The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Akin Adds Fraud Enforcer to Litigation Practice

A former senior prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia is joining Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as a partner in the litigation practice.

Charles Connolly, who led the prosecution office's public corruption and financial crimes unit, will be based in Washington and focus on corporate investigations and white collar defense work. Connolly oversaw about a dozen assistant U.S. attorneys.

At the U.S. Attorney's Office, Connolly was on the team that prosecuted Paul Allen, former chief executive of the mortgage-lending firm Taylor, Bean & Whitaker. He also oversaw the prosecution of executives at Colonial Bank. Prosecutors revealed years of fraud in an investigation that snared several executives from both companies. Taylor Bean executives sold hundreds of millions of dollars in fake mortgages to Colonial with the help of the bank's executives.

The Morning Wrap

Foiled: "The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents," The New York Times reports. In other surveillance news: The Justice Department is planning to release hundreds of pages of documents, including Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions. POLITICO has this report on the government's plan.

Scanned: From today's Recorder, a report on Google's defense of email snooping. "As lawyers for Google Inc. fought to dismiss a spate of privacy claims, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh pressed them to explain how scanning messages sent through Gmail to target advertisements falls under the company's "ordinary course of business" as an email provider," according to the report. The Los Angeles Times has more on the story here.

Streamed: A Washington federal trial judge late Thursday handed an early victory to major network broadcasters in their fight against a service that provides streaming television online. The BLT has this report. More here in Reuters. Read the judge's ruling here.

Snapped: The authorities have charged a man with voyeurism for a series of photos he took at the Lincoln Memorial, The Washington Post reports. The defendant reportedly told police he didn't think taking photos of underwear was illegal.

Sheppard Mullin Starts as Police Monitor

A team of lawyers from Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton has started as the independent monitor for the New Orleans Police Department, tasked with ensuring that the city is complying with a 2012 consent decree entered with the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a letter dated August 10 to Judge Susie Morgan, Sheppard Mullin managing partner Robert Beall accepted the job on behalf of the firm, cementing the contract with the city of New Orleans. Judge Morgan awarded the contract to Sheppard Mullin on July 5.

Washington office co-managing partner Jonathan Aronie will serve as the primary monitor, with partner David Douglass serving as the deputy monitor. They will be supported by partners Peter Morris and Tracey Kennedy and a team that includes a former police chief.

Former Anti-Fraud Enforcer Joins Stein Mitchell

Updated 2:40 p.m.

The former executive director of the Obama administration’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force will join Stein, Mitchell, Muse & Cipollone next month.

Michael Bresnick, appointed to the post by Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. in 2011, was a top advisor to senior U.S. Justice Department officials on financial fraud investigations and prosecutions. Bresnick officially left DOJ August 1. He will join the boutique firm's Washington office.

President Barack Obama started the task force in 2009 in the wake of the financial crisis to investigate and prosecute fraud. In 2012, under Bresnick's guidance, the task force established the consumer protection working group to tackle consumer fraud.

MIT, Library Urge Intervention in Public Records Suit

Lawyers for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the digital library JSTOR continue to press their fight to intervene in a public records lawsuit to assert control over the scope of information the government is planning to release about the late Aaron Swartz.

In the dispute in Washington federal district court, MIT and JSTOR argue they should have some say over the ability to keep certain details secret before the government provides any information to the public. Wired investigative reporter Kevin Poulsen sued the Department of Homeland Security in April under the Freedom of Information Act. The suit now tests just how big a voice a third party can have in a public records case.

MIT's attorneys at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr said in a court filing Tuesday night that the university, which provided information to law enforcement in the investigation of Swartz in a computer crimes case, "manifested an expectation" that the government would refrain from disclosing confidential information.

Much of the information MIT provided to the authorities, Wilmer lawyers said in their court filing, was in response to grand jury subpoenas amid the Swartz investigation. Swartz was ultimately charged in Boston federal court in connection to his downloading of millions of JSTOR articles via MIT networks. In January, while the case was still pending, he committed suicide.

Postal Inspectors Press on as DOJ Moves to Sidelines

A group of former U.S. Postal Service inspectors who are defendants in a businessman's long-running retaliation suit in Washington have turned to outside counsel to press their challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court as a trial date inches closer.

The Justice Department, which had fought for the inspectors in earlier litigation in the Supreme Court, did not file the latest petition, which asks the justices to review a ruling in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that kept alive businessman William Moore's allegations.

The solicitor general's office has final say on any petitions brought on behalf of federal agencies and officials. That the Justice Department did not pursue the latest legal fight in the high court could mean the government saw no merit in taking the case any higher.

Jeffrey Lamken of Washington's MoloLamken represents the inspectors in the latest Supreme Court action. Lamken couldn't be reached for comment today about the petition, which was filed last week. The document asks the high court to resolve a divide among appellate court over the scope of qualified immunity in cases that alleged retaliatory prosecution.

Justice Dept. Told Not to Delay Aaron Swartz FOIA

A federal trial judge in Washington today urged the government to continue reviewing thousands of pages of documents that could be released in a public records lawsuit seeking information from the Secret Service about the Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

The high-profile suit hit a snag this month when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the digital library JSTOR filed requests to intervene to have a say in the scope of any information that is released to the public.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly didn't immediately rule today on whether she will allow MIT, represented by a team from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, and JSTOR, represented by Debevoise & Plimpton, to intervene in the lawsuit. Wired reporter Kevin Poulsen filed the suit in April in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

An assistant U.S. attorney, Peter Maier, said the government is prepared to release 131 pages of responsive documents. Maier said the department still has upwards of a 8,000 pages that need to be reviewed. The government will not meet an August 5 deadline to file a response to the lawsuit.

Kollar-Kotelly today expressed some concern about any potential slow-down in the processing of the documents about Swartz. "Can we do this quickly?" she asked at one point during a hearing.

Patton Boggs Earns $1.9 Million for Foreign Lobbying

Patton Boggs received payments totaling $1.9 million for lobbying work performed on behalf of overseas governments during the first half of 2013, according to a report filed with the U.S. Department of Justice last week.

The semiannual report was filed July 17 with Main Justice and includes details about the firm’s lobbying work for and income from foreign governments. The disclosure is required under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which covers  firms that lobby in the United States for foreign government entities. Of the 13 foreign clients from which Patton Boggs received payments from January through June, the Embassy of Ecuador doled out the most – $458,000.

Earlier this month, Patton Boggs ended its lobbying relationship with Ecuador, which had hired the firm in 2009. The $780,000-a-year contract was to "improve its reputational image and bilateral relations with the United States." The termination report was filed one day after Ecuador removed itself from trade talks with the United States amid international tension over the asylum application of Edward Snowden, the former government contractor who revealed the existence of a domestic spy program run by the National Security Agency.

MIT, Library Seek Say in Aaron Swartz FOIA Suit

A federal judge is set to explore whether to allow two groups, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to intervene in a lawsuit seeking the public disclosure of government information about Internet activist Aaron Swartz.

MIT, represented by a team from Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, last week filed a request to intervene in the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in Washington. JSTOR, the online database of academic journals, has also asked to step into the litigation.

MIT's lawyers, Wilmer partner Patrick Carome and senior associate Laura Hussain, said in their filed papers that the university should be allowed to have a say in the scope of any information released about Swartz, who killed himself in January as federal computer crimes charges were pending against him in Boston.

Fourth Circuit Voids Protection of Reporter in Leak Case

A sharply divided federal appeals court in Virginia today rejected a New York Times reporter's claim that he cannot be compelled to testify in the prosecution of a former CIA official in a national security case.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned a trial judge's ruling that quashed subpoenas seeking testimony from James Risen in the government's case against former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling. Prosecutors charged Sterling in Alexandria federal district court in 2010 with the unauthorized retention and disclosure of information about a secret CIA operation targeting the Iranian nuclear weapon program.

Risen published a book in 2006 titled "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration" that described, in one chapter, a "failed attempt by the CIA to have a former Russian scientist provide flawed nuclear weapon blueprints to Iran." The details, the Fourth Circuit said, included classified information. Risen has not revealed his sources.

"There is no First Amendment testimonial privilege, absolute or qualified, that protects a reporter from being compelled to testify by the prosecution or the defense in criminal proceedings about criminal conduct that the reporter personally witnessed or participated in, absent a showing of bad faith, harassment, or other such non-legitimate motive, even though the reporter promised confidentiality to his source," Chief Judge William B. Traxler Jr. wrote for the majority. The opinion is here, and click here for audio from the court's hearing.