The St. Louis Cardinals announced yesterday that they had retained the St. Louis law firm of Dowd Bennett to conduct an internal review of the allegations of hacking into the Houston Astros’s database. The Cardinals said they had retained the firm in February, well before it was disclosed this week that the F.B.I. was investigating whether the team had hacked into the database, which is used to track players and prospects.

The internal investigation is being led by NAFUSA members Jim Martin, shown above, and Ed Dowd, shown below, partners at Dowd Bennett. Martin said yesterday that high-level executives of the Cardinals were not involved in the hacking.

“With what we have done so far, I am 100 percent confident that this does not touch upper management,” Jim Martin, said. He added that he was sure the hacking did not involve people like John Mozeliak, the team’s general manager, or Bill DeWitt Jr., its chairman.

The New York Times reported “There has been no indication of how many employees might be under investigation, and Mr. Martin’s comments were the first to suggest that any wrongdoing could be limited to the lower levels of the Cardinals’ organization.”

The internal investigation is not finished and Dowd Bennett is also helping the team cooperate with the federal government.

NAFUSA board member and life member Kevin J. O’Connor has joined Point72 Asset Management as General Counsel, Point72 CEO Steve Cohen and President Doug Haynes announced on May 6, 2015.

“I am excited to join Point72 and its outstanding management team,” O’Connor said. “What made this opportunity so compelling was Steve and Doug’s clear commitment to continue doing what is necessary to build a world-class legal function that will help ensure that Point72 adheres to the highest ethical standards yet maintains its excellent performance. I look forward to being part of such a worthy endeavor.”

O’Connor began his legal career clerking for the Hon. William H. Timbers of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and subsequently joined the SEC, where he investigated securities fraud cases on behalf of the government.

After his service with the SEC, O’Connor returned to Connecticut and practiced law, becoming a partner at the then firm of Day, Berry & Howard in 2001. In 2002, he returned to public service when President George W. Bush nominated him to serve as the U.S. Attorney for Connecticut, a position for which he was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate.

O’Connor served as U.S. Attorney until 2008 when President Bush nominated him to serve as Associate Attorney General, the third-highest ranking position at the DOJ in Washington, D.C. O’Connor was unanimously confirmed again by the Senate and served in that position until 2009.

While at DOJ, O’Connor also served, at the request of the Attorney General as Associate Deputy Attorney General and as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General.

In addition to his public service, O’Connor has a decade of private law firm experience, most recently serving as a partner in Bracewell & Giuliani, where chaired the firm’s white collar practice.

O’Connor graduated with High Honors from the University of Connecticut School of Law in 1992 and earned his BA with Honors from the University of Notre Dame in 1989. He is involved in many non-profit organizations, serving as Vice Chair of the Board of St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, and the Ethics Resource Center.

Point72 Asset Management is a family office managing the assets of its founder, Steven A. Cohen, and eligible employees. Point72 primarily invests in discretionary long/short equities and makes significant quantitative and macro investments. The Firm’s long/short investment divisions are Point72 Asset Management and EverPoint Asset Management. Cubist Systematic Strategies is its quantitative business, Rubric Capital is its deep value, multi-strategy business, and Honeycomb Ventures is its high-growth, technology-focused venture capital investing business. The Firm is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, and maintains offices in New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Singapore. Point72 Asset Management, L.P. is a family office and does not seek, solicit or accept any external investments. www.Point72.com

Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner and Sauber LLP today announced that NAFUSA life member Michael R. Bromwich, former Inspector General for the Department of Justice, has joined the firm as Senior Counsel.  Bromwich will focus on corporate internal investigations and white-collar criminal defense.

Bromwich has practiced law for 35 years in the public and private sector.  He served as an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York (1983-87); Associate Counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel: Iran –Contra (1987-89); Inspector General of the Department of Justice (1994-99); and at the personal request of President Obama, took over the country’s offshore drilling regulatory agency following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

From 1999-2010, Bromwich served as a partner and Chair of the Internal Investigations, Compliance & Monitoring Practice Group at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP in both its Washington, D.C. and New York offices.  During that time he focused his practice on conducting internal investigations for companies, audit committees, special committees, and special litigation committees, and representing both companies and individuals in white-collar criminal investigations.

Bromwich will maintain the consulting firm – The Bromwich Group – that he established in 2012 and which focuses on independent monitoring, public affairs, crisis management, law enforcement, and offshore energy.  He will practice law exclusively with and through Robbins Russell.

Bromwich received his A.B. from Harvard College, his Masters in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He was a panel member on internal investigations at NAFUSA’s 2014 conference in Boston.

A former Baltimore police officer was accused of agreeing with owners of a local repair shop to refer damaged cars to the shop in exchange for cash payments. Under settled precedent, this alleged conduct constitutes extortion “under color of official right.” See Evans v. United States, 504 U.S. 255, 2698, (1992). But the government went further and charged the former officer with a Hobbs Act violation by bringing a separate count for conspiracy to commit extortion under color of official right. The former officer was convicted and the conviction was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit.

Certiorari has been granted by the United States Supreme Court. According to NAFUSA member John Richter, a partner at King & Spalding, “The case presents an important question of statutory interpretation concerning the Hobbs Act: whether a conspiracy to extort ‘property from another’ under the Hobbs Act requires the government to show that the conspirators agreed to obtain property from someone outside the conspiracy.”

Richter has been seeking support from former United States Attorneys who are willing to join a brief in support of petitioner. The amicus brief is expected to be filed June 8 by Baker Botts.

When NAFUSA Board Member Catherine Hanaway was first elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1998, she was a freshman lawmaker in a body dominated by Democrats. By the time she left the House in 2004, she had become its first female Speaker in half a century. After her time in the House, President George W. Bush appointed her U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. Since then, in the private sector, she has built a successful law practice. A mother-of-two who grew up in rural Nebraska and Iowa, Catherine Hanaway is now seeking to be elected as the governor of Missouri.

Learn more about Catherine’s stances on the issues at: Hanaway Quick Sheet