NAFUSA member Don DeGabrielle has joined the Government Investigations & White Collar Criminal Defense section of Chaffe McCall, L.L.P in Houston.

As a 35-year veteran of legal services, DeGabrielle’s experience includes defending a wide range of white collar criminal matters including violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), healthcare fraud, immigration worksite enforcement matters, intellectual property and data intrusion statues. He has worked with clients on securities, compliance and corporate governance matters, criminal anti-trust statutes, bank and insurance fraud, and environmental regulations. He has also represented clients who have been victims of embezzlement and extortion.   His career in federal law enforcement includes service as a Special Agent with the FBI, an Assistant District Attorney, an Assistant U.S. Attorney, and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. He has prosecuted matters involving public corruption, white-collar and environmental crimes, bank fraud, and general criminal and narcotics offenses.

DeGabrielle was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006 and sworn in as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas. Prior to this time he served as First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Chief of the the Criminal Division and held an assignment with the Public Integrity Unit. He spent a year as the Resident Legal Advisor to the South African National Directorate of Public Prosecutions, where he served as a consultant and advisor for rule of law and criminal justice development. In addition to his tenure as the U.S. Attorney, he served as an Assistant District Attorney in New Orleans, where he prosecuted more than 150 jury trials and also served as a former FBI Special Agent in New York and New Orleans.

Chaffe McCall is a full service law firm with a rich history of serving clients regionally, nationally, and internationally to address the challenges they face in numerous industry areas. Founded in 1826, Chaffe McCall LLP is Louisiana’s oldest law firm, with offices in Houston, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lake Charles.

NAFUSA lifetime member John McKay continues his residency in Ramallah, Palestine, where for the past two years he has headed the U.S. State Dept. (INL) rule of law program supporting Palestinian public prosecutors, police and security services. (See February 7, 2015 post)

Recently he was visited by NAFUSA members Debra Yang and Marc Jimenez as they toured the Masada Fortress near the Dead Sea. McKay will take them on to visit Bethlehem and Nazareth today, before ending up in Tel Aviv tomorrow. Deb Yang reported, “Learning so much about the region, the people, and the history from our dear friend John McKay. He is doing the ‘good work’ out here.”

Yang will be busy upon her return to the U.S. According to a filing in the Northern District of California on April 13, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher have replaced Uber’s prior legal team in its litigation over whether the company’s drivers are employees or independent contractors. Yang, of Gibson’s Los Angeles office, will be part of the new legal team.

Deb Yang, John McKay, Marc Jimenez

President Matt Orwig has scheduled the Spring NAFUSA meeting of the officers and board of directors for May 16, 2015 in Nashville, Tennessee. Orwig has also named Past President Jay Stephens, shown left, to a new position as Counsel to the Board.

Board member Hal Hardin will serve as the host in Nashville, having served as U.S. Attorney in the Middle District of Tennessee, 1977-1981. Hardin’s Tennessee roots are shown by this article Prison Mates published in the Nashville Bar Journal in March 2015, where Hal reflects on his ancestors who fought in the the battle of New Orleans under General Andrew Jackson and the Civil War. Hal’s great grandfather, Isaac Henry Hardin was captured by General Ulysses S. Grant.

Hardin met last week in Big Bend National Park with Executive Director Rich Rossman and Executive Director Emeritus Ron Woods, where they vacationed with Susan Adzick, Patty Rossman, and Patty Woods. There was absolutely no discussion of NAFUSA matters, but there was a great time had by all.

Ron Woods, Hal Hardin, Rich Rossman

On February 25, 2015, President Obama nominated NAFUSA member Cono R. Namorato to be the Assistant Attorney General of the Tax Division (see:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/25/presidential-nominations-sent-senate).  The  Senate must now consider and vote on the nomination.  The White House Website included the following information about Mr. Namorato, who is a Tax Division alumnus:

Cono R. Namorato, Nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division, Department of Justice
Cono R. Namorato is currently a Member of the law firm Caplin & Drysdale, a position he has held since 2006 and previously from 1978 to 2004.  From 2004 to 2006, Mr. Namorato served as Acting Deputy Commissioner for certain designated matters and as Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the Department of the Treasury.  Before beginning his career at Caplin & Drysdale, Mr. Namorato held various positions within the Tax Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ), including Deputy Assistant Attorney General from 1977 to 1978, Assistant Chief and then Chief of the Criminal Section from 1973 to 1977, and Supervisory Trial Attorney and Trial Attorney from 1968 to 1973.  Mr. Namorato began his career in 1963 as a Special Agent for the Criminal Investigation Division of the IRS in the Brooklyn District.  He is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel.  Mr. Namorato has headed various tax-related committees and subcommittees for the American Bar Association, serving as Chair of the Tax Section’s Subcommittee on Criminal Tax Policy, Chair of the Committee on Tax Litigation, and Co-Chair of the Committee on Complex Criminal Litigation of the Litigation Section.  Mr. Namorato received a B.B.A. from Iona College and a J.D. from Brooklyn Law School.
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/02/24/president-obama-announces-more-key-administration-posts)

Robins Kaplan LLP announced on Monday, March 16, 2015,  that Brendan Johnson, shown left, former U.S. Attorney for the District of South Dakota, and Tim Purdon, shown below, former U.S. Attorney for the District of North Dakota, have joined the firm. They will open and head the firm’s newest offices in Sioux Falls, S.D., and Bismarck, N.D. Johnson and Pardon are also NAFUSA’s newest members, both having joined this week.

Johnson and Purdon join as partners in the firm’s Government and Internal Investigations Group, and will also focus on further developing the firm’s work with American Indian Tribes. They both join the firm’s Personal Injury Group as well, and Johnson will also focus his practice on commercial litigation.

“We are thrilled to welcome Brendan and Tim to Robins Kaplan, and couldn’t envision two more qualified lawyers to expand our national internal investigations and white-collar crime capabilities, as well as our work on behalf of tribal communities,” said Martin Lueck, Chairman of Robins Kaplan’s Executive Board.

As South Dakota’s top federal prosecutor for five and a half years, Johnson managed a broad range of cases including financial and healthcare fraud, public corruption, violent crime, narcotics, and trafficking. Frequently praised for his work against human trafficking, he was the recipient of the 2014 Shared Hope International Pathbreaker of the Year Award, and more than 30 men were prosecuted for criminal sex trafficking under his watch, resulting in more life sentences than any other federal district. Johnson also was heavily involved in the state’s Indian Country, developing a community prosecution strategy that helped increase prosecutions by more than 90 percent on South Dakota’s largest reservations.

Purdon, appointed U.S. Attorney in August 2010, managed a broad range of cases, and—similar to Johnson—focused much of his work on combatting sex trafficking and violent crime. He designed an anti-violence strategy for North Dakota Indian reservations, which markedly improved communications between the U.S. Attorney’s office and the tribes while increasing reservation prosecutions district-wide by more than 80 percent. He also designed and implemented the U.S.A.O.’s victim-centered strategy to counter the increasing threat of sex trafficking in North Dakota.

Both Johnson and Purdon were nominated by President Barack Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. They each spent time in private practice before joining the Department of Justice.

“As a longtime colleague and friend, I couldn’t be more excited to continue my partnership with Tim at Robins Kaplan,” said Johnson. “We look forward to bringing our experience to clients nationally, as well as in North Dakota and South Dakota.”

“Throughout my 20-year career as an attorney—both in private practice and as U.S. Attorney—I’ve worked hard to protect the people of North Dakota. The opportunity to continue that mission with the great attorneys at Robins Kaplan and with my close friend Brendan has me excited about the next chapter in my career,” added Purdon.

In a project of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, in partnership with the American Conservative Union Foundation and Justice Fellowship, over 70 of the most influential figures in the national conservative movement, including several members of NAFUSA, have published “Right On Crime”, a Statement of Principles.

In the preamble, The Statement states:

Conservatives are known for being tough on crime, but we must also be tough on criminal justice spending. That means demanding more cost-effective approaches that enhance public safety. A clear example is our reliance on prisons, which serve a critical role by incapacitating dangerous offenders and career criminals but are not the solution for every type of offender. And is some instances, they have the unintended consequence of hardening nonviolent, low-risk offenders- making them a greater risk to the public than when they entered.

 

Click here to read the Right on Crime: Statement of Principles and a list of the signatories.

NAFUSA Director Hal Hardin was quoted in the February 27, 2015, issue of the International Business Times. The article, “Amid Federal Corruption Probe, Andrew Cuomo Administration Purges State Government Emails”, discusses the reported mass purging of email records by the Cuomo administration. The IBTimes interviewed a number of former prosecutors and open-government advocates.

“The government belongs to the people and the government has to be transparent,” said Hal Hardin, a former judge and U.S. Attorney who famously investigated Gov. Ray Blanton of Tennessee. “Citizens ought to be able to know what our government is doing. The average email generated by a government owned by the people should be available to the people.”

Click here to read the entire IBTimes article.

Former NAFUSA Executive Director Ron Woods began his career with the FBI fifty years ago. His reminiscences were published on February 15, 2015, on xboys network, an email group of 3300 ex FBI agents. The photo was taken when Ron was invited to J. Edgar Hoover’s office for a private meeting when he was admitted to the Supreme Court in 1967. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a photo of Ron with the famous fedora.

Fifty years ago today, 22 young males, most in their twenties,  met in an FBI office on the fifth floor of the DOJ Building, where we were introduced to our Class Counselor, GERALD D. COAKLEY, a poster image of an FBI agent and a good man, along with Training Supervisor SI ‘THE SPY’ TULLAI, famous for his involvement in the RUDOLPH ABEL Russian spy case (arrested and convicted in 1957; traded for U-2 pilot Gary Powers in 1962)

We were sworn in, filled out all of the paperwork, took the language aptitude test, and received our official Bureau names.  The next day, 20 of us were on the navy gray school bus to Quantico.  It was never explained what happened to the other two.

In 1965, the FBI was still using its original Academy, opened in 1940 on the Quantico Marine Base. After several additions during increased agent training in WW II and the Korean War, the Academy was then a three story building with a basement, which housed the gym and the gun cleaning room.  We began our defensive tactics and firearms training under GEORGE  ZEISS, a giant of a man and a truly legendary FBI Agent. His defensive tactics training and firearms training mantra was “It’s better to be judged by 12 in the box rather than be carried by 12 in a box.”  Of course, we had all seen him in “The FBI Story” and were eager to follow his instructions. His pistol shooting demonstrations were truly spectacular. He could shoot a playing card in half edgewise by pointing the .38 special revolver over his shoulder and using the stone in his ring to sight in. Another trick was splitting a bullet on an ax and breaking targets on both sides.  In the summer of 1968, GEORGE and KEN BOUNDS were sent by DIRECTOR HOOVER to London to bring back JAMES EARL RAY, who had been arrested there for the April 1968 murder of MARTIN LUTHER KING,JR.

Our firearms training focused on the .38 Special Smith and Wesson revolver, the 1903 .30-06 Springfield rifle (never understood why the Bureau was still using this WW I rifle), the .45 Thompson Submachine gun and the Remington 870 shotgun. The FBI had great outdoor ranges for each of the different weapons. For some of us, this was the best part of the 14 week training.

Our counselor explained to us that everyone must wear a hat while in Washington because DIRECTOR HOOVER believed that all professionals wore a hat with their dark suits and white shirts. We all bought pretty much the same fedora at a clothing store in Quantico. When we returned to Washington, we were the only ones in town wearing hats. When we made the frequent walk from the DOJ Building to the Old Post Office and back to attend classes, we stood out like a sore thumb with our identical hats, dark suits, white shirts and all carrying identical leather government briefcases.  This scene was later parodied in a 1967 James Coburn movie, “The President’s Analyst”

Four of us rented an apartment in Arlington and drove in every day for classes in Washington, which were held in the DOJ Building and The Old Post Office, which was in a terrible state of disrepair before its first renovation in 1977. Our class alternated between Quantico and Washington during the 14 weeks training.  EFRAM ZIMBLAST, JR attended several of our classes in Washington and firearms in Quantico as he was preparing for the television show, The FBI, which started in September 1965.

The most memorable teacher during this period was CHARLIE DONELAN, who led the legal training.   He was very humorous with his melancholic (his favorite word) factual situations calling for a legal solution. He was an excellent teacher. The 20 member class ultimately met and shook hands with DIRECTOR HOOVER in his office, making sure we had dry palms as the DIRECTOR did not like damp, clammy handshakes.  The only time that we observed the counselor become nervous.  A few days later we heard the rumor that in one of the classes, after the ritual hand shaking, DIRECTOR HOOVER had told the counselor to “get rid of the guy with the funny shaped head”. Since the counselor had no idea which agent HOOVER meant, the counselor looked at all of the hat sizes to find one out of the ordinary. At any rate, we did not lose any class member and we chalked the story up to the numerous HOOVER rumors.

We eventually received our first office assignments, following DIRECTOR HOOVER’S mandate that each agent was sent to a different part of the country from which he came; i.e. north to south and vice versa. This was especially so since the NOVEMBER 1964 flare up between MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR and DIRECTOR HOOVER. KING had publicly claimed the FBI was not doing its job on civil rights in the South because all of the agents there were from the South. DIRECTOR HOOVER responded by publicly calling KING the “most notorious liar in the country” and pointed out that his policy had long been to assign northern agents to the South. True to form, the Yankees in our class all got assigned to southern offices and we southerners were sent north. Only one was sent west, to San Diego.

Times were much more simple fifty years ago.

RON WOODS

1965-1968

Cincinnati; Columbus RA; Defense Language Institute, Monterey, CA; New York City; San Juan, P.R.

 

NAFUSA Past President (1992-1993) Dan Hedges, and his wife, Adele, were featured in the February 16, 2015, issue of the Texas Lawyer. The article entitled “Love in Law: Legendary Lawyer Couples Talk About Life and Love”, the Hedges were one of two married couples of Texas lawyers profiled in how they have juggled their busy careers, raised families and found time to enjoy each other.

The Hedges first met when they were on opposing moot court teams in law school. Their relationship began when they were both associates at Fulbright & Jaworski in the 70s. Dan served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of Texas (1981-1985) and is currently a partner at Porter & Hedges in Houston. Adele served eleven years on the First Court of Appeals in Houston, and ten years as the Chief Justice of the Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston, retiring in 2013 to open an appeals and mediation practice in Houston.

Click here to read the article about the Hedges: Texas Lawyer Love in Law Digital Edition 2_16_2015.