the precise nature of the difficulties and obstacles we face changes with the times.  Today, some of the most significant hurdles we encounter relate to technology and the Internet.  

    Innovation in computing, the Internet, and related services has had tremendous benefits for our economy, our ability to connect with others, and the convenience, efficiency, and security of our everyday lives.  It has also transformed how we in law enforcement do our jobs by expanding our ability to detect, investigate and prosecute criminal activity.  

    However, these same innovations permit criminals to more easily victimize Americans, including from afar, while concealing their identities and enabling destruction of evidence.  We face an enormous task in responding to these new threats – ranging from botnets and ransomware to online child sexual exploitation and firearms trafficking, to name just a few – and that task is not getting any easier.  This morning I will focus on four challenges that have been and must continue to be the center of our work if we intend to succeed: 
    •    First, the growth of sophisticated, global cyber threats; 
    •    Second, dangerous loopholes in our legal authorities; 
    •    Third, the widespread use of warrant-proof encryption; and, 
    •    Fourth, inefficient cross-border access to electronic evidence.

    As I will explain in more detail, the past few years have marked some significant progress in some of these areas.  We have grown more nimble and effective in cooperative international law enforcement efforts to bring cyber criminals to justice and remediate cybercrime.  And we have managed to effect some targeted and common-sense improvements in legal authorities.  But in other areas, the challenges remain, and in some cases have become more prominent.  Let me begin with the threat.  The global nature of the Internet means that criminals now can easily victimize more people within the United States in more dangerous ways, all without ever setting foot here.  Some of the most significant criminal activity in recent years is the result of sophisticated criminal groups reaching across our borders from perceived safe harbors.  As we rely more and more on network communications to handle virtually every aspect of our lives, the cost of cybercrime will only rise – to over two trillion globally by 2019, according to some estimates – and the United States is a uniquely attractive target.

    We have responded first and foremost by aggressively identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting offenders.  This past October, for example, the Russian cybercriminal Roman Seleznev was convicted by a jury in Seattle.  Seleznev was a hacker who, from the other side of the world, pilfered data for millions of payment cards from the computer systems of small business owners across America – a crime that strikes at the trust and security of our everyday financial transactions.  Seleznev was the son of a member of the Russian parliament, and the Russian government filed diplomatic protests and tried to pressure us into releasing him.  But that’s not how justice in America works, and he is now in an American prison.

    We recognize that we cannot prosecute our way out of cybercrime, but prosecution must remain an integral component of our response to global cyber threats.  That is why foreign hackers like “Guccifer” – who hacked into the email and social media accounts of about a hundred Americans, including two former U.S. presidents – as well as Vladimir Drinkman and Dmitriy Smilianets – who, along with co-conspirators, conducted a worldwide hacking scheme that compromised more than 160 million credit card numbers – have likewise found themselves within the reach of American law enforcement.  Thanks to the work of our colleagues in the National Security Division, the same holds true for individuals like Su Bin – who conspired with Chinese military hackers to steal cutting-edge U.S. aircraft designs – and Ardit Ferizi – who shared stolen PII belonging to 1,300 U.S. military and government personnel with a member of ISIL, for publication on a hit list.  All have now been brought to the United States to face justice.  

    The department’s strong track record in this area is a critical deterrent to would-be attackers.  Over the last twenty years, for example, our Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) – the centerpiece of our prosecutorial response to criminal cyber threats – has successfully prosecuted cases involving more than one billion stolen pieces of information, including payment card data, email addresses and social security numbers – more than three pieces of data for every American alive today.

    Our international partnerships make this work possible.  And they have been key in another way as well.  Even when prosecution is not yet an option – for example, because we have been unable to identify or apprehend a criminal target – we have developed operational expertise in disrupting cybercriminal infrastructure in the United States and abroad.  For example, we have worked hand-in-hand with our foreign partners to address technical threats like botnets, so-called “bulletproof” hosts, Darknet markets and international hacking forums.  

    Indeed, just last week, the department led a multinational operation to dismantle a vast network of dedicated criminal servers known as “Avalanche,” which allegedly hosted more than two dozen of the world’s most dangerous and persistent malware campaigns.  The Avalanche network served clients operating as many as 500,000 infected computers on a daily basis and is associated with monetary losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide.  We were joined in this effort by investigators and prosecutors from more than 40 jurisdictions across the globe.  We must maintain existing international law enforcement cooperation – and develop new mechanisms to work with foreign partners – if we hope to continue these successes.

    These efforts have also benefitted from growth in our technical and investigative capacity.  The Criminal Division has steadily increased resources for CCIPS, along with its in-house Cybercrime Lab, over the last two years.  The Cybercrime Lab has become the go-to resource across U.S. law enforcement for intractable problems in accessing and understanding digital evidence, whether that means uncovering evidence that a defendant accessed online terrorist radicalization materials to rebut a claim of entrapment, or cracking passwords to dozens of devices that hold key evidence of serious crimes.

    We have also found that augmenting our own expertise and legal authorities with insight from private sector institutions allows us to identify and develop new, creative responses.  For example, in 2014, the FBI, in conjunction with a coalition of nearly a dozen foreign countries and a group of elite computer security firms, dismantled the Gameover Zeus botnet.  That botnet, which infected more than one million computers around the world, inflicted over $100 million in losses on American victims alone, and was responsible for the spread of the Cryptolocker ransomware.  The Gameover Zeus operation represents what we can achieve when law enforcement agencies collaborate with private sector experts, and indeed, many private organizations provided similar assistance in the recent Avalanche take-down.  I hope that it will continue to serve as a model for the department’s future work.

    This relationship works in both directions.  The investigative experience of our CCIPS prosecutors can offer important lessons for private sector entities.  In addition, navigating the federal laws that govern network monitoring practices – laws in which CCIPS specializes – can be fraught for organizations seeking to improve their cybersecurity.  That is why, two years ago, we created the Cybersecurity Unit, a group of CCIPS prosecutors who can leverage their case-related experience to develop and share practical cybersecurity advice with the private sector.  The Unit has also played an integral role in implementation of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).  So not only have we benefitted from private sector experts for our operational needs, but we have made a practice of sharing our knowledge base as well.

    Even as the department addresses technical obstacles to preventing and prosecuting cybercrime, however, we confront a second challenge: arbitrary gaps in the law that frustrate some of our most pressing investigations.  One example of such a loophole was the venue provision of Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. 

    As that Rule existed prior to Dec. 1, 2016, when law enforcement sought court approval for a search warrant, it generally was required to seek authorization from a court sitting in the same geographic district where the property to be searched was located.   This Rule made perfect sense in dealing with the physical world.  But in the cyber-world, we increasingly face scenarios where criminals use technology to hide the location of their computers, meaning that we could not know where the computers were located.  In those circumstances, federal law did not clearly identify which judge could authorize a search.   

    Similarly, we regularly encounter crimes like mass hacking through botnets that are carried out in multiple districts at once, all across the country.  But in order to respond in a timely, comprehensive manner, the prior version of the Rule arguably required authorities to obtain a warrant in each district – up to 94 in all, across 9 time zones, ranging from the Virgin Islands to Guam.  

    Last week, a three year effort, spearheaded by the Criminal Division, and approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, culminated in a targeted, procedural fix to the venue provisions of the Rule to ensure that technology does not render our investigative abilities obsolete.  The update to the Rule does not alter the probable cause or other standards we must meet to obtain a search warrant.   What the Rule does change is that now, when criminals hide the location of their computers through anonymizing technology, we don’t have to figure out in which federal district the computers are physically located before we can act to stop criminal activity.  Likewise, when a criminal deploys a botnet that indiscriminately infects computers nationwide – as many botnets now do – we don’t have to go to as many as 94 different judges. 

    The need to update Rule 41 was not theoretical.  Today, dozens of websites on Tor – a proxy network – openly distribute images of child rape and sexual exploitation, where they are frequented by tens of thousands of pedophiles.  These sites can thrive in the open because proxy networks, like Tor, hide the locations of the criminals’ servers and the identities of their administrators and users.  While law enforcement – and the general public – can easily find images of child sexual exploitation by visiting one of these sites, we often cannot locate and shut down the websites or identify and apprehend the abusers.  More troubling, the child victims stand little chance of rescue.

    The recent investigation of “Playpen,” a Tor site used by more than 100,000 pedophiles to encourage child sexual abuse and trade sexually explicit images of that abuse, illustrates why a Rule 41 fix was necessary.  In that case, authorities were able to wrest control of the site from the administrators, and then obtained court approval to use a remote search tool to retrieve limited information, including the user’s IP address, only if a user accessed child pornography on the site.  This enabled a traditional, real-world investigation, leading to more than 200 active prosecutions and the identification or rescue of at least 49 American children who were subject to sexual abuse.  

    Yet in some of the resulting cases, federal courts relying on the language of the prior version of Rule 41 found that even though the probable cause and other standards for obtaining a warrant were satisfied, evidence obtained in searches nevertheless had to be excluded because the judges who issued warrants lacked venue over the computers, which turned out to be physically located outside their geographic districts.  This is a perverse result, as it would mean that criminals who are savvy enough to hide their locations – which is not difficult given current technologies – could place themselves beyond the reach of law enforcement.  

    This is a good example of why the amendments to Rule 41 are such a crucial step forward.  They make clear which courts are available to consider whether a particular warrant application comports with the Fourth Amendment, without altering in any way the substantive requirements for – or privacy protections provided by – a warrant.  This will ensure that criminals who use anonymizing technologies are not immune from justice, and that threats like botnets are not too big to investigate and remediate effectively.

    This fix is a not a cure-all, however.  Our response to cyber threats requires revisiting laws that simply did not anticipate and cannot adjust to modern technology.  We must continue to move forward – not backward – to ensure that our laws protect Americans from criminals, and not the other way around.

    I now want to turn to some challenges that, despite the best efforts of many, will continue to confront policymakers in the years to come.  As society’s use of computers and the Internet has grown, so too has the importance of digital evidence in criminal investigations.  In nearly every criminal investigation we undertake at the federal level – from homicides and kidnappings to drug trafficking, organized crime, financial fraud and child exploitation – critical information comes from smart phones, computers and online communications, often instead of physical evidence.  Yet, these materials are increasingly unavailable to law enforcement as a result of certain implementations of encryption, even when we have a warrant to examine them.

    This is because, in an attempt to market products and services as protective of personal privacy and data security, companies increasingly are offering products with built-in encryption technologies that preclude access to data even when a court has issued a search warrant.  Service providers with more than a billion user accounts, that transmit tens of billions of messages per day around the world, now advertise themselves as unable to comply with warrants.  And device manufacturers that have placed hundreds of millions of products in the market have embraced the same principle.  We in law enforcement often describe this sort of encryption as “warrant-proof encryption.”  

    Let me be clear: the Criminal Division is on the front lines of the fight against cybercrime.  We recognize that the development and adoption of strong encryption is essential to counteracting cyber threats and to promote our overall safety and privacy.  But certain implementations of encryption pose an undeniable and growing threat to our ability to protect the American people.  Our inability to access such data can stop our investigations and prosecutions in their tracks.

    Inaction is not a suitable response.  Our occasional success in accessing information protected by seemingly “warrant-proof encryption” is unpredictable and inadequate.  There are devices in evidence lockers across the country that remain locked.  

    As the President reminded us recently, the Government has different responsibilities – a different “balance sheet” and different “stakeholders” – than a corporation.  There is nothing wrong with companies pursuing profits and marketing strategies, but no one should expect that they will take into account all of the societal interests that are at stake.  And that is especially true for our public safety mission.  Our ability to protect Americans from crime has become dependent, in thousands of cases, on the business decisions of for-profit corporations.  More troublingly, even when companies have the technical ability to reasonably assist us in accessing encrypted information, they have refused to do so for fear of “tarnishing” their image.  Regardless of which side of this issue you are on, we can all agree that market-driven decisions are not and have never been a substitute for sound public safety policies. 

    Business decisions made by for-profit companies have had enormous effects on our public safety in other ways as well.  Data held by major Internet service providers can be crucial to identifying and holding accountable the perpetrators of virtually every federal crime we handle.  Increasingly, however, American providers and other providers subject to the jurisdiction of the United States are storing such information outside the United States, and not always at rest and in the same location.  The data can be partitioned and stored in multiple locations, or moved about on an ongoing basis, and some providers may not even know where all data relating to a particular user is at a given time.  

    It is this last challenge – foreign-stored digital evidence – that I will close with today.  The department has worked diligently to increase the cross-border availability of data, through mechanisms like the 24/7 Network, which facilitates the preservation of digital evidence, as well as mutual legal assistance treaties and the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, which enhance international cooperation in obtaining that evidence.  The Criminal Division has also directed additional resources toward a dedicated cyber mutual legal assistance unit in our Office of International Affairs, which has seen a 1,000 percent increase in incoming requests for computer records since 2000.

    But while these are important crime-fighting tools, they have significant shortcomings.  The United States has mutual legal assistance treaties with less than half the countries in the world, some of which place limitations on when assistance is available or the types of evidence that can be obtained.  Even then, obtaining evidence can take months, if not years.  Ireland, for example, reports that in routine cases it takes 15 to 18 months to execute a request for assistance from a foreign country.  In less experienced or less cooperative countries, the process can take even longer.  Sometimes we never receive a response at all.  

    Recently, the difficulties caused by foreign-stored data for public safety have become more acute.  In July, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, in the so-called “Microsoft Ireland” case, held that U.S. authorities cannot use a search warrant issued by a U.S. court pursuant to the Stored Communications Act (SCA) to compel a U.S. service provider, such as Microsoft, to produce data that it chooses to store for its own business purposes (and typically without the knowledge or input of its subscribers) outside the United States.

    So, what is already a difficult and time-consuming process of gathering electronic evidence may now also become an impossible one, for both the United States and our partners.  Since the Microsoft decision was handed down, U.S. providers such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have refused to produce information that they have chosen to store abroad in response to search warrants issued by courts even outside the Second Circuit.  This has been the case even in instances where the account-holder was an American citizen residing in the United States, and when the crime under investigation is carried out on American soil.  And this includes warrants obtained on behalf of foreign countries pursuant to mutual legal assistant requests.

    U.S. law generally does not require our providers to store this data in a particular location or make it accessible in any particular way.  But as a result, the ability of law enforcement to effectively investigate serious crime may now be determined entirely by a provider’s data management practices, well-intentioned or not.  One major American provider, for example, is unable to determine the country in which foreign-stored data is located; and even if it could, the data is frequently moved and may not be in the same country from day to day.  Under the Second Circuit’s decision, a SCA warrant is not available.  But sending an MLAT request to a foreign country could result – after months of delay – in a notification that the relevant data is no longer there.

    It is for this reason that, in October, the department filed a petition for the case to be reheard by the entire Second Circuit en banc.  It is also why we intend to submit legislation to Congress to address the decision’s significant public safety implications.  This issue must be resolved before we move to other important initiatives, such as legislation to implement a cross-border data agreement with the United Kingdom.

    Looking forward, I cannot predict how the rehearing petition, or the broader concerns implicated by the Microsoft decision, will play out.  And I suspect that, whether the issue relates to warrant-proof encryption or cross-border access to evidence, reaching a resolution will be challenging.  But these decisions must be made in the policy arena, not by the private sector alone.  We cannot allow changing technologies or the economic interests of the private sector to overwhelm larger policy issues relating to the needs of public safety and national security.  And we must let government fulfill its fundamental responsibilities to protect the American people.

    I know that the panel to follow will focus on some of these challenges for the future, but let me offer my own thoughts here.  In each of these areas, we must proceed thoughtfully and balance multiple different legitimate interests.  Yet several basic principles should be obvious.  First, sitting back and doing nothing is not an acceptable option.  The world is changing around us, and those seeking to do harm are evolving with it; if those responsible for ensuring public safety do not have the same ability to adapt, public safety will suffer.  Second, these changes pose policy challenges, and we need to develop policy responses.  Rather than let evolutions in technology dictate our responses, we must think ahead as a society and develop appropriate frameworks to address new and upcoming challenges before they become crises.  And finally, when there are multiple interests at stake – public safety, cybersecurity, international comity and civil rights and civil liberties – we cannot allow the most consequential decisions to be made by a single stakeholder, or leave them to the whim of the commercial marketplace.  We would never tolerate that approach in other areas of importance to society, and we should not do so here.  Thank you.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Memorial Service for Former Attorney General Janet Reno

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Good morning, everyone. To President [Bill] Clinton; Sandy D’Alemberte; distinguished guests; and most importantly Maggy [Reno Hurchalla], Hunter [Reno] and all of Ms. Reno’s family: I bring you greetings and remembrances from her Department of Justice family.

    Early in her career, someone famously told Janet Reno that “ladies don’t become lawyers.” This being free advice, she took it for exactly what it was worth. And I am so grateful – as is our nation – that she did. Further, it is absolutely fitting that history books will pay no notice to whoever uttered that pithy absurdity, but they will certainly pay tribute to Janet Reno. In so many ways – as the first woman to serve as Attorney General in American history; as our nation’s chief law enforcement officer in a tumultuous and eventful time; and as a straight-talking, no-nonsense public servant of the highest integrity – Ms. Reno was a historic figure. She broke barriers and defied expectations. The Department of Justice she left was one that was stronger, wiser, and more compassionate than the one she had inherited.

    Janet Reno was undoubtedly aware of her historic role. But she never let her place in history – or anyone for that matter – define her. The weight of her responsibilities never got in the way of her fundamental kindness, a fact that so many department employees still recall. And in a life filled with achievement, one of her proudest was that she cared for her mother as she was dying of cancer, and ensured that her final days were spent in comfort, peace and love. Because she always knew that what really mattered in this life were the connections we have with one another. That acknowledgement of those connections – the blessed ties that bind all of us, as caretaker of our loved ones, as stewards of this land and of the law, as Americans – was at the core of her strength.

    When I was thinking of my remarks for today – in the five-minute time frame Maggy so generously gave me – I thought about focusing on the meetings I had with Ms. Reno around her conference room table, now mine. I thought about focusing on the many consequential matters I saw her consider with wisdom and grace. But what kept coming to my mind and to my heart were the first time I met her and the last time I saw her.

    When Janet Reno became Attorney General, I was a young federal prosecutor in Brooklyn. A few years into a job that I loved, I must confess that to me and so many of my colleagues, especially the women, Main Justice was a somewhat mysterious place down I-95 populated mostly by dark-suited men whose main distinguishing characteristic seemed to be whether they were grey or whether they were balding. When Janet Reno came onto the scene – a woman, a Southerner, an original who famously “didn’t do spin” – we were electrified. I was inspired by her. I wanted to be like her. Despite my best efforts, I was not able to achieve 6’2”.  I had to settle for being Attorney General instead. It has not been a bad trade.

    I first met Janet Reno at the National Black Prosecutors Conference, being held in Washington in her first year in office. She spoke to us about the importance of having prosecutors who based their decisions on what was best for the country, not what was best for their careers. She told us never to forget the many experiences and backgrounds that had brought us there, because that would be our strength as prosecutors. After her talk, she was swarmed with well-wishers. We wanted to shake her hand, to take a photo, to just be near her. And she stayed and spoke with every person who wanted her attention. She posed for pictures, and she asked each of us, thoughtfully and seriously, about ourselves. Maya Angelou once said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Even today, no one in that room has forgotten how Ms. Reno made us feel – she made us feel valued, she made us feel heard, she made us feel that we could do anything.

    That was one of her great gifts. She was one of the best listeners you’ll ever meet. The last time I saw her was earlier this year, in the house her mother had built. She was dealing with difficult health challenges, but she didn’t want to discuss her own health or make idle chitchat. She wanted to hear about the Department of Justice. She wanted to hear about our work in civil rights and in community policing. She wanted to hear about the tough decisions before our department – the kind of tough decisions she had faced every day. And as I spoke, she listened – with that same patient, intent gaze I remembered from so many years ago. And because it was a good day for her, we were able to speak together as well. And as she had so many years ago, she made me feel that I could do anything.

    I know that all of us here today have similar stories of how she inspired us in ways large and small. We’re here to honor and remember her. And both the lesson and the challenge she has left for all of us is to decide – how will our actions make others feel? So, as we leave here today with our hearts still full, let us do so with a mission. A mission to carry Janet Reno’s legacy with us, and make the people in our lives feel valued, feel heard, and feel that they, too, can do anything.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at Interfaith Event on the Justice Department’s Commitment to Combatting Hate Crimes

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you, Imam [Mohamed] Magid, for your kind words; for your hospitality in welcoming me today; and for your outstanding leadership of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, especially during what I know has been a difficult time for many Muslim Americans.  I am proud to stand beside you today.  I also want to thank all of the inspiring faith leaders that we just heard from for their moving words.  And I want to thank all of you – faith leaders and community leaders; activists and advocates – for all that you do, each and every day, to strengthen, empower and unite our communities.

    It is truly inspiring to stand in this space, in front of this audience.  This morning, we have gathered under this roof, in this mosque, as men and women of all races, creeds and colors.  Some of us were born in the United States, our immigration status having been resolved several generations ago; some of us came here more recently in search of a better life.  We may speak different languages; we may read from different books of scripture; we may call our God by different names.  But we all love this country and the ideals for which it stands.  We all want our children to lead lives of safety and opportunity.   We all proudly claim the title of American.  And we all hold, as Justice Brandeis proclaimed, “the most important political office … that of the private citizen.”  In this assembly, I see a living expression of the American promise: the conviction that every person’s dignity is inherent and equal. 

    That promise is as old as our nation itself.  Twelve score years ago, our forefathers boldly proclaimed that “all men are created equal.”  But of course, when those words were written, a large gap existed between America’s founding ideals and America’s founding reality.  The very hand that put those words on parchment had also signed the deeds for the sale and purchase of other human beings.  For many of our ancestors – for women, African Americans, Native Americans, immigrants and countless others – the promise of American life rang hollow. 

    But the declaration’s revolutionary statement of equality was too plain and powerful – too “self-evident”, in Jefferson’s words – for that state of affairs to endure.  Generation after generation of Americans heard the promise set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and they demanded that it be fulfilled: women who endured ridicule and condescension for seeking the ballot; black soldiers who defended freedom overseas, only to return home to a nation that wouldn’t let them vote, and that sometimes repaid their service with angry violence; marchers who braved the jaws of police dogs at Birmingham, and the sting of cattle prods at Selma; LGBTQ individuals who fought for their civil rights at the Stonewall Inn – through the courage and determination of these and countless others who have gone before us, we have slowly built a society that more fully reflects our founding creed of liberty and justice for all.

    That does not mean our work is finished; as you are all well aware, the opposite is true.  We all know this work is never finished.   Just last month, the FBI released its statistics on the number of hate crimes committed in 2015.  The report was a sobering indication of how much work remains to be done.  Overall, the number of reported hate crimes increased six percent from 2014.  That figure includes increases in hate crimes committed against Jewish Americans, African Americans, and LGBTQ Americans.  And, perhaps most troublingly of all, it showed a 67 percent increase in hate crimes committed against Muslim Americans, and the highest total of anti-Muslim incidents since 2001, when 9/11 spurred so many reprehensible acts.  And we know that there are many more hate crimes in communities across the country that go unreported.  

    In addition, all of us have seen the flurry of recent news reports about alleged hate crimes and harassment – from hijabs yanked off of women’s heads; to swastikas sprayed on the sides of synagogues; to slurs and epithets hurled in classrooms.  The FBI is working with local authorities to review multiple incidents, and our agents and prosecutors are working to assess whether particular cases constitute violations of federal law.  

    These incidents – and these statistics – should be of the deepest concern to every American.  Because hate crimes don’t just target individuals.  They tear at the fabric of our communities, and they also stain our dearest ideals and our nation’s very soul.  There is a pernicious thread that connects the act of violence against a woman wearing a hijab to the assault on a transgender man to the tragic deaths of nine innocent African Americans during a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston, South Carolina.  As President Obama has said, it is “the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity – the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same hopes and fears, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.”  The reason we have a cross-section of so many leaders from different faiths here today is because we believe so deeply in certain common values.  Regardless of our faith, we believe that we must treat others as we would wish to be treated.  Regardless of our faith, we believe that every individual is precious.  Regardless of our faith, we believe in our common humanity, and we believe that, in the famous words of Martin Luther King Jr., “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  That is why the Department of Justice – and the entire Obama Administration – regards hate crimes with the utmost seriousness, whether they target individuals because of their race, their religion, their gender or their sexual orientation.  And that is why we have worked tirelessly over the last several years to bring those who perpetrate these heinous deeds to justice.

    A cornerstone of that work is investigating and prosecuting hate crimes against Muslim Americans, as well as those perceived to be Muslim.  Muslim Americans are our friends and family members, our doctors and nurses, our police officers and firefighters.  They own businesses and teach in classrooms.  Thousands of them have fought for the American flag.  Many have died defending it.  And yet, too often – especially in the last year, following a number of tragic terrorist incidents, and amidst an increase in divisive and fearful rhetoric – we have seen Muslim Americans targeted and demonized simply because of their faith.  And to impose a blanket stereotype on all members of any faith because of the actions of those who pervert that faith is to go backwards in our thinking and our discourse, and to repudiate the founding ideals of this country.  This is unacceptable in a nation whose Bill of Rights guarantees the freedom of religion in its very first clause, and the Department of Justice has vigorously prosecuted a number of these repugnant acts.   

    In recent months, our Civil Rights Division – led by Vanita Gupta, who is here with us today – along with our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, have convicted a Connecticut man for firing a high-powered rifle at a mosque; a Florida man for threatening to firebomb two mosques and shoot their congregants; a Missouri man for the arson of a local mosque; and a North Carolina man who yelled at a woman and ripped off her hijab on an airplane.  And in October, our National Security Division and the U.S Attorney’s Office in Kansas charged three men in connection with their plot to detonate bombs at an apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, which included a mosque where many members of the local Somali immigrant community gather to pray.  These are only a few examples of the Justice Department’s recent prosecutions.  There are many more matters that we, often in close partnership with our state and local law enforcement partners, are investigating.  

    The Justice Department is also working to protect the rights of religious communities to build houses of worship without unlawful interference or harassment.  Unfortunately, that task has only become more urgent in recent years.  Members of the Civil Rights Division have heard repeatedly about more overt discrimination in both the tone and framing of objections to planned religious institutions, especially mosques and Islamic centers.  Our primary tool to combat such discrimination is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA.  Since September 2010, the department has opened 50 RLUIPA land-use investigations, filed ten lawsuits involving land use, and filed eight amicus briefs in private parties’ RLUIPA cases to inform courts about the law’s provisions and requirements.  In the last six years, 38 percent of the Civil Rights Division’s RLUIPA land use cases involved mosques or Islamic schools – a dramatic increase over the percentage of such cases brought during the previous decade. 

    Religious institutions aren’t the only vulnerable spaces we are determined to keep free of hatred and bias.  We all know that in order for our children to learn and thrive, they need access to safe and inclusive classrooms.  Earlier this year, the Civil Rights Division launched a new initiative with our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices that will significantly advance our ability to address religious discrimination in schools.  And our Community Relations Service, or CRS – led by Paul Monteiro, who is also here with us today – works to ease tensions and promote understanding in communities and schools that have been rocked by traumatic incidents.  For example, after a student was allegedly forced to remove her hijab in a school in Massachusetts, the school invited CRS to present its Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Cultural Awareness Program to the school’s staff.  CRS also recently appointed its first ever National Program Manager for Muslim, Arab, Sikh and South Asian Communities, and I am so pleased that Harpreet Singh Mokha has joined us here today.   

    We are also concerned with crimes against our LGBT brothers and sisters.  In October, we commemorated the seventh anniversary of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to included crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, and sexual orientation.  Here, too, we have been active, bringing hate crimes cases in a number of states around the country.  Tomorrow, I am traveling to New York to meet with LGBT youth, and to reaffirm the department’s steadfast commitment to the rights and well-being of all LGBTQ Americans.

    These are all important efforts, and their impact has been amplified by our efforts to train local and federal law enforcement agencies in how to recognize and investigate hate crimes; how to engage with communities; and how to encourage better hate crime reporting and data collection.  These initiatives have helped us to build stronger partnerships between law enforcement officers and the communities we serve, and I am hopeful that those partnerships will stand as a bulwark against hate crimes for years to come.

    I am encouraged by what we have accomplished together over the last eight years.  But I also know that we face many challenges in the years ahead – challenges that will require the Department of Justice to remain an active force for good in communities from coast to coast.  Our federal hate crimes laws are among the most powerful tools we have for creating a more just and equal nation, and career Justice Department prosecutors will continue to enforce them.

    Nevertheless, I know that many Americans are feeling uncertainty and anxiety as we witness the recent eruption of divisive rhetoric and hateful deeds.  I know that many Americans are wondering if they are in danger simply because of what they look like or where they pray.  I know that some are wondering whether the progress we have made at such great cost, and over so many years, is in danger of sliding backwards.  

    I understand those feelings.  I know that as we continue to demand a nation where all people are truly treated equally, we will be met with prejudice, bigotry and condemnation.  

    It is true that there is nothing foreordained about our march towards a more just and peaceful future.  There never has been.  Our centuries-long project of creating a more perfect union was not the product of fate, or destiny.  It was the result of countless individuals making the choice to stand up, to demand recognition, to refuse to rest until they knew that their children were inheriting a nation that was more tolerant, more inclusive and more equal.  That is why it is so fitting that we are here today in this beautiful house of worship, this place of deep and abiding faith.  It has been faith that has sustained this fight since the beginning.  

    Faith – a small band of colonies could separate from the most powerful nation on earth and chart a course of freedom and equality.

    Faith – a new nation and its ideas could survive a bloody and divisive civil war that arose from its original sin of slavery.  And not just faith – the works that made it so when there was no guarantee of success. 

    I have been fortunate to have such people in my life.  Two of them happen to be faith leaders: my grandfather and my father.  They both lived at a time when their country regarded them as less than fully human, simply because of the color of their skin.  And they both did their part to make the United States just a little more free and a little more fair.  In 1930s North Carolina – where the law offered little protection to people of color – my grandfather used to hide neighbors in trouble under the floorboards of his house.  My own father let civil rights activists meet in the basement of his church in Greensboro, North Carolina.  

    These were acts of enormous courage.  But they were also acts of enormous faith and hope.  Here were two men living in a country that put obstacles in their path to prevent them from voting; that told them they could only use certain drinking fountains; that told them that when the Declaration of Independence said, “All men are created equal,” it wasn’t referring to them.  But they knew what those words meant, and they chose to act accordingly.  They knew their portion of fear.  They knew their portion of anger.  And yet they never lost their hope that although their country was far from perfect, it was certainly capable of perfection.  They both risked a great deal for that faith – never knowing if would work out or not – never imagining that the daughter of one and the granddaughter of the other would one day become the chief law enforcement officer of the united states.

    My friends, that hope is still alive in our country.  You and I know what the declaration means when it says, “All men are created equal.”  You and I know what the Constitution means when it says, “We, the people.”  So let us leave here united in our confidence, inspired by our faith and strengthened by our courage.  Let us leave here with a renewed commitment to demanding nothing less than a country that is true to its founding promises.  And let us leave here in hope – the hope that has brought the United States so far in the last 240 years; the hope that I am confident will carry us even further in the days to come.

    Will this work be hard?  It has always been hard. 

    Will there be challenges ahead?  We have always known that “the price of freedom is constant vigilance.”  

    Will we persevere?  We always do.

    Let me recall a song from my faith, made famous by Mahalia Jackson: “Lord, don’t move the mountain, but give me the strength to climb.”

    I want to thank you for allowing me to spend a few moments with you today to talk about the country we all love, and the future we all cherish.  Thank you for all that you do in your congregations and your communities to vindicate the promise of American life.  And let me assure you that long after I leave the Attorney General’s seat, I will continue to stand beside you in the cause of liberty and justice for all.  Thank you.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: New Carrollton Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison for Kidnapping Minors, Producing Child Sexual Abuse Material

    Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) State Crime News

    Greenbelt, Maryland – On January 31, 2025, U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman sentenced Julian Everett, 41, of New Carrollton, Maryland, to 20 years in federal prison and 20 years of supervised release, for kidnapping minors and producing child sexual abuse material.

    Erek L. Barron, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland, announced the sentence with Special Agent in Charge William J. DelBagno, of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office; Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha N. Braveboy; and Chief Malik Aziz, Prince George’s County Police Department.

    According to the guilty plea, in 2005, 2015 and 2016, Everett acknowledged sexually abusing and capturing sexual abuse material of several victims at his New Carrollton home – four were minors.

    On July 11, 2005, Everett drove Victim 2 — who was16 at the time — from the Commonwealth of Virginia to his New Carrollton residence.  While at his residence, Everett provided Victim 2 with a beverage, before engaging in sexual intercourse without her consent. Everett also took nude photographs of the victim without her consent.

    Additionally, on August 23, 2015, Everett drove another victim — who was 18 at the time — from a Washington, D.C. night club to a gas station. While there, Everett created and provided Victim 3 with a beverage before driving her to his New Carrollton residence. Everett then engaged in sexual acts with Victim 3 without her consent.

    Then on August 21, 2016, Everett drove Victim 1 — who was then 17 at the time — from her Washington, D.C. residence to a Northwest D.C. barbershop where he worked. While at the barbershop, Everett created and provided Victim 1 with a beverage. Victim 1 drank it and eventually lost consciousness before waking up at Everett’s home while he was performing a sexual act on her. Additionally, Everett recorded the sexual encounter and took naked pictures of the victim without her consent.

    Authorities arrested Everett in Prince George’s County on March 21, 2019. Federal law enforcement obtained a search warrant for Everett’s electronic devices, revealing images of child sexual abuse material, including a video of Everett engaging in sexual intercourse with an unidentified fifth female victim. During the video, Victim 5 can be heard mumbling and is physically unresponsive with her eyes closed.

    On March 26, 2019, a fourth victim reported a sexual-assault incident to the Prince George’s County Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division. Between March and April 2015, Everett transported Victim 4 — who was16 at the time — from her Washington D.C. residence to his New Carrollton home.  After arriving at his house, Everett mixed a drink for Victim 4 who drank it and became lightheaded. Everett then engaged in multiple sexual acts with Victim 4 without her consent, which he also digitally recorded. He also took nude photos of her. 

    This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.justice.gov/psc and click on the “Resources” tab on the left of the page.

    U.S. Attorney Barron commended the FBI, Office of State’s Attorney for Prince George’s County, Maryland, and the Prince George’s County Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Barron also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Timothy Hagan and Thomas Sullivan who prosecuted the federal case.

    For more information about the Maryland U.S. Attorney’s Office, its priorities, and resources available to help the community, please visit www.justice.gov/usao-md and https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/community-outreach.

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  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer Delivers Remarks Before the National Asian American Coalition and National Diversity Coalition

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Thank you Faith for those kind words and for your outstanding leadership of the National Asian American Coalition (NAAC).  The NAAC and its partners in the National Diversity Coalition have become important voices and strong advocates for communities – in particular, minority and poor communities – that far too often go unheard in our society.  Day in and day out, you provide hope and a helping hand to many hardworking Americans struggling to attain the American dream.  In my three years in this job, one highlight is meeting regularly with your coalition.  You are always informed and effective advocates on behalf of your communities.

    But I appreciate that advocating on behalf of consumers when you visit D.C. is only a small part of what the NAAC and the National Diversity Coalition do.  You provide training to the laid-off father searching for a job that will put food on the table and a roof over his family’s head.  You provide financial advice and resources to the mother hoping to start her own business.  You help families purchase their first home or refinance their mortgage so they can hold onto the home they purchased with their life savings.  You inspire countless young people to dream big and to strive for excellence by providing them with mentoring, after-school programs and scholarships.  I spoke with some of these students this morning.  I believe, as President Obama has noted, that “[t]here is no stronger weapon against inequality and no better path to opportunity than an education that can unlock a child’s God-given potential.”

    The mission of the Antitrust Division also involves ensuring economic opportunity for all consumers.  Our antitrust laws seek to promote fairness in our marketplaces, safeguard the economic freedom of our citizens and strengthen our economy through vigorous competition.  Our first antitrust law – the Sherman Act – was passed 125 years ago.  That law seeks to protect American consumers and businesses from the harm to competition that results when too much economic power is held by only a few corporations and individuals.  The Sherman Act became a vital tool under President Theodore Roosevelt – a progressive reformer often referred to as the “trust buster” – as he spearheaded the movement to bring fairness to the marketplace and to ensure that consumers benefit from healthy competition for their hard earned dollars.  Some years later, his distant cousin – President Franklin D. Roosevelt – established the Antitrust Division at the Justice Department to help continue the fight to protect hardworking Americans from the higher prices and reduced innovation that can result from the consolidation of economic power in a few hands.

    Here are a couple of examples of the Antitrust Division’s work.  Earlier this year, I stood with Attorney General Loretta Lynch when she announced the criminal guilty pleas of five of the world’s largest and most influential financial institutions – Citicorp, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, UBS and The Royal Bank of Scotland – for manipulating the massive foreign currency exchange market.  As part of their guilty pleas, these institutions were required to pay almost $3 billion in criminal fines, including the largest antitrust fines ever obtained in the Justice Department’s 145-year history.

    A few years ago, we uncovered international conspiracies to fix the prices for all kinds of automobile parts, including seatbelts, airbags and antilock brake systems.  This illegal conduct made it more costly for companies like General Motors, Ford and Toyota to manufacture cars.  At the end of the day, we all know who paid the price for these cartels – the American consumer.  As of today, we have charged 58 corporate executives and 37 companies and obtained more than $2.6 billion in criminal fines.  And we are not done yet.

    Sometimes antitrust crimes are local.  Here in Northern California, our San Francisco office has spent the last several years prosecuting individuals who rigged the bids on foreclosed homes being sold at public auctions.  As you know, many Californians lost their homes during the Great Recession because they could not afford to pay their mortgages.  Some real estate investors saw the misfortune of these homeowners as an opportunity to line their pockets by agreeing not to bid against each other when these homes were auctioned.  They took turns winning these auctions at suppressed prices and deprived the banks and homeowners of the benefits of a competitive auction.  Thus far, we have charged more than 110 individuals who engaged in this type of bid rigging here in Northern California and other parts of the country.  Our San Francisco office also successfully prosecuted a conspiracy to fix the prices of liquid display panels sold worldwide.  LCDs are used in all kinds of electronic products, including flat screen televisions, computer monitors and tablets.  This conspiracy made it more expensive for companies to manufacture electronics, which, in turn, caused millions of Americans to pay higher prices.

    These cases showcase the Antitrust Division’s strong record of criminal antitrust enforcement during the Obama Administration.  Since President Obama took office, we have charged over 400 individuals and 140 corporations with criminal misconduct.  We obtained over $8.5 billion in criminal fines and penalties.  These large criminal fines and penalties serve an important deterrent effect because they directly affect something that corporate executives and investors care deeply about: a company’s bottom line.  But another thing to note: the criminal fines obtained by the Antitrust Division provide funding for the Justice Department’s Crime Victim’s Fund, which helps victims of all types of crime obtain the medical, legal and financial services that they need to move forward with their lives.  In California, this fund has helped victims of child abuse, domestic violence and sexual assault.

    We challenge other misconduct that raises – or threatens to raise – the prices that you as a consumer pay.  Here are some recent examples.

    Think about e-books, a popular alternative to hard copies.  Because they cost less to produce, they should be cheaper.  And until early 2010 they were.  Suddenly, prices shot up.  Why?  Because certain book publishers and Apple entered into an illegal agreement to raise prices.  We sued Apple and the publishers to put an end to their unlawful coordination.

    What happened to e-book prices when the publishers and Apple were forced to compete?  Prices for e-books fell.  In 2010, when the price fixing conspiracy was in place, you often had to pay $12.99 or $14.99 for a best-seller.  After we obtained judgments against Apple and the publishers, prices for best-sellers fell significantly, with many available for $9.99 or less.  Thus, competition, once restored, worked to benefit you and other consumers.

    But what about those who were victims of higher prices during the e-books conspiracy?  Based on the facts we developed, state attorneys general and private plaintiffs have thus far secured over $160 million in refunds for the victims of this conspiracy.  These refunds were directly credited to the consumers’ accounts with Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Apple.

    At the Antitrust Division we also worry about mergers between competitors that put the American public at risk of higher prices and lower quality products.  That was our concern a few years ago when AT&T wanted to buy its rival, T-Mobile.  AT&T claimed that by eliminating T-Mobile as a competitor, you, as a consumer, would be better off.  Our job at the Antitrust Division is to kick the tires on those claims and make sure they are accurate.  Here, the facts we uncovered told us that the elimination of T-Mobile as a competitor risked having you pay higher prices and receiving worse contract terms for mobile service.  We challenged the deal and AT&T ended up abandoning it.

    And guess what happened next?  Just like e-books, when the antitrust laws are enforced, competition flourishes.  T-Mobile went back to competing to win your business.  It spent billions of dollars improving the products it offers; it fought to woo customers by offering lower prices and better services; and it gave customers freedom of choice by offering to pay the early termination fees for those who switched to T-Mobile.

    And T-Mobile’s competitors were compelled to respond.  Sprint began offering lower prices and better plans.  AT&T targeted T-Mobile customers with a $200 credit, plus money for smartphone trade-ins, if they switched to AT&T.  T-Mobile responded by offering plans that allow customers to upgrade their phones twice a year.  AT&T, Verizon and Sprint all felt compelled to match these plans.

    A couple of months ago, in one of his final speeches as the lawyer for the American people, former Attorney General Holder summed up the role and purpose of antitrust enforcement.  He said: “In the appropriate enforcement of the antitrust laws we make real the promise of our democracy and our founding documents.  Vigorous competition in all spheres is what makes this nation exceptional.  It makes progress more likely and promotes the general welfare.”

    The hardworking men and women of the Antitrust Division remain true to this mission.  We should be proud of them and grateful to them.  They make the economy work for all of us.

    Similarly, we are grateful for the work that the NAAC and the National Diversity Coalition do on a daily basis to help some of our most vulnerable citizens and communities.  Together we can help to promote marketplaces where companies compete on price and quality for the hard earned dollars of American consumers.

    Thank you for your time today and congratulations on organizing another great conference.

    AAG Baer Remarks to NAAC 10-23-15 (53.39 KB)

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Sally Quillian Yates Delivers Keynote Address at the 10th National Prosecution Summit

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Karol [Mason], for that warm introduction and for everything you do at the Office of Justice Programs (OJP). 

    I am continually amazed by how much good work happens at OJP – and especially within the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA).  BJA serves as a vital link between the Department of Justice and our friends in state, local and tribal government – a link that’s as important now as ever before.  So a special thank you to BJA’s director, Denise O’Donnell, for cultivating this very important bond, today and every day. 

    I’d also like to recognize all of the law enforcement officers here in the room, including our exceptional Acting Director of ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives), Thomas Brandon.  I’ve worked with a lot of great agents and officers during my career and I know how hard you all work and how deeply you care about the cause of justice.  As a career prosecutor, it’s easy enough to draft a search warrant.  The tough part is executing that warrant – at 6:00 a.m., in the dark, not knowing what’s on the other side of that door.  I think I speak for all the prosecutors in the room when I say, thank you – for your courage, your commitment and so much more. 

    And finally, the prosecutors.  My fellow prosecutors.  It’s a privilege to be here with you.  In my new capacity as Deputy Attorney General, I give a lot of speeches now to a lot of groups.  But here, with you, I feel like I am with “my people.”  And I’m particularly grateful to the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, who for 10 years have brought “my people” together for this important summit.  And it’s actually you – the prosecutors – who I want to speak about today – about the critical work prosecutors do and why we’re all so proud to do it.

    As Karol mentioned, I’ve been a prosecutor for a long time.  But I didn’t set out to be a prosecutor.  In fact, I would imagine that contrary to many of you, I didn’t feel the calling in law school.  I started my legal career in a big firm in Atlanta.  I was there for a few years and I had a good experience there.  But I didn’t find the work as satisfying as I had hoped, so I thought I would give the U.S. Attorney’s Office a shot, with the full expectation that I would go back to the firm after a few years.  And so I set off for the Justice Department and, in retrospect, I was totally unprepared for what I would encounter there.

    First, many people talk about the pressure of a big firm practice and those in private practice assume that it’s easier on the government side.  My experience was just the opposite.  First, the stakes are a lot higher as a prosecutor.  In private practice, or at least the private practice that I experienced, the lawyers were pretty much representing companies fighting over money.  Make no mistake, the money is important to the clients and often times it’s a whole lot of money, but in the big scheme of things, it’s just money.  No one is going to lose their liberty.  No child is going to grow up with a parent behind bars.  No victim is counting on you to hold accountable the person who robbed or raped or killed a family member.  So while all legal jobs require you to do your best work and vigorously represent the interests of your client, there is a whole lot more riding on how well you perform as a prosecutor.

    Secondly, as a prosecutor, in all but the largest or most complex cases, you’re often handling the case on your own.  There’s not a team of lawyers to draft your briefs and triple-check your footnotes and there’s no one else responsible when things go wrong.  It’s up to you and your judgment.  I was a young associate in private practice, so to be honest, no client was really relying on my advice.  I might write a memo to a partner about the legal issues or even give my opinion on strategy, but in the end, someone else was going to be making that call.  And the pressure on me was to do a good job to impress the partner.  But as a prosecutor, we have real, not artificial, pressure.  Prosecutors generally aren’t writing memos or staying at work late to impress anyone in the office.  Prosecutors are staying late to get their work done and to get it done well.  I always have to chuckle when a defense attorney from a large, well-resourced defense firm with an army of associates on a case mentions the “vast resources” of the government.  While the overall resources may be vast, at least at the federal level, it sure doesn’t feel that way when you’re the one standing by the copy machine late at night making sure your exhibits are ready for the next day, or sitting at your computer drafting last minute responses to defense motions, even though you still have an opening to craft, or putting together your own exhibit binders.  And when you combine the amount of individual work required with the stakes involved, that’s real pressure.

    So why do we do it?  Well, I can tell you why I do it.  Because, as corny as it sounds, we have the privilege of representing the people of the United States.  And this is indeed a privilege to treasure.  Think about it.  When you represent private clients, you pretty much have to take your clients as you find them.  It’s your ethical responsibility to represent their interests, regardless of whether you think they’re really right or whether you even like them.  But as a prosecutor, unless we believe that a defendant is in fact guilty and that it’s right and fair that he or she be charged, we don’t bring that case.  What other group of lawyers has that luxury?  What other group of lawyers has had the opportunity not simply to zealously represent the interests of an individual client, but to do what  is right and just and fair?  But with that privilege comes great responsibility.  The people of our country are counting on us to not only be the glue that holds together an orderly society; they are counting on us to do it in manner that engenders their trust and confidence.  We’re held to a higher standard than other lawyers.  And in my mind, that’s as it should be.  Because, in the famous words of Justice [George] Sutherland, a prosecutor is “The representative not of an ordinary party, but a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done.”

    Over my 27 years as a prosecutor, as a Line Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA), Supervisor, U.S. Attorney and now as Deputy Attorney General, I have witnessed and been humbled by prosecutors’ commitment to that responsibility.  I have watched as prosecutors have spoken for victims who had no voice and who stood up for the vulnerable in our society so often overlooked. 

    I remember a human trafficking case during my time as U.S. Attorney in Atlanta.  The defendants in that case had lured impoverished young women and girls from Mexico to the United States on a promise of marriage and jobs.  When the women arrived in the United States, they were forced into prostitution, with more than 20 men on their first night.  They were beaten and tortured, diminished and treated as animals.  Our prosecutors worked hard on that case.  They convicted the perpetrators, some of whom received 40 years in prison.  I will never forget talking with these young women after sentencing, where they had bravely stared down their assailants to testify.  They told me afterward about their newfound dignity, made possible not simply because the case was prosecuted, but because of the way it was prosecuted.  These women found dignity – in part – because our prosecutors treated them with dignity.  They told me that they had their lives back now.  Because of these prosecutors, the defendants will never be able to victimize others in this way again.  Because of these prosecutors, these young women, who had been so brutally abused, had gained the strength to overcome horrors that most of us can’t imagine and to reclaim their lives.  Prosecutors across the country do this kind of work every single day.  And because of the work you do, the weak, the powerless, the silenced victims in this country are not only given voice, they reclaim their sense of self. 

    I have also been repeatedly humbled by prosecutors’ commitment to justice.  The prosecutors I know aren’t motivated by “winning” or amassing notches on their belts.  They don’t try to send everyone to prison for as long as possible.  They are motivated by their responsibility to enforce the law, to make their communities safe and to fairly administer justice.  And fairness and justice is what matters most of all. 

    These aren’t just ethereal concepts.  I have seen prosecutors live this every day.  When I was U.S. Attorney, we learned that a sitting judge in our district had been using illegal drugs with a woman with whom he was involved.  Even more troubling, we learned that during the course of this relationship, the judge had become jealous of the relationship that this woman had with an African American man and he told the woman that he sentenced African American men more harshly than white men.  As you might imagine, we were stunned.  While the case was being prosecuted by main justice, we knew that regardless of the outcome of the criminal case against the judge, we had to do something about the potential impact of the judge’s stated racial bias.  So we gathered the supervisors of our office around the conference room table and considered what we should do.  As it stood, it was unlikely that these statements were going to be publicly revealed during the judge’s criminal case.  But to the great credit of the prosecutors in our office, everyone agreed that we had an obligation to publicly disclose what we had learned and to do everything that we could to ensure that defendants who had appeared before this judge had been treated fairly.  So we publicly announced what we had learned about the judge’s statements and also announced that anyone who had a case before the judge after the time of the alleged statements would get an automatic “do-over.”  We agreed to have their case heard again by another judge.  And because we recognized that this kind of racial animus doesn’t arise overnight, we announced that, if requested, we would review the case of any defendant who had appeared before this judge, regardless of the timing, for any evidence of racial bias.  As you might expect, this was a huge undertaking.  Going back to review trial transcripts and sentencings from years-old cases was enormously time consuming.  But the remarkable part about this is that when we needed to have AUSAs review the transcripts, we didn’t once have to assign a case.  AUSAs raised their hands and volunteered.  They volunteered to take on this tedious and difficult work, on top of everything else they were doing, because they were committed to ensuring that the public had confidence in the fairness of the criminal justice system.  They weren’t looking for stats – they were looking for justice. 

    As impressive as this is, it’s entirely consistent with the day-to-day devotion to justice that I’ve seen from the prosecutors I’ve known over all these years.  The prosecutors I know don’t play hide the ball or look to read their discovery obligations as narrowly as possible.  In fact, just the opposite is true.  As I watched prosecutors in our office agonize over whether they had tracked down every possible shred of exculpatory evidence or impeaching evidence, I often wished the public could see the lengths they went to ensure that they didn’t just meet their ethical obligations, but that they exceeded them. 

    This is made increasingly hard in an environment where it seems at least some defense counsel have made allegations of prosecutorial misconduct a standard litigation strategy, where some defense counsel seek to use that wonderful Justice Sutherland quote as a weapon rather than as a reflection of who we are and what we stand for.  Let me be clear, I have absolutely no tolerance for prosecutors who shirk their ethical obligations, discovery-related or otherwise.  I believe that we can and should be held to a higher standard than other lawyers – and if you don’t like that, you shouldn’t be a prosecutor.  But it’s because I believe that the overwhelming majority of prosecutors honor this obligation as one of the most fundamental parts of their job, that I take great exception to irresponsibility throwing around allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.  Prosecutors are in these jobs because we care about our solemn obligation to seek justice and when someone unfairly impugns that commitment, it strikes at the core of who we are. 

    I’m proud to be a prosecutor.  I’m proud to be a part of a profession that holds those who violate our law accountable, that makes our communities safer, that stands up for victims and that, above all else, seeks justice.  At the Department of Justice, we are proud every day to be your colleagues.  We are proud to stand with you and beside you on the side of justice as we seek to advance the values that all of you have spent your lives defending. 

    Thank you.  

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Director Ronald Davis of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services Testifies Before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Good afternoon, Chairman Cruz, Ranking Member Coons, and distinguished Members of the Committee.  Thank you for this opportunity to discuss the many ways in which the Department of Justice is providing valuable support and resources to the nation’s 800,000 law enforcement officers in the more than 16,000 local, state and tribal police agencies and sheriff’s offices across the country.

    I come to you today not just as the Director of the Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services – also known as COPS – but as one who has spent close to 30 years as a local police officer.  I served 20 years in the Oakland Police Department rising to the rank of Captain, and close to nine years as police chief for the city of East Palo Alto, California. For me, the decision to become a cop was an easy one – I simply followed my father’s footsteps, who served 25 years in the Philadelphia Police Department.

    I can tell you as a 30-year, second-generation cop, there is no greater or more noble profession than policing.  And, I can also tell you without hesitation that the men and women who answer this calling are truly America’s finest.  So, you can imagine the great satisfaction it brings me to lead the COPS Office and work for the Justice Department – an agency that provides tremendous support to local, state and tribal law enforcement. 

    For example, since 2009, COPS has awarded over $2 billion in hiring grants to create and preserve more than 10,000 police officer and deputy positions in nearly 2,600 law enforcement agencies.  For some agencies, providing funding for just one officer may mean the difference in having a full shift and making sure officers have sufficient cover and safety.

    COPS also supports the development of effective crime-fighting initiatives. As a police chief I implemented several of these initiatives which contributed to dramatic reductions in murders in my city – a city that was once dubbed the murder capital of the United States.

    Over the past 20 years, the COPS Office has provided training to over 700,000 officers and deputies, and supports valuable research releasing publications on a wide range of issues from homeland security to reducing gang violence to building community trust and enhancing officer safety and wellness.  These publications are critical to the field because most agencies have fewer than 50 officers and do not have the capacity to conduct this research on their own.  

    Just last month COPS released two valuable research reports – one addressing ambush attacks against police, and another presenting models for protecting the physical and psychological health of officers.  These reports will help officer safety and save lives.

    Through our executive sessions, COPS brings together the best and brightest minds in the field to tackle issues such as crime and violence, preventing violent extremism, handling mass casualty events, use of force and officer safety.  The information gleaned from these sessions is distributed to the field.  

    Another way we help the field is through the COPS Collaborative Reform Initiative.  At a law enforcement agency’s request, COPS examines key operational areas within the agency – such as training, internal investigations, use of force, and racial profiling – and provides recommendations that will enhance community trust and public safety.  COPS then works closely with the agency in implementing these recommendations.

    The Las Vegas police department was the first to complete this process and Collaborative Reform efforts are now underway in Spokane, Philadelphia, St. Louis County, Salinas, Calexico, and Fayetteville, with the latest request coming from the Milwaukee police chief.

    This voluntary process has received support from the Civil Rights Division and my esteemed colleague, Vanita Gupta.  It is considered in some cases as a viable option, when appropriate, over a pattern and practice investigation.

    Through our Catalyst grants, COPS works with and supports the major law enforcement organizations in addressing key challenges facing law enforcement such as the use of force, animal cruelty, leadership development and mentoring, and officer safety and wellness.

    The COPS Office also funds a Critical Response for Technical Assistance program that offers immediate, real-time assistance to agencies dealing with major public safety incidents.

    For example, within days of the start of mass demonstrations in Ferguson, COPS was able to connect regional police leaders with police executives with experience dealing with similar issues.  We have provided support to nearly a dozen agencies at their request.  And, as with all COPS projects, the lessons learned from these cities are shared with the over 16,000 law enforcement agencies throughout the United States.

    This year, the COPS Office provided administrative support to the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing – a task force comprised of law enforcement and community leaders – which issued 59 recommendations to help agencies and communities build trust and advance public safety. 

    While policing is primarily a local issue, the federal government has a critical role to play in helping our local law enforcement agencies respond to the challenges of policing in the 21st  century.  Under the leadership of President Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the Department of Justice has made supporting local law enforcement one of the Administration’s top priorities.

    As a career police officer, I know firsthand just how important this support is, and I can say without hesitation that the men and women of the Department of Justice make this a priority every day.

    Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

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  • MIL-OSI United Nations: New Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan Presents Credentials

    Source: United Nations General Assembly and Security Council

    (Based on Information Provided by the Protocol and Liaison Service)

    The new Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the United Nations, Tofig Musayev, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.

    Between 2019 and his most recent appointment, Mr. Musayev served as his country’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and from 2016 to 2019, as the Permanent Mission’s Counsellor.  He led the Regional Security Department in his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2014 to 2016.

    His diplomatic career includes serving as Counsellor and Deputy Permanent Representative of Azerbaijan to the United Nations from 2008 to 2014, including during his country’s membership in the Security Council.  In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he further served as Deputy Director and Director of the Foreign Policy Planning and Strategic Studies Department from 2004 to 2008, and Deputy Director of the International Law and Treaties Department and Head of the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Division from 2001 to 2004.

    He also held various positions in the Permanent Mission of Azerbaijan to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva from 1997 to 2001, and in the Treaties and Legal Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1993 to 1997.

    Mr. Musayev holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the Baku State University, and a master’s degree (LLM) in international human rights law from the University of Essex.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: New Permanent Observer for International Committee of Red Cross Presents Letter of Appointment

    Source: United Nations General Assembly and Security Council

    (Based on information provided by the Protocol and Liaison Service) 

    The new Permanent Observer for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Elyse Mosquini, presented her letter of appointment to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.

    Prior to her appointment, Ms. Mosquini served at the organization in various roles including as Secretary-General to the Assembly, ad interim, between April and December 2024, and Chief of Staff to the Office of the President from March 2019 to March 2024.  She was Deputy Head of Resource Mobilization from June 2018 to March 2019 and Deputy Regional Director for Movement Affairs for the Near and Middle East between November 2016 and June 2018. 

    Prior to her career with ICRC, Ms. Mosquini worked as coordinator at the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent between June 2014 and November 2016.  She also worked in multiple positions for the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), including as Senior Disaster Law Officer, Legal Counsel, Senior Humanitarian Affairs Adviser, Senior Legal Office and Legal Delegate — all spanning between July 2005 and June 2014. 

    Ms. Mosquini has a graduate law degree from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and a bachelor’s degree in economics, political science and international relations from the University of Wisconsin, United States.

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein Delivers Remarks at the Investiture of United States Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery.

    Thank you, Chief Judge Smith. Greetings to the distinguished judges and court personnel, United States Attorney’s Office employees, family and friends of the Eastern District of Virginia’s new U.S. Attorney.

    It is a great privilege to join so many distinguished guests to celebrate Zach Terwilliger, and to honor the Office of the United States Attorney and the judicial system in which it serves.

    After the Constitution was ratified in 1789, one of the first Congressional actions was to adopt the Judiciary Act, establishing federal district courts and United States Attorneys, including one for what was then the District of Virginia.

    When President George Washington selected the first United States Attorneys, he sent each one a handwritten letter. Some of the recipients had applied for the job, but to others, the appointment came as a surprise, and as a burden that was not always welcome.

    It was a part-time job. There were no Assistant U.S. Attorneys or support staff. And it did not pay very well.

    So, Washington appealed to the patriotism of his inaugural class of U.S. Attorneys. He wrote: “The high importance of the Judicial System in our national Government, made it an indispensable duty to select … characters to fill the … offices … [who] would discharge their respective trusts with honor to themselves and advantage to their Country.”

    Virginia lawyer John Marshall, the future Chief Justice of the United States, was a recipient of that letter.

    The internet web site for the Eastern District of Virginia proudly states, and I quote, “John Marshall … was appointed by President Washington to serve as the first United States Attorney for the District of Virginia.”

    Virginia’s claim to Chief Justice Marshall as the first U.S. Attorney is quite a distinction. But it is not entirely accurate. Now, it is literally true that John Marshall was appointed U.S. Attorney by President Washington. But he never actually served as U.S. Attorney.

    In fact, Marshall responded to the President with a letter of his own. Marshall wrote, “[T]hank you … very sincerely for the honor … [but] I beg leave to declare that … with real regret[,] I decline ….”

    Washington replied with yet another letter. He wrote, “As some other person must be appointed to fill the Office of Attorney for the district of Virginia, it is proper your Commission should be returned to me.” He wanted the document back!

    Perhaps that explains why, when the case of Marbury versus Madison came along in 1803, Chief Justice Marshall focused so intently on the importance of the signed commission.

    Zachary Terwilliger did not share John Marshall’s reluctance to serve as U.S. Attorney. On the contrary, Zach was so eager that he did not even wait for a Presidential nomination, let alone a senate confirmation or a signed commission. Fortunately, it is well-established that the Attorney General, as a principal officer, possesses the authority to appoint federal prosecutors.

    But the decision to select Zach was not made lightly, by either Attorney General Jeff Sessions or President Donald Trump. It was made with the support of two distinguished Senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, and with the gratitude of many members of the bench and bar.

    And it was well deserved.

    I was fortunate to work closely with Zach for more than a year. He helped me through my confirmation process. At the end of my Senate confirmation hearing, Zach told me that I probably would not need to return to Capitol Hill anytime soon. He said that the Deputy Attorney General rarely testifies before the Congress. That was the only bad advice he gave me.

    Zach went on to serve as my Chief of Staff. That is one of the most challenging jobs in the Department of Justice. It requires legal skills. It requires political skills. It requires organizational skills. It requires tact. It requires endurance. And Zach performed it with distinction.

    I want to offer three points of advice for success as United States Attorney, principles that Zachary Terwilliger exemplifies.

    Point one: Know what you stand for.

    A few months ago, on Law Day, President Trump explained that “we govern ourselves in accordance with the rule of law rather than according to the whims of an elite few or the dictates of collective will.  Through law, we have ensured liberty.  We should not … take that success for granted.”

    Consistent with the President’s words, we do not take success for granted. We know that the rule of law depends on the character and conduct of the people who enforce the law.

    I encourage you to pay attention to the final clause of the oath that Zach swears today. It includes a promise to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.”

    Not every government job carries the same duties. In order to fulfill your oath, you must understand the unique responsibilities of your office. You need to know what you stand for.

    In a 1940 speech, Attorney General Robert Jackson spoke eloquently about what prosecutors stand for. He said that “the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches [the] task with humility.”

    Another Attorney General, Edward Levi, once observed that “it is by watching [law enforcement] that many of our citizens learn what kind of country this is…. People must believe, if not in the wisdom of a particular law, at least in the fairness and honesty of the enforcement process… Nothing can more weaken the quality of life … than … failure to make clear by words and deeds that our law is not an instrument of partisan purpose.”

    More recently, Judge Richard Posner described our job this way: “The Department of Justice wields enormous power over people’s lives, much of it beyond judicial or political review. With power comes responsibility, moral if not legal, for its prudent and restrained exercise; and responsibility implies knowledge, experience and sound judgment, not just good faith.”

    Zach understands that good faith is necessary to do the job well, but it is not sufficient. Wisdom and experience are required, and Zach brings those attributes to the task.

    Point two: Maintain a sense of perspective.

    I was a young prosecutor in the Department of Justice when Zach’s father, George Terwilliger, served as Deputy Attorney General, and Zach was a young boy running down the Main Justice hallways. Bill Barr was the Attorney General. There were many other superb officials in Main Justice, and in the 93 U.S. Attorney’s Offices, including Jeff Sessions in Southern Alabama.

    Each of those great leaders faced unique challenges. You never know what crises may hit on your watch, but you can be sure that things will not always go as planned. Always keep in mind that we are just temporary stewards of these jobs.

    The adjective “executive” in the Executive Branch refers to the obligation to get things done. You are required to make controversial decisions, often in exigent circumstances and with imperfect information. Then everybody else gets unlimited time to reflect on how they might have done things differently. If you worry too much about the criticism, you will never get anything done.

    So after you identify priority goals, make sure you stay focused on achieving the priority goals. There is a sign in our office that reads, “Don’t tell me what I want to hear, just tell me what I need to know.” Zach always respected the importance of avoiding distractions and remaining focused on the things that really matter. As we say at Main Justice, keep moving forward.

    Point three: Earn the love and support of family and friends.

    There are times when these jobs require you to miss important events in the lives of your loved ones, both large and small.  Zach worked many nights and weekends, but he never lost track of what he was missing. He always spoke about his family and tried to make up for lost time.

    Zach, you learned those priorities from your parents, and you and Anne will pass them on to Charlotte and George. You had a life before this job. You will have a life after this job. Stay close to the people you want as part of that life.

    Let me conclude with one final thought. Robert Jackson ended his 1940 speech to U.S. Attorneys with these words: “A sensitiveness to fair play and sportsmanship is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches [the] task with humility.”

    If you follow that advice, you will remain faithful to our mission.

    Zach, for the past two years I have observed your sense of fair play, your kindness, your commitment to the truth and the rule of law, and your humility.

    John Marshall declined to take up George Washington’s charge to serve as U.S. Attorney. Thank you for proudly accepting the commission. You will serve with honor to yourself and advantage to your country.

    It is an honor to work with you in the pursuit of justice.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford Delivers Remarks at the College of Europe’s Global Competition Law Centre

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Designing a System to Secure the Fair Administration of Competition Laws

    I am delighted to be with you today to discuss how competition authorities can promote fundamental due process in competition investigation and enforcement.  Ten years ago this topic would not have been high on the agenda for competition enforcers.  Today, in a globalized economy with over 130 competition enforcers, almost everyone agrees that convergence on due process is an important aspect of competition enforcement.  So the question is not whether we should promote due process, but how best to do so.  While guidelines, recommendations, and best practices are useful and important, the international competition community is ready to do more.  We should actively promote effective compliance to fundamental due process through a multilateral framework on procedures through which parties commit to basic fundamental norms, and that framework should be open for signature by all competition authorities.

    To ensure due process for all, it is essential to have a system in place to promote compliance.  Former Irish Foreign Minister Seán MacBride, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and a founder of the European Convention on Human Rights, noted that guarantees such as the “right to the fair administration of justice” will “never be adequately or efficiently protected without a system of machinery to enforce their application, a system of implementation for the rights declared.”  Today, I would like to discuss recent international efforts to design a system to secure the administration of competition laws according to due process principles.      

    For years, many jurisdictions, including the United States, have promoted due process in competition investigations and enforcement at home and abroad.  Former Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer emphasized that “in a global economy, competition and consumers are best served where corporations and individuals have confidence that they will be treated fairly wherever they do business.”  Adherence to due process principles helps agencies reach the right decision and improves the quality of antitrust enforcement overall.  Due process also enhances the reputation of competition authorities. 

    Many competition authorities around the world have joined in this effort to promote due process, including initiatives to promote due process at the ICN and OECD, leading to the current proposal, the Multilateral Framework on Procedures.

    As many of you know, in early June 2018, Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim discussed publicly our months-long cooperation with leading antitrust agencies on an initiative to craft the Multilateral Framework on Procedures in Competition Law Investigation and Enforcement (“MFP”).  The MFP’s goal is to promote global due process in antitrust enforcement and thereby further improve cooperation among antitrust agencies around the world.  The United States and our partners around the world agree that basic minimal due process protections are of fundamental importance in antitrust enforcement.

    The goal of the MFP is to establish minimal procedural norms that are truly universal.  The MFP is animated by fundamental norms, which are accepted widely across the globe and that most competition agencies already recognize.  The MFP will combine this set of universal procedural norms with an adherence and review mechanism, under which the participants commit to these norms and agree to cooperate with each other regarding their compliance.

    The fundamental principles set forth in the MFP were derived from the texts of competition chapters in several existing bilateral and regional agreements, as well as from the work related to due process conducted by international organizations such as the OECD and the ICN, in conjunction with an examination of procedures and practices of competition authorities around the world.

    The draft text captures universal principles, using language that is versatile enough to cover both common as well as civil law jurisdictions, administrative as well as prosecutorial systems, and older as well as younger competition agencies.

    The core principles identified in the MFP include basic commitments regarding non-discrimination, transparency, meaningful engagement, timely resolution, confidentiality protections, avoidance of conflicts of interest, proper notice, opportunity to defend, access to counsel, and independent judicial review of enforcement decisions.

    The adherence and review mechanism under the MFP includes bilateral discussions and consultations between participating agencies, reporting by participants on the working of the MFP principles, as well as a proposed mechanism to review periodically any changes as may be needed.  The adherence and review mechanisms under the MFP are an important step forward towards a mutual commitment amongst agency partners.  The MFP also represents a substantial positive effort towards global respect for competition enforcement and the overall culture of competition we collectively have sought to promote. 

    The MFP is not a binding agreement in the international sense, but adhering to the framework is important, because breaches of a promise can have reputational consequences.  As Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said in June, “The rich network of relationships ensures that reputation matters, and that the promise to abide by an obligation becomes a potent means of enhancing compliance.”

    Dozens of competition agencies from around the world have been spending countless hours and many months working on the MFP.  The initial discussions culminated in the “Paris Draft” of the MFP, a remarkable document that reflects the current practices of many leading competition authorities around the world.

    Over the summer, further discussions ensued among all interested antitrust agencies worldwide, including discussions with agencies on the sidelines of the Fordham Conference in New York in early September.  A revised draft of the MFP was circulated recently, reflecting suggestions made at New York and since.  We look forward to meeting with those interested in joining the MFP on the margins of the OECD in late November.

    There has been widespread support for the MFP from numerous agencies around the world.  We are delighted that so many countries are committed to the MFP and recognize its value, and will continue efforts to further improve it and move toward its enactment.

    To date, the vast majority of agencies have expressed strong support for the MFP.  A few agencies, however, have expressed some concerns with respect to the MFP structure and review mechanism.  Let me address the more salient concerns. 

    First, a few agencies had raised questions about the need for mandatory review mechanisms.  In general, a review mechanism is a key component of any agreement such as the MFP.  The goal of the MFP is to strike a constructive path, promoting incremental progress through an acceptable implementation mechanism.

    In light of these concerns, the review mechanisms in the MFP have been calibrated so that they are meaningful, but not burdensome.  For example, unlike certain treaties, there are no mechanisms for binding dispute settlement, third-party mediation, independent expert reports, or private complaint procedures.  Instead, there are modest proposals that include mechanisms for dialogue, agency self-reporting on adherence, and periodic assessments of the functioning of the framework, only as needed.  This will allow for advancing the shared goals towards due process norms.

    It is important to note that although meaningful review mechanisms of agreements relating to due process may appear novel in the antitrust context, they are routine in other contexts.  For example, meaningful review of a country’s compliance with fundamental due process norms is common in the context of investment protections, human rights, anti-corruption, trade, tax, and development assistance.  

    In fact, even in the antitrust context, review mechanisms are not new.  For example, in free trade agreements there are consultation provisions in various competition chapters.  Likewise, in 2006 the European Competition Network (ECN) adopted the ECN Model Leniency Programme to “harmonise the key elements of leniency policies within the ECN.”  In 2009, the ECN published an assessment report to “provide an overview of the status of convergence of the applicable provisions contained in the ECN leniency programmes.”  If a network of regional competition authorities can agree to periodically assess the state of procedural convergence of their leniency programs, it seems only reasonable to have competition authorities periodically assess the state of procedural convergence on fundamental due process.     

    A second issue presented related to the possibility that the MFP can be confused to create a new international organization.  The language has been modified to make it clear that the MFP does not create a new international organization.  Instead, the MFP is a new multilateral arrangement for adherence to fundamental due process norms by the signatory agencies.

    A third issue was whether certain competition agencies have the capacity to sign at the agency level.  This was a fair concern, and we are pleased to have revised the draft to make clear that agencies can either sign or join the MFP by sending a letter through ICN providing notice of adherence.  This is a common practice that has been employed previously in many contexts, including in the antitrust context.  This change should allow any competition agency interested in joining the MFP to do so.

    I should also note that although all of the interested agencies working on the MFP hope that every agency adheres to these principles, that the MFP is voluntary.  Only agencies that want to join will be subject to the norms.  Also, the MFP allows an agency to take a reservation if their law allows them to comply with almost everything but prevents compliance with a specific provision. 

    The international community can and should seek to promote convergence on core principles, while respecting diversity on the margins.  That is what the MFP does.

    Finally, let me address the issue that Commissioner Margrethe Vestager raised in her remarks at the Georgetown University conference regarding the relationship between the MFP and international organizations such as OECD and ICN.  The Antitrust Division fully supports initiatives by OECD, ICN and other international organizations to promote due process.  Indeed, the substantive principles set forth in the MFP are fully in line with – and, in fact, complement – these initiatives. 

    The ICN already recognizes regional competition networks like the ECN, bilateral and trilateral dialogues like those held by the North American partners last week in Mexico, competition chapters in free trade agreements such as KORUS and USMCA, and hundreds of cooperation agreements between competition authorities.  Despite these developments, the ICN is as strong as ever, and the MFP will further complement its success.  Indeed, the ICN expressly anticipates initiatives such as the MFP. The ICN Framework provides that “where the ICN reaches consensus on recommendations … it is left to its members to decide whether and how to implement the recommendations, for example, through unilateral, bilateral or multilateral arrangements.” 

    From the start, the MFP has been designed to go beyond mere guidance on procedural fairness.  The MFP will reflect the commitment of its participants to uphold fundamental due process norms.

    There are various other reasons why we believe the MFP is needed and does not duplicate the OECD or ICN.  For example, the OECD has only 36 members, and its recommendations apply to countries rather than to competition agencies, where we would like to focus our efforts.  And while around 140 agencies are members of the ICN, not all agencies are ICN members, though we encourage all to join.

    Further, as currently structured the ICN is not set up for accountability and review of its recommendations.  It has never had that role and it could dramatically change the culture of the ICN if it were to take on such a role, although at a later time the ICN may choose to change its culture.  That time is not now, however, as we don’t want to risk the consensus-based good work the ICN does.

    Let me close with an historical analogy.  In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, which included the fundamental due process commitment that “everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations….”  Yet at the very moment the U.S. delegate Eleanor Roosevelt was celebrating that victory, she said she still was not satisfied.  Why?  Because the declaration had no means for implementation.  She said that while the adoption of this declaration was a monumental achievement, we should “now move on with new courage and inspiration to the completion” of a multilateral agreement with “measures for … implementation.”  We all recognize that the time is ripe for us to join in moving forward with inspiration to implementation of a multilateral framework on fundamental due process. 

    We look forward to further discussions on the MFP in Paris in a few weeks.  A significant number of competition authorities have recognized the benefits of the MFP and we look forward to being a partner in working together to bring it to fruition. 

    Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks to the Department of Justice Rural and Tribal Elder Justice Summit

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Marc for that kind introduction and thank you for your leadership as United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa.  I think you’ll agree with me that it’s one of the best jobs in the world.

    This is a distinguished crowd.  Thank you to:

    • Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller
    • Six U.S. Attorneys: Bryan Schroder, Trent Shores, Ron Parsons, Andrew Murray, Pete Deegan, and Marc Krickbaum
    • the head of our Office of Justice Programs and former U.S. Attorney for Northern Iowa, Matt Dummermuth,
    • Katie Sullivan, the head of our Office on Violence Against Women,
    • Darlene Hutchinson, the Director of our Office for Victims of Crime,
    • Assistant Agriculture Secretary Anne Hazlett,
    • Assistant Secretary Lance Robertson of HHS,
    • SEC Regional Director Joel Levin,
    • Postal Inspector Guy Cottrell,
    • Acting Commissioner of the Social Security Administration Nancy Berryhill,
    • Director Deborah Cox Roush of Senior Corps, and
    • A special thanks to all those who made this event possible, especially Toni Bacon, Andy Mao, Kate Peterson, and their teams at the Elder Justice Initiative and the Office for Victims of Crime.

    Thank you all for being here for this summit.  I think this turnout shows how important these issues are to the Department of Justice and to the Trump administration.

    It’s good to be home.  Des Moines is my home.  This is where I played football, where I practiced law, where I prosecuted criminals as a United States Attorney, and it’s where I’m raising my family.

    Iowa shaped my values.

    One of those Iowa values is that we respect our elders.  We recognize the debt that we owe to our parents and grandparents.

    Many seniors in Iowa and across America spent their whole lives working, saving, and sacrificing so that they could enjoy a secure and peaceful retirement.  And under President Trump their 401(k)s are looking good.

    But criminals can try to take it all away with one phone call, one letter, or even one email.

    Each year, an estimated $3 billion are stolen or defrauded from millions of American seniors.  Through so-called grandparent scams, fake prizes or even outright extortion, criminals target our seniors to rob them of their hard-earned savings and their peace of mind.

    And it appears as though this threat is only growing.  The Senate Aging Committee’s Fraud Hotline received twice as many reports in 2016 as it received in 2015.

    These fraud schemes can happen to anyone. And so I hope that no one will feel ashamed to come forward and report if they’ve been a victim.  Some of my family members here in Iowa have received these phone calls.  Some of you have, too.

    At the Department of Justice, we acknowledge that rural areas are especially vulnerable to these crimes.

    In tightly knit communities like the one I grew up in, people are generous and they develop a sense of trust with one another.

    Criminals look at that and they see dollar signs.

    Oftentimes local law enforcement in rural communities have to cover large areas of land with only a small number of officers.  They don’t have the time or the resources to investigate fraud schemes that are often national or even international in scope.

    Fortunately, the Department of Justice has their backs.  As President Donald Trump has said, this administration supports state and local law enforcement 100 percent.

    In this administration, we are well aware that 85 percent of law enforcement officers in this country serve at the state and local levels.  We know that we can’t achieve our goals without them.

    Over the past year we have taken historic new action to support our state and local partners and to keep our seniors safe.

    This year our U.S. Attorneys’ offices have each designated an elder justice coordinator to help prevent crime by educating seniors about scams and other threats.  Over just nine months, our elder justice coordinators participated in nearly 200 training, outreach, and coordination meetings attended by approximately 7,000 people.

    Our elder justice coordinators are also customizing our strategy to protect seniors in their district and coordinating our prosecutions with state and local partners.  That will help us complete more cases and secure more convictions.

    In February, the Department conducted the largest elder fraud enforcement action in American history.  We charged more than 200 defendants with fraud against elderly Americans and we brought civil actions against dozens more. The defendants in these cases allegedly stole from more than one million American seniors of more than half a billion dollars.

    Just a few weeks ago, the Department extended a deferred prosecution agreement with a financial services company in Dallas.  This company allegedly knew about criminals using their services for money laundering, but didn’t do anything about it.  Some of their employees even took part in the schemes—including grandparent scams and fake prize scams targeting the elderly.  In exchange for avoiding prosecution, the company is forfeiting $125 million which the Department will provide to the victims.  The company has also agreed to implement anti-money laundering protections to prevent these crimes from ever happening again.

    There are a lot of other cases that we could talk about—but I’ll just mention two right here in Iowa.

    This year, a total of 33 defendants in Dubuque—11 at the federal level and 22 at the local level—have been convicted for a grandparent scam against a total of 285 American seniors.  The defendants defrauding more than $750,000 and then wiring it to their co-conspirators in the Dominican Republic.  Now they’ve been held accountable.

    At the federal level, these cases were prosecuted by AUSA Tony Morfitt of our Elder Justice Task Force—Tony, great job.

    In August, a jury convicted a man from outside of Des Moines for convincing elderly Iowans to sell off their investments and buy insurance from him.  Instead of buying the insurance as promised, the defendant used most of the funds for personal expenses like remodeling his house and buying two new Harley Davidsons.  I’m pleased to report that that house and those motorcycles have now been forfeited. 

    This case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Adam Kerndt and Mikaela Shotwell.  Great work.

    These are important accomplishments.  We have increased the resources dedicated to these cases and we have increased our effectiveness in prosecuting them.

    But there is more to do.  And so today I am announcing our next steps.

    First of all, we are improving training for our U.S. Attorneys’ offices. 

    Earlier this year the Department’s Elder Justice Initiative published its Elder Abuse Guide for Law Enforcement or EAGLE.  EAGLE contains helpful information for prosecutors, including overviews of state and local law as well as best practices for evidence collection, interviewing older adults, and for documenting elder abuse.  EAGLE is free and available right now to every law enforcement officer in the country.

    Today I am announcing that the next edition of our Journal of Justice Policy and the Law—formerly known as the USA Bulletin—will focus on Elder Justice.  It will also be the longest bulletin we’ve ever published since we started it back in 1953.  These bulletins are public, and so they can be used by state and local prosecutors as well as our U.S. Attorneys’ offices.  That will provide the knowledge and insights of some of the top experts on elder justice to the prosecutors who are on the front lines.

    Second, we are investing in services for seniors who have been victimized by criminals.

    I am announcing today that over the next 11 months, our Office for Victims of Crime will provide nearly $18 million to help seniors who are victims of crime.  These funds can be used for priorities like legal services, telephone hotlines, and housing for seniors who have lost their homes—which is something that happens all too often.  We are using these OVC funds for a wider variety of services for seniors than ever before.

    And finally, we are continuing to enforce the law aggressively and forcefully.

    On October 1st, the Department began our Money Mule Initiative, which is a coordinated effort against the transnational criminal organizations who are defrauding our seniors.

    We are hitting the fraudsters where it hurts—in the wallet.

    Our prosecutors have found that fraudsters avoid using banks to launder the money they take from their victims. Instead, they launder it through so-called money mules—Americans who collect the money and then send it overseas.

    Oftentimes these are co-conspirators—as in the Dubuque case that I mentioned a moment ago.  But sometimes they are simply good people who have been tricked into thinking that they are doing charity work or working for a legitimate business. 

    Working with our Postal Inspectors, FBI agents, and other law enforcement partners, we have identified a number of these money mules across America.  We have even been able to determine which ones have been tricked into this work and which ones are knowing and willful conspirators.

    In the first case, we knock on their door and we explain to them what’s really going on.  We ask them to sign a letter acknowledging that it’s wrong and promising to stop.  That in itself is shutting off large quantities of money for the fraudsters.

    And in the second case—when we determine that they are part of a conspiracy—we are filing civil actions and taking them to court.

    Since October 1, we’ve taken action to stop 400 money mules across 65 districts.  These involve everything from grandparent scams to romance scams, fake lotteries, IRS imposters, and fake tech support schemes.

    The FBI and our Postal Inspectors have interviewed 300 money mules and sent 300 warning letters.  We’ve charged 10 defendants and filed 25 civil actions.  We’ve executed search warrants across America, including here in the Southern District of Iowa.

    These are impressive numbers. 

    Our goal is to reduce crime and protect America’s seniors.  And we have good reasons to believe that our work with our law enforcement partners is reducing crime and having a real impact on the seniors of this country.

    The Postal Inspection Service has estimated that payments by mass mail fraud victims to foreign post office boxes has dropped by 94 percent since 2016—from 150,000 per month to approximately 10,000 per month now.

    There are many causes for that, but that is a remarkable achievement—and I want to thank everyone who has played a role in our efforts.

    We are going to keep up this pace. 

    We are going to continue to provide our prosecutors and our state and local partners with the resources that they need.  And we’re going to keep putting fraudsters in jail.

    I want to thank each of you again for your contribution to this effort.  Each of us has a role to play—and certainly not just those of us in government.  All of us can be on the lookout for fraud schemes and report suspected criminal activity.

    If we do that—and if we remain vigilant—then we can ensure that every senior has the safety and peace of mind that they deserve.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks to State and Local Law Enforcement on Efforts to Combat Violent Crime and the Opioid Crisis

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Marc for that kind introduction and thank you for your leadership as United States Attorney.  You are carrying the torch on a lot of the work that we did back when I was U.S. Attorney for this district.

    Thank you also to:

    • Commissioner Roxann Ryan and Director of Investigative Operations Kevin Winker of the Iowa Department of Public Safety,
    • Acting Director Joyce Flinn of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management,
    • Marshall County Sheriff Steve Hoffman,
    • Marion County Sheriff Jason Sandholdt,
    • Chief Dana Wingert and Major Stephen Waymire of the Des Moines Police Department,
    • Chief Chad McCluskey of Windsor Heights,
    • Chief Al Pizzano of Pleasant Hill,
    • Chief John Quinn of Waukee,
    • Chief Greg Stallman of Altoona,
    • Chief Michael Tupper of Marshalltown,
    • Polk County Attorney John Sarcone,
    • David Lorenzen, Motor Vehicle Enforcement Chief with the Iowa Department of Transportation, and
    • Polk County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Gregory Schmunk.

    Thank you all for being here.

    It is good to be back. 

    This is the office where I served for nearly five and a half years.  It was the honor of a lifetime, and it was an experience that only deepened my appreciation for law enforcement.

    I worked every day with officers from the federal, state, and local levels—including people in this room—to find evidence of crime and to keep the people of Iowa safe.

    I am proud of what we accomplished together.

    I am especially proud because I have seen the results firsthand.  This is the community where I grew up, where I played football, where I went to law school and business school, where I ran a small business, and where I’m still raising my family.  I know that Iowans are safer because of what we achieved.

    Some of you may have heard that there have been some changes at the Department in recent weeks.  One thing that hasn’t changed is our unwavering support for state and local law enforcement.

    The Trump administration will always be a law-and-order administration.  We recognize that public safety is government’s first and most important task—and we honor the role that law enforcement officers play in protecting our society.

    Our federal officers are known all over the world for their professionalism and their competence.

    But we are well aware that about 85 percent of the law enforcement officers in this country serve at the state and local levels.  It is simple arithmetic that we cannot succeed without you.

    That is why this Department of Justice under President Donald Trump has given you more resources and more tools to help you succeed.

    One of President Trump’s very first Executive Orders to Attorney General Sessions was to “back the blue” and enhance the safety of law enforcement officers in this country.

    We have embraced that goal and we’ve been faithful to it every day.

    Over these last two years we have helped hire hundreds of police officers across America, including 10 here in Iowa.

    We have reinvigorated the Project Safe Neighborhoods program, which directs our U.S. Attorneys to work with you to develop a customized crime reduction plan—and to target the most violent criminals in the most violent areas.

    I ran this program as United States Attorney and I know that it works.  We are more successful at the federal level when we listen to our partners at the state and local levels.

    Our strong law enforcement partnerships are paying off.

    In fiscal year 2017, the Department of Justice prosecuted more violent criminals than in any year on record to that point.

    And then, in fiscal year 2018—we broke that record by a margin of 15 percent.

    In fiscal year 2018, we charged the highest number of federal firearm defendants in Department history.  We broke that record by a margin of 17 percent.  We charged nearly 20 percent more firearm defendants than we did in 2017 and 30 percent more than we charged in 2016.

    Over the past fiscal year we also broke records for fentanyl prosecutions and for illegal entry by illegal aliens.

    At the same time, we increased the number of white collar defendants and the number of drug defendants overall.  And we increased the number of deported illegal aliens prosecuted for re-entering our country by 38 percent.

    These are remarkable achievements.  There can be no doubt that they have had an impact on this nation.  And we’ve achieved them together with you, our partners.

    The evidence is already coming in that we’ve reduced violent crime and drug overdose deaths.

    The FBI’s violent crime numbers for 2017 show that violent crime and murder both went down in 2017 after increasing for two years in a row.  And for 2018, one estimate projects that the murder rate in our 29 biggest cities will decline by 7.6 percent.

    The DEA’s National Prescription Audit shows that in the first eight months of 2018, opioid prescriptions went down by nearly 12 percent—and last year they went down by seven percent.

    While 2017 saw more overdose deaths than 2016, overdose deaths declined by two percent from September 2017 to March 2018, the most recent month for which we have data.

    This is what we can achieve when we work together.

    Our work is not finished.  We are going to continue to support our state and local partners—and I believe that our partnerships are going to continue to deliver results.

    I want to conclude with something a mentor of mine used to say every time he spoke to law enforcement, and I believe it too: we have your back, and you have our thanks.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio Delivers Remarks to the American Bar Association Section of Antitrust Law Fall Forum

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Good morning.  Thank you, Jim, for that kind introduction, and special thanks to you and your co-chair of this Fall Forum, Debbie Feinstein, for inviting me.  It is an honor to join the distinguished attorneys in attendance here.

    As you just heard, the Office of the Associate Attorney General works closely with the Antitrust Division, and I’d like to begin by saying just a few words about the men and women who work there.  The Division is led by a superlative team.  Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim is an expert in the field and a tireless advocate for the American consumer.  Andrew Finch, his principal deputy, draws on his broad private-sector antitrust experience to supervise all aspects of the Division’s civil and criminal matters.  Barry Nigro, another deputy, is a walking encyclopedia of merger law and practice.  And the many other front office appointees bring to the Division an incredible breadth and depth of knowledge and determination.  Behind them, of course, stand the career lawyers, economists, and staff of the Antitrust Division who, as many of you know firsthand, are smart, resourceful, and tenacious in upholding the law and protecting competition for the benefit of the American economy.  We appreciate their public service and hard work, and we are so fortunate that they have chosen to lend their expertise and talent to our shared mission at the Department of Justice.

    Speaking of which, it is worth reciting the DOJ mission statement for those of you who have never heard it.  It reads as follows: “To enforce the law and defend the interests of the United States according to the law; to ensure public safety against threats foreign and domestic; to provide federal leadership in preventing and controlling crime; to seek just punishment for those guilty of unlawful behavior; and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.”  Much of this mission statement is outward facing—we are the cops and we go after the robbers.  But the first and last clauses of the mission statement require something more: we must “enforce the law” and “ensure fair and impartial administration of justice.”  And if we are truly to “enforce the law” and fairly administer justice, we cannot be focused solely on how legal commands apply to those outside the Department.  We must also focus on how the law constrains and cabins the Department—and the federal government as a whole.

    This is a theme, and a tension, as old as our government itself.  James Madison, famously lamenting in Federalist 51 that men are not angels and thus need a government, explained: “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”  Our government is adept at creating rules to control the governed, but it sometimes fails to control itself.  Over the last two years, some of our priorities at the Department have been aimed at this latter virtue—at controlling ourselves.

    I would like to discuss one of those priorities today—namely, regulatory reform, which is an imperative need for an administrative state that has grown mightily over the last seventy-five years and in ways that Madison and his compatriots could have never imagined when they created the checks and balances they thought would oblige the government to control itself.

    Early in 2017, the President issued several executive orders on regulatory reform.  For example, Executive Order 13771 directs agencies to eliminate two regulations for each new one and to impose zero net regulatory costs.  Executive Order 13777 directs agency heads to appoint Regulatory Reform Officers and Task Forces to implement regulatory reform initiatives and identify burdensome regulations for repeal, replacement, or modification.  These are important measures.  As Neomi Rao, Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), recently explained in a Washington Post editorial, lifting unduly burdensome regulations promotes economic growth and “the spirit of liberty that animates our productive and innovative society.”

    Accordingly, at the Department of Justice, we take this regulatory reform mandate very seriously.  While the Department does not generate the same volume of regulations as, say, the Environmental Protection Agency, we do have components that issue regulations, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency, which regulates doctors, pharmacies, and hospitals under the Controlled Substances Act; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, which regulates the firearms and explosives industries; and the Civil Rights Division, which regulates state and local governments, public accommodations, and commercial facilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Each of these components is working to ensure that their regulatory agendas comply with the executive orders. 

    But, in my view, the Department’s most critical contribution to regulatory reform has not come by way of any particular substantive regulatory change, but rather through our focus on improving the regulatory process by promoting transparency, accountability, and public participation.  Such procedural reforms can often outlive more newsworthy substantive changes to individual rules, and they can lead to better and less burdensome substantive decisionmaking.

    One of the first areas of procedural reform we focused upon is reigning in the use of guidance documents.  To understand why this is so important, let me first set the stage by returning to Federalist 51.  There, Madison wrote that “[i]n republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates.”  Accordingly, as Madison explained in Federalist 48, “it is against the enterprising ambition of this department that the people ought to indulge all their jealousy and exhaust all their precautions.”  Acting on this belief, the Founders wrote a Constitution in which the first article (establishing Congress) is much more finely wrought than, and is more than double the length of, the second article (establishing the executive).  The Founders viewed the legislative branch—with the power to make policy and thus restrict liberty—as the foremost danger among equals, and thus much more carefully cabined that branch through structural protections (or “precautions” as Madison called them in both Federalist 48 and 51).

    But we twenty-first century Americans, for better or worse, live in the age of the administrative state, where most substantive rules that are binding on the People are created by Executive Branch agencies exercising rulemaking powers delegated by Congress.  That means that the threat from the “enterprising ambition” that Madison feared now comes more often from the administrators than from the legislators.  Accordingly, we also need procedural protections—“precautions,” as Madison called them—to cabin those ambitions. 

    We have some such protections in the form of the Administrative Procedure Act.  When Congress delegates to an executive agency the authority to regulate—that is, to create binding rights and obligations for the public—the APA normally requires that such authority be exercised through notice-and-comment rulemaking.  These rulemaking processes require a lot of input and serious deliberation; there are many steps, and they sometimes proceed slowly or not at all.  They are designed this way, just like the Constitution is designed to require many steps for the enactment of statutes.  Process protects liberty. 

    But regulators like to regulate, and everyone likes a shortcut.  So it has come to pass that, with increasing frequency, administrative agencies, including the Department of Justice, issue so-called guidance documents that effectively bind the public.  The guidance documents do not go through the notice-and-comment process required by the APA; indeed, they do not go through any transparent or regularized process at all.  They just spring forth fully formed, and the public is expected to comply.  Some commentators have begun to call such guidance, perhaps fairly, “regulatory dark matter.”  The threat such a regime poses to our constitutional structure, and the liberty it protects, is manifest.

    Accordingly, with this in mind, in November 2017, Attorney General Sessions signed a memorandum prohibiting the Department of Justice from issuing guidance documents that “impose new requirements on entities outside the Executive Branch.”  The memorandum lays out five principles that must govern any future guidance, including that the document should disclaim any force or effect of law and “should not be used for the purpose of coercing persons or entities” to take or refrain from taking any actions beyond what is already required under the law.

    A few months later, in January 2018, we took the next step to reign in inappropriate use of subregulatory guidance.  The Associate Attorney General issued a new policy that prohibits the use of agency guidance documents in affirmative civil litigation in a manner that would convert such guidance into binding rules of conduct.  This ensures that DOJ will not do with another agency’s guidance what it cannot do with its own under the Sessions Memo.  As the memorandum explains: “That a party fails to comply with agency guidance expanding upon statutory or regulatory requirements does not mean that the party violated those underlying legal requirements; agency guidance documents cannot create any additional legal obligations.”

    Now, I realize that I am at an antitrust, and not an administrative law, conference.  So what does all of this mean for the Antitrust Division?  Well, the Division, often in conjunction with the Federal Trade Commission, has issued numerous guidance documents, including, for example, intellectual property guidelines and, of course, the horizontal merger guidelines.  Under our view, none of these guidelines create binding rights or rules that have the force of law.  The guidelines can be useful in ensuring transparency by explaining how the Antitrust Division uses its prosecutorial discretion.  But the Antitrust Division will not treat a violation of the guidelines as presumptively or conclusively establishing a violation of the underlying legal requirements.  The Division must bring cases in court if it seeks to assert that a violation of the law has occurred, and it must prove such a violation by reference to statutory law and judicial precedent.

    With that, let me turn from the dark matter of guidance documents to another particle in the regulatory cosmos, but one that is even less visible: the consent decree.

    A consent decree is a binding court judgment, and it can serve an important function in a range of cases and enforcement areas.  But some consent decree are voluminous in their requirements and have virtually perpetual life.  They are, in effect, a set of regulations for a single party, overseen by the Department of Justice, a federal judge, and, quite often, a private-party monitor appointed by the court.  In practice, consent decrees can result in one or all of these entities directing the day-to-day operations of a business or local government agency for years on end.  As should be obvious from the description, such a regime can be as intrusive as—if not more intrusive than—a regulation.

    Thirty years ago, Assistant Attorney General Rick Rule, whom many of you know, gave a speech about telecommunications policy to the Brookings Institution.  He noted that the Reagan Administration’s best known accomplishment in antitrust law was the breakup of AT&T.   The ongoing monitoring required under the AT&T consent decree, however, created, in his words, a “mixed legacy” because of the institutional harms flowing from requiring the Antitrust Division and a federal court to be, in effect, telecommunications regulators.  Federal courts and the Antitrust Division, Rule said, “inherently lack many of the resources crucial to successful regulation.”  He explained that effective regulation requires technical expertise, regulatory experience, and administrative processes that federal courts and federal prosecutors simply lack.

    That is one problem, but it is not the only problem.  Some consent decrees stray not only beyond the practical resources and expertise of the enforcers, but also beyond the legal authority of what the government could do by other means.  Imposing conditions that could not be obtained through litigation to judgment is similar to creating regulations beyond the bounds of law.  And just because a court imposes such a decree does not make it appropriate or wise.  Courts, like executive branch agencies, can exceed their powers and distort constitutional norms.  As with our commitment to abstaining from regulation through guidance, the Department of Justice must take care to avoid going beyond our lawful authority through the entry of consent decrees.

    Accordingly, while consent decrees can be necessary and appropriate in certain circumstances, we are requiring Department litigators in all components to proceed with due caution and care before entering into new cosent decrees.  Effective consent decree management is a key part of our regulatory reform and good government efforts. 

    And, as with our other efforts, the Antitrust Division has been doing its part.  For example, last year, at this every forum, Assistant Attorney General Delrahim gave a speech on antitrust and deregulation.  He made the case that a behavioral consent decree substitutes regulation for competition.  He also announced that the Antitrust Division would disfavor behavioral consent decrees, calling them “the wolf of regulation dressed in . . . sheep’s clothing.”   Indeed.  The notion that the Department of Justice can fine-tune the operations of large businesses, for years on end, to prevent competitive harm is simply untenable from a first principles standpoint and unwarranted from a pro-competitive and pro-liberty standpoint. 

    Avoiding behavioral consent decrees is not the only step that the Antitrust Division is taking in this area.  Earlier this year, the Division launched its Judgment Termination Initiative, through which the Division is identifying and terminating legacy consent decrees that no longer protect competition.  To understand why this is important, it is helpful to turn again to something Administrator Rao explained earlier this year.  She described the problem of “cumulative regulations.”   When the government is always adding regulations but never repealing old ones, regulatory accretion occurs—the regulatory text expands and expands, with some regulations serving no purpose and others affirmatively harming economic growth and American competitiveness.

    Consent decrees can suffer from the same infirmity.  Indeed, from the first cases brought under the Sherman Act until 1979, antitrust consent decrees were perpetual.  In that year, the Division changed its policy such that future settlements would have “sunset” provisions that would automatically terminate a decree on a date certain, usually after ten years.  But while the Division recognized forty years ago that perpetual decrees were not in the public interest, there has been no effort to address the perpetual decrees that were entered prior to that date. 

    Until now.  Assistant Attorney General Delrahim and his team deserve great credit for tackling this issue.  And there is a lot of work to do.  There are nearly 1,300 legacy judgments still on the books, including some decrees that are more than one hundred years old.  There is, for example, a decree from 1914 concerning rubber hoof pads for horseshoes.  Another one from 1921 relates to music rolls for player pianos.  And yet another, my personal favorite, controls the market for horse-buggy whips.  This state of affairs, my friends, is not good government.  This is not prudent and careful regulatory action.  This is ancient, cosmic junk unnecessarily floating around the regulatory atmosphere.

    These outdated decrees pose a particular problem given the common-law nature of the antitrust laws, the construction of which evolve through judicial decisionmaking closely informed by economic analysis.  Under the Sherman Act, only unreasonable—which is to say anticompetitive—restraints of trade are condemned.  Courts look to economic analysis to understand what is unreasonable.  And as economic analysis has matured and been refined over decades, courts have recognized that certain practices, once condemned, are not only not harmful to competition, but can even be procompetitive.

    The Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in the Leegin case provides one example of such a change.   In that case, the Court overturned a nearly century-old per se prohibition on resale price maintenance.   It recognized that resale price maintenance can help stimulate interbrand competition.  The antitrust laws are designed to protect just such competition because it is output enhancing.  By contrast, intrabrand competition, such as when independent retailers engage in a price war to undersell a product from the same manufacturer, is not output enhancing.

    Yet a perpetual consent decree related to resale price maintenance entered any year between 1911 and 1979 would have frozen the old prohibition in place.  Such an ongoing, indefinite prohibition against lawful behavior does not serve to protect competition or to advance the rule of law.  Indeed, it affirmatively undermines both.

    Perpetual consent decrees rarely continue to protect competition, and those that are more than ten years old should be terminated absent compelling circumstances.  To expedite the termination of outdated consent decrees, the Antitrust Division has engaged in a comprehensive effort to review all of its legacy judgments.  Each judgment was assigned to a Division attorney, who examined court papers, internal case files, and publicly available information to determine whether the judgment continued to serve competition.  Judgments for which termination is recommended are then posted, by judicial district, to the Division’s website for a thirty-day public comment period.

    The judgments in sixty of seventy-nine judicial districts have been posted to the Division’s website for public comment.  Once the thirty-day public comment period closes for a particular judicial district, the Division will review any comments received and, if appropriate, prepare a motion to terminate the judgments.

    Already, in July, the Division moved to terminate nineteen legacy judgments in the District Court here in the District of Columbia.  And the court granted that motion on August 15.  The Division is actively working to prepare other motions in other districts.

    The Division will move to terminate such decrees where the essential terms of the judgment have been satisfied, where most defendants no longer exist, where the judgment largely prohibits that which the antitrust laws already prohibit, or where market conditions likely have changed.  Of course, as with the Leegin example, the Division will also seek to terminate decrees for which the relevant antitrust jurisprudence has changed and the conduct prohibited might actually be procompetitive.

    I know that the Judgment Termination Initiative is a top priority for AAG Delrahim and the Division.  I applaud the hard work that has gone into this effort already and the commitment of the Division to see it through.

    With that, let me close by saying thank you, again, for the opportunity to be here.  We are hard at work at the Department of Justice, including at the Antitrust Division, in our efforts to enforce the law and fairly administer justice.  As I have stated, that includes applying the limits of the law to ourselves, or, as Madison put it, to controlling ourselves.  We will continue to advance this cause, and we hope it makes a difference in helping the American people and economy flourish.  Thank you very much.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks at the Department of Justice’s Veterans Appreciation Day Ceremony

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Lee for that kind introduction and thank you for your 36 years of service to the Department of Justice and your 12 years of stewardship of the Department’s finances.

    I also want to thank the Joint Armed Forces Color Guard for the Presentation of the Colors and Girale Wilson-Takahashi from our COPS office for that beautiful rendition of the National Anthem.

    Thank you all for being here for the Department’s eighth Veterans’ Appreciation Day.

    Above all, thank you to the 150 veterans who have joined us today.

    Thank you for your service in our Armed Forces—and thank you for your service in this Department.

    At this Department of Justice, we recognize that public safety is government’s first and most important priority.

    The men and women of our Armed Forces—Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard—risk their lives for that mission every day, and each of us owes them a debt of gratitude.

    This Department also works for public safety by enforcing our laws—but we know that our work depends upon the bravery and sacrifice of our troops.

    We are proud of each one of the 27,000 veterans who serve in this Department.

    Your skills, your patriotism, and above all your selfless character make you the kind of employees that any employer would want.  But you’ve chosen to continue to serve your country—you’ve chosen to work in the Department of Justice.  I commend you for that.

    We are well aware that heroes walk these hallways.

    Outside of my office is a memorial with the names of colleagues who during World War II made the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our grateful country.

    I also know firsthand of the heroes we have in department, because I am now literally surrounded by them each and every day.  Most of the FBI agents in my security detail are veterans.

    That includes Special Agent Damon Flores, who is a former Navy rescue swimmer in the Mediterranean and in the Persian Gulf.  After his service in the Navy, he went to college on the GI Bill and got an accounting and finance degree.  He quickly realized that accounting was not as exciting as being a rescue swimmer.  He wanted a little more adventure, and so he signed up with the FBI.  He marked his 14th anniversary with the Bureau just yesterday.  Damon, congratulations.

    We’re also proud to be the home of Maura Quinn of DEA.

    Maura graduated from the Naval Academy, and then in flight school she chose to fly helicopters so she could pilot a combat aircraft.  After graduation she deployed twice—first with a carrier battle group to the Indian Ocean and then in support of Operation Desert Shield. 

    She served as an instructor pilot for two years and went to law school at night.  As if she weren’t busy enough, she gave birth to two children before graduation.

    After law school, she joined the United States Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of California and then the FBI’s Office of General Counsel.  She then served for eight years in the Chief Counsel’s office at DEA.  Over that time she became an expert in technology law—and today she serves as DEA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Information Systems.  Maura, thank you for your service.

    I could go on and on.  There are roughly 26,998 more examples that I could talk about.

    But this is the caliber of people that we are so grateful to have in this Department.

    Through our Veterans Employment Office in the Justice Management Division, we have made hiring veterans a priority and helped them make the transition into careers with the Department.

    We want more exemplary employees like Damon Flores and Maura Quinn.

    We will continue to invest in our heroes—because you’re a good investment.  You are, in the words of General John Kelly, “the very best this country produces.”

    Now I have the honor of introducing someone who knows that as well as anyone.

    Our keynote speaker is the Director of Military Force Management Policy for the Air Force, Major General Robert LaBrutta.  You might think of him as the Air Force’s head of human resources.

    Major General LaBrutta has served in the Air Force for the last 37 years.

    Today he is responsible for setting force management policy that affects more than half a million Air Force personnel—issues like assignments, evaluation, readiness, and transitioning back to civilian life.

    Before this assignment he served as Commander of the Second Air Force at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.

    He has earned a number of distinguished awards including the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Force Commendation Medal, the Air Force Achievement Medal, and many others.

    Please join me in welcoming Major General Robert LaBrutta.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim Remarks at the American Bar Association Antitrust Section Fall Forum

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    “November Rain”: Antitrust Enforcement on Behalf of American Consumers and Taxpayers

    Good morning, and thank you for the kind introduction.  I’d like to thank the American Bar Association for your invitation to this year’s Fall Forum and Deb Garza for her leadership of the Section this year. 

    I find it hard to believe it’s been only a little more than a year since I was confirmed as AAG and spoke at last year’s Fall Forum.  Over the past year, the Antitrust Division has been hard at work on behalf of American consumers. We made a number of significant enforcement actions this week, but before I turn to those, I’d like to update you on a few recent changes in the Front Office. 

    First, Michael Murray recently joined us from the Deputy Attorney General’s office, where he served as Associate Deputy Attorney General.  Mike now will be a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Front Office, where he will be overseeing our Appellate Section and our 4A damage actions on behalf of the American taxpayer.  Mike has significant appellate experience, including as a law clerk for Justice Anthony Kennedy. 

    In addition, our new acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Economics is Jeff Wilder.  Jeff received his Ph.D. from MIT and has distinguished himself as an outstanding economist serving as one of the leaders in the Division’s Economic Analysis Group, and we’re happy to have him join us in the Front Office.

    Some of you may remember that at last year’s Fall Forum, I spoke about antitrust and deregulation.  In those remarks, I focused on remedies, including our preference for structural remedies and our emphasis on making consent decrees more enforceable.  I also discussed our commitment to the view that antitrust enforcement is law enforcement, not industrial regulation, and that the Antitrust Division should strive to accomplish its law enforcement mission in the most efficient and effective way possible.  The Division has stood by those principles. 

    More recently, in a speech at Georgetown, I announced several improvements to the merger review process.  We are making good on those changes as well.  Today, we posted a model timing agreement and a model voluntary request letter on our website.  Those documents increase transparency and predictability and will help merging businesses and their counsel know what to expect as part of the merger review process.  We’ve also begun tracking the duration of merger reviews more carefully, so that we can monitor our performance and factors affecting it.  You will recall our goal is to resolve investigations within six months of filing, provided that the parties cooperate and comply with our document and data requests during the entire process.

    I would like to focus the remainder of my remarks today on four important settlements in the last week that reflect the Antitrust Division’s commitment to vigilant and effective antitrust enforcement. 

    As some of you may have seen, the Division announced just yesterday a set of global settlements with three South Korean companies.  Those unprecedented settlements resolve criminal charges and civil claims arising from a bid-rigging conspiracy that targeted fuel supply contracts to U.S. military bases in South Korea.  They are the result of tremendous hard work in parallel criminal and civil investigations by the Antitrust Division’s Washington Criminal I Section, the Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture Section, and the Fraud Section of the Civil Division.  We were assisted ably by our partners at the FBI and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.

    The United States currently maintains numerous military bases in South Korea, housing American soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors in the region.  These military bases need fuel for various purposes, and two Department of Defense agencies, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES), contract with South Korean companies to supply fuel to the numerous U.S. military bases throughout South Korea. 

    Our investigation, which is ongoing, revealed that SK Energy, GS Caltex, Hanjin Transportation, along with other co-conspirators, rigged bids and fixed prices for fuel supply contracts issued by the U.S. military in South Korea for over a decade.  They cheated the Military and American taxpayers out of precious limited resources.  As a result of the conspiracy, the Department of Defense paid substantially more for fuel supply services.  Although the immediate victim here was the U.S. military, the American taxpayer, you and me, ultimately footed the bill. 

    The three companies agreed yesterday to plead guilty to criminal charges under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, and they will pay at least $82 million in criminal fines for their involvement in the conspiracy.  Importantly, the three defendants have also agreed to cooperate with the ongoing criminal investigation of the conduct. 

    Robert Jackson, who is one of my legal heroes, recognized that bid rigging is particularly harmful to government purchasers.  When he served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division, Jackson broadly denounced arrangements that “compel purchasers to pay a price based on calculation, not competition,” and specifically emphasized that “[w]hatever the effect of this on private buyers, it completely destroys the mechanism set up by federal, state, and municipal governments to keep favoritism and corruption out of public buying.”

    The harm Jackson recognized still exists today, and these settlements serve as an important reminder that the Justice Department and its law enforcement partners will investigate aggressively and prosecute without hesitation companies who cheat the United States government and the American taxpayer. 

    We did not stop there.  We are committed to using all authorities Congress has granted to us to remedy antitrust injuries to the American taxpayer.  Those tools include the authority conferred in Section 4A of the Clayton Act.  Section 4A is an important but underused enforcement tool that allows the government to recover treble damages for antitrust violations when the government itself is the victim. 

    To that end, the Division established a parallel civil enforcement team, led by Kathy O’Neill and a group of capable litigators from the Transportation, Energy, and Agriculture Section to pursue parallel civil actions for damages.  We negotiated separate civil resolutions with each of the three defendants on behalf of American taxpayers.  We also worked alongside our partners in the Civil Division’s Fraud Section, who pursued charges against the defendants under the False Claims Act for making false statements to the government in connection with their conspiracy. 

    To resolve both the civil antitrust and the False Claims Act violations, these three defendants have agreed to pay an additional $154 million in total.  They also have agreed to cooperate fully with the Division’s ongoing civil investigation and to implement effective antitrust compliance programs.

    These historic cases mark the first significant settlements under Section 4A in many years.  In fact, as far as we can tell based on our records, they are the largest settlements the government has ever recovered since the enactment of Section 4A.    

    Let me take a step back to review the history of Section 4A. 

    When Congress enacted the Sherman Act in 1890 and the Clayton Act in 1914, neither statute contained a provision specifically allowing the government to recover damages it suffered as a result of an antitrust violation.  In 1939, the United States, led by Assistant Attorney General Thurman Arnold, brought its first-ever antitrust suit for damages on its own behalf.   The government claimed authority to do so under Section 7 of the Sherman Act, which was the predecessor of Section 4 of the Clayton Act.  As most of you know, Section 4 permits “any person” injured by an antitrust violation to recover the damages they suffered. 

    In that pioneering case, United States v. Cooper, the government alleged that eighteen defendants had “collusively fixed” bids that were “identical to the penny on eighty-two different sizes of tires” sold to the United States.  The defendants successfully moved to dismiss the action on the question of whether the government is a “person” entitled to bring an action for damages under the statute.  The Second Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court ultimately held that the United States is not a “person” entitled to sue. 

    In 1955, Congress amended the Clayton Act in response to the Court’s ruling in Cooper by adding Section 4A.  As originally enacted, Section 4A allowed the government to recover only single damages, so that the government could recover damages where it was the victim of an antitrust violation. 

    At first, the Division used Section 4A aggressively, filing numerous cases for damages throughout the 1960s and 1970s.  In the 1980s, however, the government brought only four cases under Section 4A—a remarkable decline from the prior two decades.  Some attributed this drop, in part, to the Supreme Court’s Illinois Brick decision in 1978, because many of the cases brought in the ‘60s and ‘70s involved claims by the United States as an indirect purchaser.  The government, however, increasingly purchases goods and services directly.

    The next milestone came in 1990, when Congress amended the Clayton Act again to allow the government to seek treble damages in Section 4A cases. 

    Since 1990, a span of nearly thirty years, only three Section 4A cases have been filed.  In 1991, the Division recovered $250,000 from two companies for rigging bids to purchase surplus gunpowder.  In 1994, the Division filed suit against two defense contractors for entering into a “teaming” arrangement that eliminated competition in supplying the Department of Defense with cluster bombs.  In that case, the Division recovered $4 million on behalf of American taxpayers and obtained an $8 million discount on the bid price.  In 2012, the Division challenged collusion between two companies bidding on four natural gas leases at auctions run by the Bureau of Land Management.  The Division recovered $275,000 from each company. 

    The American Taxpayer deserves to see a revitalization of the government’s Section 4A authority.  This week’s settlements are only the first in that direction.  Going forward, the Division will exercise 4A authority to seek compensation for taxpayers when the government has been the victim of an antitrust violation.  We hope that these efforts will also deter future violations. 

    In light of our policy of seeking damages under Section 4A where available, I would like to address how parallel criminal and civil enforcement will proceed going forward. 

    First, the Division’s new focus on Section 4A enforcement will not require any changes to the Division’s leniency policy.  The Division offers strong incentives to come forward to report criminal antitrust violations in exchange for leniency, and those incentives do not change when the government is harmed by the violation. 

    The Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act of 2004, better known as ACPERA, created another valuable incentive for leniency applications.  Under ACPERA’s detrebling provision, those who successfully qualify for leniency will be subject only to single damages in follow-on civil suits, rather than treble damages.  In addition, those who successfully qualify for leniency are not subject to joint and several liability.

    This detrebling incentive will apply to any Section 4A claims brought by the government.  We will also follow the underlying requirements for ACPERA in Section 4A cases: companies will need to cooperate with the civil team, as they would with any private plaintiff, in order to reap the detrebling benefits.

    The bottom line is that the Division’s enforcement of Section 4A will increase the incentive for co-conspirators in cartel cases to come forward. 

    Separately, I should note that global resolutions like the ones announced yesterday should serve the interests of the parties as well.  Cooperating companies subject to penalties under multiple statutes can gain certainty and finality.  Employees, customers, and investors can resolve the problem and move on. This is consistent with the Department’s broader policies on coordination of corporate penalties.

    Next, as we pursue Section 4A damages going forward, global resolutions of criminal and civil antitrust liability will help maintain a consistent policy on how to calculate civil damages.  Yesterday’s settlements underscore this point.  They provide that SK Energy, GS Caltex, and Hanjin each will pay an amount calculated to exceed the overcharge paid by the government.  At the same time, the amount reflects both the value of the cooperation commitments each defendant made as a condition of settlement and the cost savings the Division realized by avoiding extended litigation.  

    As a general matter, if the government is required to litigate claims it brings under Section 4A, the government will seek treble damages.  In addition, we anticipate that earlier cooperators will benefit by paying a lower multiple of damages, because the value of their cooperation is higher earlier in our investigation. 

    I will turn now to another significant settlement the Division filed this week, one which resolves a complaint against six broadcast television companies alleging that they engaged in widespread, unlawful sharing of non-public, competitively sensitive information.  Along with the complaint, the Division filed proposed final judgments requiring the companies to cease such conduct and to undergo rigorous compliance and reporting measures for the next seven years.

    We uncovered this conduct during our investigation into Sinclair Broadcasting Group’s proposed acquisition of Tribune Media Company, which has since been abandoned. 

    As we allege in the complaint, the defendants agreed in local broadcasting markets throughout the United States to exchange revenue pacing information and other competitively sensitive information.  “Pacing” compares a broadcast station’s revenues booked for a certain time period to the revenues booked in the same point in the previous year.  Pacing indicates how each station is performing versus the rest of the market and provides insight into each station’s remaining spot advertising for the period. 

    We discovered that the defendants had been exchanging pacing information either directly between stations or corporate headquarters, or indirectly through national representatives that help local stations sell advertisements to national advertisers.  By exchanging this information, the broadcasters were better able to anticipate whether their competitors were likely to raise, maintain, or lower spot advertising prices, which in turn helped inform the stations’ own pricing strategies and negotiations with advertisers.  As a result, the information exchanges harmed the competitive price-setting process.

    We have not heard any legitimate pro-competitive justification for this conduct.  We are therefore pleased that these companies recognized that a protracted investigation and litigation would serve no purpose, and we welcome their cooperation as our investigation continues.  We also want to remind businesses, as well as the antitrust practitioners that advise them, that agreements between competitors to exchange competitively sensitive information can violate the antitrust laws and lead to a civil enforcement action even if the conduct does not amount to the type of hard core cartel conduct that the Antitrust Division prosecutes criminally.

    Finally, this morning we announced the third significant enforcement resolution this week—a settlement with Atrium Health, formerly known as Carolinas Healthcare System.  We were joined in the settlement by the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, and we thank them for their partnership in this action.  The settlement resolves over two years of civil antitrust litigation challenging the hospital system’s use of anticompetitive steering restrictions in its contracts with major health insurers.  These steering restrictions prevented health insurers from promoting innovative health plans and more cost-effective healthcare providers.  

    Atrium is the dominant hospital system in the Charlotte, North Carolina metropolitan area.  It used its market power to limit major health insurers’ ability to introduce plans designed to encourage consumers to choose cost-effective healthcare providers.  Specifically, Atrium would agree to participate in a broad network plan only if the insurer would commit not to introduce other plans that would steer patients away from Atrium.  The steering restrictions also deliberately constrained insurers from providing consumers with transparency into the comparative cost and quality of their healthcare alternatives.

    Because the steering restrictions were in place, insurers could not introduce more innovative health insurance plans that create financial incentives for patients to use lower-cost healthcare services.  Needless to say, competition for patients encourages healthcare providers to reduce costs, lower prices, and increase quality.  These steering restrictions inhibited competition among healthcare providers to provide higher quality, lower-cost services.  

    The resolution prevents Atrium from enforcing the steering restrictions in its contracts with major health insurers.  If approved by the Court, it will restore competition between healthcare providers in Charlotte, North Carolina.

    I would like to make a broader point about the Division’s settlements this week.  The consent decrees in all three cases, like all other decrees the Division has entered into the past 13 months, include specific new provisions designed to improve their enforceability. 

    These provisions (i) address the burden of proof in a civil contempt action by providing that the preponderance standard will apply; (ii) make defendants responsible for reimbursing the government for all costs it incurs in connection with enforcing the decree; (iii) allow the United States to seek a one-time extension of the term of the decree in the event of a violation, or to terminate the decree early if continuation is no longer necessary or in the public interest.  Another provision addresses interpretation of the decree by stating that courts can enforce any provisions that are stated specifically and in reasonable detail, whether or not they are clear and unambiguous on their face.

    The Division serves as a guardian of American consumers, and we act in the public’s trust.  When the Division enters into a consent decree to resolve charges of anticompetitive conduct, we will hold parties’ feet to the fire and enforce the decrees. 

    Finally, last Friday, three defendants pled guilty to conspiring to rig bids and allocate the market in auctions of foreclosed properties in Palm Beach County, Florida.  This case is unlike the Division’s prior foreclosure auction prosecutions because the auction occurred online rather than in-person, and the collusion occurred primarily by text message rather than in-person.  It is a good illustration of the fact that while defendants may use new platforms and technologies to commit antitrust crimes, the Division too is evolving and stands ready to prosecute these crimes in the digital age.

    The conspiracy took place in the aftermath of the financial crisis, which affected the housing market nationwide and the Florida real estate market in particular.  Defendants and their affiliated business entities were the largest buyers of foreclosed properties in Palm Beach County.  Together, the commerce affected by the defendants’ collusion was $25 million. 

    The Division began an investigation into possible collusion in online foreclosure auctions in Palm Beach County, Florida after receiving an anonymous citizen complaint that included a link to a YouTube video detailing the collusion. 

    Co-conspirators texted each other to coordinate their bidding and facilitate the conspiracy to obtain foreclosed homes at suppressed prices.  Most commonly, bidders would agree to stop bidding or to refrain from bidding at their co-conspirators’ request.  In some instances, they lowered bids for each other’s benefit. 

    After learning of the investigation, one of the defendants used and encouraged other co-conspirators to use a text messaging application to continue colluding.  He believed that law enforcement would be unable to read or trace any messages sent through the application.

    The three defendants were indicted by a grand jury in November 2017.  Since then, all three have pleaded guilty.

    I will conclude by taking this opportunity to highlight the outstanding attorneys and economists at the Antitrust Division.  They are the core of executing the Division’s mission and work tirelessly in their commitment to protect competition and consumers.    

    It has been a busy year at the Antitrust Division.  We have been working hard on behalf of America’s consumers and taxpayers, and look forward to continuing our efforts on their behalf in the year to come. 

    Thank you.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein Delivers Remarks at the Interpol 87th General Assembly

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    It is a privilege to join you at this 87th INTERPOL General Assembly.  I am grateful to the United Arab Emirates for hosting our conference. Thank you President Kim Jong Yang for your exceptional leadership and for providing stability to INTERPOL.  

    Our theme this year is innovation.  Many digital innovations affect law enforcement, from the rise of cybercrime, to the increasing importance of electronic evidence, to encryption and the dark net. 

    In addressing these innovations, we must respect the primary value that is constant in our work: the rule of law.  Law provides the framework for civilized people to conduct their lives.  At its best, law reflects moral choices; principled decisions that promote the best interests of society, and protect the fundamental rights of citizens. 

     The term “rule of law” describes the government’s obligation to follow neutral principles and fair processes. The ideal dates at least to the time of Greek philosopher Aristotle, who wrote, “It is more proper that law should govern than any one of the citizens: upon the same principle, if it is advantageous to place the supreme power in some particular persons, they should be appointed to be only guardians, and the servants of the law.”

    The rule of law is indispensable to a thriving and vibrant society.  It shields citizens from government overreach.  It allows businesses to invest with confidence.  It gives innovators protection for their discoveries.  It keeps people safe from dangerous criminals.  And it allows us to resolve differences peacefully through reason and logic.

    When we follow the rule of law, it does not always yield the outcome that we prefer. In fact, one indicator that we are following the law is when we respect a result although we do not agree with it. We respect it because it is required by an objective analysis of the facts and a rational application of the rules.

    The rule of law is not simply about words written on paper.  The culture of a society and the character of the people who enforce the law determine whether the rule of law endures.

    Since we met last year in Beijing, the news media has reported several prominent challenges to the rule of law, including the lawless attacks on Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Jamal Khashoggi.  Last month, international attention focused on INTERPOL, as a result of the disappearance of President Meng Hongwei.  Such events give rise to questions about whether our member countries abide by shared principles.  In evaluating our actions at this General Assembly, observers may ask whether our votes reflect the values that we profess. We must stand for the rule of law.  

    INTERPOL exists to promote international police coordination and discourage departures from the law. We represent diverse forms of government. But if we serve with integrity, each of us functions as a trustee for our fellow citizens.

    When our successors look back on how we dealt with the issues of our era, they will ask whether we honored our fiduciary duties.

    First, did we develop the knowledge to understand our challenges?

    Second, did we inculcate the wisdom to solve them?

    Third, did we demonstrate the courage to defend our principles?

    Fourth, did we maintain the resolve to achieve our goals?

    I traveled here to speak about INTERPOL’s role in responding to the major innovation of our lives: the rise of a cyber-connected world. 

    The Internet holds immeasurable promise as a repository of ideas, and as a forum for speech and commerce.  It connects citizens across cultures and countries.  It is accessible to the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless.  It creates efficiencies and innovations that immensely improve our lives.

    But like every innovation that offers opportunities for good, the Internet also can be exploited by wrongdoers. Today, there is a growing divergence between the Internet as it is, and the Internet as it could be.

    Malicious actors use the Internet for evil ends.  Cyber criminals employ modern technologies to damage information systems, steal data, commit fraud, violate privacy, attack critical infrastructure, and sexually exploit children. They also launch misleading schemes to influence people’s opinions, seeking to foment division and disrupt democratic processes.

    The Internet enables attacks on businesses, government agencies, and individual citizens that cause damage costing billions of dollars.  And new technologies allow criminals to conceal themselves, which frustrates law enforcement’s efforts to keep honest citizens safe. 

    We must acknowledge the divergence between the Internet in theory and the Internet in practice. Closing that gap will ensure the viability of an open Internet governed by the rule of law.

    Enforcing the law on the Internet requires rapid and accurate detection of criminal activity; cooperation among law enforcers from different nations; prosecution of accused criminals in judicial systems that provide due process of law; and just punishment of guilty offenders.  It means not tolerating virtual online locations where crime is unchallenged.  It means not condoning physical safe havens for cyber criminals.

    Detecting, disrupting, deterring, and prosecuting malicious cyber activity are among our highest law enforcement priorities in the United States.  The cyber threats we face are varied and evolving, and our resolve to keep our people safe must extend to every corner of the Internet.

    My office recently issued a comprehensive report about our work to combat cybercrime.  It describes the global challenges posed by cyber-enabled crime.  It explains how hostile cyber actors damage computer systems, steal data, engage in cyber fraud, violate personal privacy, infiltrate critical infrastructure, and pursue malign foreign influence operations.  The report also details our efforts to detect and disrupt those threats, and our commitment to inform citizens about the dangers.

    The perceived anonymity of the Internet attracts many criminals, including terrorists and those trafficking in child pornography, illicit weapons, illegal and deadly drugs, murder-for-hire, malware, and stolen identities.  The barriers to entry are low.  Criminal opportunities are on offer for anyone with an Internet browser and an inclination to break the law.  

    Yet our police agencies repeatedly demonstrate that with the support of international partners, we can find and dismantle malign internet operations.  We identify anonymous users who commit illegal activity, seize their infrastructure and proceeds, and pursue criminal charges against them.  Criminals operating on the dark web should be on notice that our investigative tools allow us to expose them.

    We must not allow cybercriminals to hide behind cryptocurrencies.  Virtual currencies have some legitimate uses.  But bad actors are using them to fund crimes and to hide illicit proceeds.  For example, Bitcoin was the exclusive method of payment for the WannaCry ransomware attack that spread around the globe, causing billions of dollars in losses. 

    In addition, fraudsters use the lure of coin offerings and the promise of new currencies to bilk unsuspecting investors, promote scams, and engage in market manipulation.  The challenges of regulating, seizing, and tracing virtual currencies demand a multinational response.  We must work together to make clear that the rule of law can reach the entire blockchain.

    To that end, last year, prosecutors in the United States announced the indictment of Alexander Vinnick and the virtual currency exchange he allegedly operated. That exchange received more than $4 billion of virtual currency. It was designed without any means to control money laundering, so predictably it served as a hub for international criminals seeking to hide and launder ill-gotten gains. 

    We filed criminal charges and assessed a $110 million civil penalty against the exchange for willfully violating our anti-money laundering laws, as well as a $12 million penalty against Vinnick.

    To prevent virtual currency from being abused by criminals, terrorist financiers, or sanctions evaders, all of us must implement policies that mitigate the risks posed by the new technology.  My country includes virtual currencies in our anti-money laundering regulations.  And the Financial Action Task Force urges all nations to make clear that global anti-money laundering standards apply to virtual currency products and service providers. We must guard against abuses of digital currency.

    We also need to protect against abuses of encrypted communications.  Encryption can be useful in the fight against cybercrime.  Encrypting data makes it more safe and secure.  But the proliferation of warrant-proof encryption also poses a challenge to effective law enforcement. 

    Encryption technologies designed to be impervious to legal process impede our ability to access investigative data.  In September, the chief law enforcement officials of the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand joined together to issue a “Statement of Principles on Access to Evidence and Encryption.”

    While acknowledging the benefits of encryption, they called for urgent, sustained attention and informed discussion about the increasing difficulty law enforcement agencies face in accessing evidence of criminal conduct.

    We will continue to work closely with technology companies to establish responsible practices that consider both privacy concerns and public safety imperatives.

    On the Internet, data is decentralized, information flows across continents, and online activities are dispersed across global networks. Cybercrime knows no borders.  As a result, international cooperation is indispensable.  INTERPOL is central to that cooperation.

    We must ensure that appropriate criminal laws are enforced.  Each of us must do our part to bring malicious actors to justice.  We rely on international partners to locate, arrest, and extradite cybercriminals so that they may be held accountable.  Cybercriminals should find no safe haven, either on the dark web or within national borders.

    In the United States, we continue to faithfully discharge our responsibility to extradite fugitives. In the last five years, we extradited 95 Americans, honoring inquiries whenever the requesting state presents sufficient evidence of criminality.

    For example, last year the United States sent Shawn Gregory Towner to Ireland.  Towner was arrested in Ireland in 2006 after authorities found him watching images of child sexual abuse on his laptop in Dublin, but he fled to the United States after being released on bail.  My country located Towner and sent him to Ireland to stand trial. 

    We process extraditions without regard to the nationality of the offender. 

    But that cooperation must be reciprocated.

    International cooperation was essential to our successful dismantlement of the Kelihos botnet, a global network of tens of thousands of infected computers.  Criminals used the network to harvest login credentials, distribute hundreds of millions of spam e-mails, and install ransomware and other malicious software. 

    In 2017, prosecutors obtained judicial orders authorizing law enforcement to neutralize the botnet by seizing control of malicious domains and redirecting traffic to servers we controlled. 

    Disabling the botnet was only part of the equation. The criminals responsible for creating and administering the botnet also should be held accountable. American prosecutors charged Peter Levashov of St. Petersburg, Russia for multiple offenses stemming from his control and operation of the Kelihos botnet.  Levashov is a cybercriminal who operated multiple botnets with impunity for nearly two decades. 

    Spanish authorities arrested Levashov and extradited him to the United States. In September, Levashov was found guilty in a fair and public judicial proceeding.

    Levashov’s extradition represented effective coordination with our foreign partners.  Unfortunately, not every case is a success story.  In some instances, nations shield their citizens from the rule of law with schemes that waste resources, cause needless delay, thwart investigative efforts, and undermine justice. 

    Consider the prosecution of accused hacker Aleksey Belan.  Belan is a Russian national who was indicted in the United States for massive computer breaches on American companies.  After the United States issued an arrest warrant, Belan was reportedly arrested in 2013.  But he was permitted to return to Russia. 

    A second indictment alleges that in 2014, after Belan returned to Russia, Russian intelligence agents recruited him to carry out one of the largest data breaches in history, stealing information from more than 500 million individual email accounts of people around the world. 

    The rule of law suffers when cybercriminals are given safe havens.  The United States will continue to promote the rule of law by identifying, exposing, and seeking to extradite perpetrators who harm innocent people.  And we will continue to support legitimate investigations and prosecutions conducted by our INTERPOL partners. 

    At the same time, we will expose schemes to manipulate the extradition process.  We will identify nations that routinely block the fair administration of justice and fail to act in good faith, with a sincere commitment to holding criminals accountable.

    As cyber threats grow in scale and sophistication, we increasingly need to search throughout the world for evidence, witnesses, and defendants.  Our responses must be as innovative as the criminal activity. We depend on expeditious international cooperation and coordination in dismantling malicious criminal operations. 

    Child exploitation cases provide a useful model for international coordination.  INTERPOL’s International Child Sexual Exploitation image and video database uses image and video comparison software to identify and locate child sexual exploitation victims and their abusers.  The database has led to the arrest of nearly 6,300 offenders. Recently, it helped authorities rescue five victims in Spain.  That is a superb example of innovative law enforcement.

    In my country, we play a leading role by identifying cases in which child exploitation materials are generated from or hosted in other countries.  Then we disseminate the information to the appropriate INTERPOL member countries. Our partners often request follow-up information to assist in their own investigations. Last year, almost nine million investigative leads were distributed through this program, resulting in many arrests and prosecutions. 

    Children around the world are safer when our law enforcement agencies work together – quickly, and with methods like those pioneered by INTERPOL.

    Finally, I am proud that the United States takes seriously our responsibility to help secure evidence that our international partners need for their investigations.  We receive thousands of requests for mutual legal assistance each year, and we do all that we can to comply.  We employ expert attorneys and staff dedicated to assisting with foreign requests for electronic evidence.  We devote additional resources when necessary to meet your needs.

    We call upon each of you to do the same.  By devoting appropriate resources to international cooperation efforts, we can properly address the increasing threat of cybercrime.

    My country recently enacted a new law to remove legal impediments to compliance with foreign court orders in cases that involve serious crimes.  The legislation demonstrates our commitment to the vision of the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, the primary treaty for harmonizing national interests and enhancing international cooperation against cybercrime.  Sixty-one nations have fully ratified the treaty, agreeing that national laws should include authority to compel providers to disclose data they control, even when it is held elsewhere. 

    New cyber conventions are sometimes proposed that would limit the free flow of information between nations. But that would dangerously impede efforts to investigate cybercrime. It would protect criminals and allow cyber threats to proliferate and grow in scale and sophistication.  That is untenable in a world in which criminals using computers shielded by layers of anonymity can harm innocent victims in any one of our nations, anywhere in the world. Such limitations would be a step backward, not an innovative law enforcement approach.

    No nation should exempt itself from just and reasonable law enforcement cooperation. No nation will be more prosperous, more secure, or more respected because it supports cybercriminals. 

    My fellow delegates, there is a parable about three stonecutters asked to describe what they are doing.  They answer in varying ways. The first stonecutter focuses on how the job benefits him. He says, “I am earning a living.” The second man narrowly describes his personal task: “I am cutting stone.” The third man has a very different perspective. Instead of focusing solely on his work, he explains what it means to others: “I am helping these stonecutters build a shrine.”

    Similarly, each of us helps to construct a legacy. INTERPOL delegates should always support leaders and policies that promote international police coordination and preserve the rule of law – in practice, and not just in theory. We must uphold the rule of law, so it will be there for us when we need it.

    When our successors speak of our time here, give them reason to say that we understood the challenges; we found the solutions; we defended our principles, and we stayed the course to support liberty and justice for all. 

    I am honored to work with you in advancing the INTERPOL mission and making the world safer and more prosperous for all law-abiding citizens. Shukran.  Thank you very much.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker Delivers Remarks to the Joint Terrorism Task Force

    Source: United States Attorneys General 13

    NOTE: The remarks originally included a case that was scheduled to be sentenced but was continued, and so that case was removed from the speech. However, a reference to the case was inadvertently left in. As such, there is no extradition relating to the Chelsea bomber case.

    Remarks as prepared for delivery

    Thank you, Geoff (Berman), for that kind introduction, and thank you for your leadership as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. And thank you also to United States Attorney Richard Donoghue from the Eastern District of New York.

    It is wonderful to be in New York during the holiday season.  I’m told that this is the best time of year to visit—but I must say I am looking forward to Thanksgiving in Des Moines.

    But before I say anything else, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that the law enforcement community is in mourning today.

    Chicago police officer Samuel Jimenez was shot and killed during Monday’s shooting at Mercy hospital. Officer Jimenez had just joined the force in 2017 and he was only 28 years old.  He leaves behind a wife—his high school sweetheart—and three young children.

    Officer Jimenez was on his way to respond to a different call when he heard of shots fired at the hospital.  Then he did what police officers do every day in America: he went toward the danger, so that the rest of us could run away from it.  He and his fellow officers saved a lot of lives that day.

    This tragedy is another reminder of both the danger and the nobility of police work.  Today, as we prepare for Thanksgiving Day, we should all be especially grateful for our police officers.

    It is an honor to be here in the J.O.C., where so many consequential law enforcement decisions have been made—so many decisions that have saved American lives.

    This is where a number of terrorism investigations have begun—and it’s where security is monitored for events like the Thanksgiving Day parade or New Year’s Eve.

    And it is an even greater honor to be with some of the most respected law enforcement leaders in the world.  Thank you to:

    • Commissioner O’Neill,
    • FBI Assistant Director in Charge, William Sweeney,
    • Deputy Commissioner Miller,
    • NYPD Chief Paul Ciorra,
    • Chief Owen Monaghan,
    • Ashan Benedict of ATF,
    • Michael Greco with the Marshals Service,
    • Troy Miller with CBP,
    • Director Frank Russo,
    • Phil Bartlett and our Postal Inspectors, and
    • Scott Sarafian with Secret Service.

    It is an honor to be with all of you.

    NYPD in particular has earned a reputation as perhaps the greatest police department on Earth.

    There are more NYPD officers than there are members of the military in entire nations, like Belgium or Ireland.

    But even more impressive than the quantity of your officers is the quality of your officers.

    You are known all over the country for your Compstat program, which enables you to monitor crime rates in real time and to quickly reallocate officers when crime begins to rise.

    And over the past three decades, your achievements have been staggering.  In 1990, there were 2,245 murders in New York City.  Last year there were 292.  Since 2000, burglaries are down by nearly two-thirds and robberies have been cut in half.  One weekend in October there were zero murders or shootings in New York City for the first time in 25 years.

    These results are a testament to the effectiveness of NYPD, and of many people in this room.  You’ve been able to start a virtuous cycle of safety, prosperity—and more safety.  That is what we want to achieve all across America.

    President Donald Trump is a lifelong New Yorker.  He invested in this city when its future was in doubt.  He bet on this city—and that proved to be a smart bet. 

    The President witnessed New York’s transformation firsthand. I think that made his support for law enforcement even stronger.

    One of his very first Executive Orders was to tell the Department of Justice to improve the safety of state and local law enforcement officers.  And over these past two years, we have followed that order.

    Today I am announcing our next step to carry out that order.  Today I am announcing that the Department of Justice is providing $56 million in grant funding to support law enforcement all across America.

    That includes $29 million for bulletproof vests, $12.2 million for body-worn cameras, and $2 million in health and safety research.

    This is just a small way of saying thank you to the officers who take care of us every day.  We understand the sacrifices that you make—and so we want you to have the right equipment and the right training.

    If anybody out there doesn’t appreciate the role of law enforcement officers in our society, then I would tell them to come to New York.

    Earlier today I visited the 9/11 Memorial.  It was an extremely moving experience.

    We all remember where we were when we heard the news.  I know I do.

    Some of you were here.  Some of you were at Ground Zero.

    It was the worst terrorist attack in American history and the most shocking attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor.  It led to the largest investigation in FBI history.

    None of us have ever been the same.  Speaking for myself, 9/11 strengthened my appreciation for our servicemembers and our first responders and law enforcement officers.

    More than 70 police officers were killed in New York City that day.  Dozens more died of illnesses related to their service at Ground Zero.  Some of you knew them.

    The Department of Justice honors their memory and law enforcement holds them up as examples of our highest ideals.  They died in a rescue mission that saved thousands of lives.

    We are indescribably proud of our federal officers.  But we recognize that the vast majority of the officers in American law enforcement is at the state and local levels.  We cannot succeed without you.

    We’re at our best when we work together—and that’s what the JTTF is all about.

    This is the oldest JTTF in America.  Today there are more than 100 JTTFs nationwide, including at least one in each of our FBI field offices.  The vast majority of these were created in response to 9/11.

    This JTTF set the model for the rest to follow.  You bring together 500 employees from 50 different partner agencies.

    And you’ve achieved so much for this city and for this country.

    You investigated the 2007 JFK bomb plot, the 2009 Subway bomb plot, and the 2010 attempted bombing of Times Square.

    And I am well aware that, under this administration, you’ve continued to have success in investigating terrorism.

    Three times a week, I receive a threat briefing where the FBI and the National Security Division tell me about the national security investigations that we are working on in our United States Attorneys’ offices.  We’ve talked about the work done here.

    People in this room have achieved successes that have made this country safer.

    This February, prosecutors in Geoff’s office secured a life sentence for the Chelsea bomber, Ahmad Rahimi. He planted nine improvised explosive devices in New Jersey and New York, including two not far from here in Chelsea.  He detonated one of them and injured more than 30 people.  The bomb was so powerful that it launched a 100-pound dumpster more than 120 feet.  It shattered windows 400 feet away and three stories above ground level.

    Another bomb here in Chelsea was rendered safe by law enforcement before it was detonated.

    That investigation started right here in this room.

    And so to all of the agents, officers, and the AUSAs who worked on this case—Emil Bove, Andrew DeFilippis, and Shawn Crowley—thank you for this outstanding work.

    People in this room also worked to convict the Bangladeshi national who detonated a bomb near the Port Authority bus terminal last December. The explosion was caught on surveillance video and the defendant was found lying on the ground with parts of a pipe bomb on and around his body.  After he was arrested, he admitted that he detonated the bomb to express his support for ISIS.  He attempted to make the bomb as dangerous as he could and to target a public place during rush hour.

    Just two weeks ago, thanks to the hard work of Geoff’s Assistant U.S. Attorneys Shawn Crowley, Rebekah Donaleski, and George Turner, he was convicted on six counts.  Now he is facing a potential life sentence.

    These are terrific accomplishments.  The dangerous terrorists in these cases can’t hurt anyone now—and that’s because of your hard work.

    But these cases are also a reminder that the terrorist threat is not going away on its own.  Sadly, our work is not finished.

    Terrorists are going to continue to target us.  So we’ve got to keep targeting them—during this holiday season and all year round.

    And so I want to assure all of you that this work remains the top priority of the Department of Justice.  We will not let up.

    We will continue to support you with resources—like the grant funding that I mentioned—with personnel, and with intelligence.

    I want to conclude with something a mentor of mine used to say every time he spoke to law enforcement, and I believe it too: we have your back, and you have our thanks.

    MIL Security OSI –