dpas

Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie

You won’t see GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie testifying in front of a Democratic Party-dominant House Subcommitee in Washington, D.C. – at least not during the Republican Primary.

The subcommittee has rescheduled a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) hearing for June 25th at the request of Republicans on the panel, according to Chairman U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee), co-sponsor of a bill to reform DPAs.

Originally scheduled for May 19, the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law hearing will focus on legislation to reform deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) and the selection of federal monitors, an issue with a concussive effect on New Jersey politics.

Cohen said Democrats rescheduled the hearing date to comply with the entreaties of Republicans on the panel who worried about the distraction factor with a hearing initially schooled at the tail end of a GOP primary campaign – June 2nd - and specifically the impact on GOP gubernatorial candidate Christie, who Cohen asked to testify at the hearing. 

Defense Attorney Ted Wells (center) was among the panelists.

MANHATTAN – Days before a House Judiciary Subcommittee launches hearings on the subject, legal experts at an event hosted by New York University’s School of Law considered whether sufficient checks and balances govern the process by which federal U.S. Attorneys select federal monitors to oversee deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) of corporations.

They also assessed in general the role of politics in prosecution, both at the state and federal level.

“No one should be exercising power without appropriate constraints,” said Michelle Hirshman, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York - but how the government would implement depoliticizing changes to federal monitoring contracts remains a question mark as Congressional lawmakers prepare for hearings.

The multi-paneled discussion unfolded against the backdrop of a gubernatorial bid on the other side of the Hudson River by former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, who during his tenure as New Jersey’s top cop appointed former Attorney General John Ashcroft to a no-bid federal monitoring job potentially worth up to $52 million.

U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) at NYU on Friday.

MANHATTAN – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Paterson) straightened the backs of New York’s legal community yesterday and created a ripple of discomfort when he railed against deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) and government appointment of federal monitors, forcing the event's organizer out of his chair and into mild-mannered damage control mode.

Pointing to the DPAs administered by the government in fraud and alleged fraud cases perpetuated by Bristol-Myers Squibb, AIG, Zimmer Holdings, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) and others – 112 deferred prosecution agreements since 1993 - Pascrell said the process as it currently exists not only diminishes consumer confidence, but breaks down the confidence the average person has in the judicial and prosecutorial system.

Pascrell called the engineers of Medicare fraud at Zimmer Holdings “the real ax murderers of our time,” and charged a weakened U.S. Department of Justice with using deferred prosecution agreements instead of administering real punishment out of a general sense of fear of “dismantling corporations. God forbid that should happen.”

Some House Democrats are touting stories that the Justice Department has awarded mega million dollar federal monitor contracts to oversee deferred prosecution agreements (dpas)to thirty politically connected former prosecutors and government officials as a fledgling scandal, but one key Senate Democrat says he hasn't heard about it yet.

U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), a member (and former Chairman) of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was asked about a New York Times editorial and story on federal monitors and dpas at a press availability yesterday for Frank Lautenberg's re-election campaign.

“What monitors?” asked Biden.