Paul Fishman

The Senate Judiciary Committee will meet next Thursday morning to consider Paul Fishman’s nomination for New Jersey U.S. Attorney.

The committee was scheduled to consider Fishman’s nomination today, along with Washington State Western District nominee Jenny Durkan, but the committee’s ranking Republican member – Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) – requested a delay.

Fishman and Durkan will now be considered along with Hawaii nominee Florence T. Nakakuni and Nebraska nominee Deborah K. R. Gilg.  Once they pass through the committee, the full Senate will vote on their confirmations.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will not decide whether to kick up the nomination of New Jersey U.S. Attorney nominee Paul Fishman for a vote in the full Senate.

Caley Gray – a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park), who is not on the Judiciary Committee but who recommended Fishman to President Obama – said that Fishman’s nomination will be taken up by the committee next week.  The same applies for Jennifer Durkan, who was nominated as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington State.  

“It’s just procedural.  Neither of the U.S. Attorneys are being considered,” said Gray.

The committee's ranking Republican member, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), requested postponement of the consideration of the Fishman and Durkan nomination, though it is not yet clear why.  A spokesman for Sessions could not immediately be reached for comment.  Members of the committee are allowed to hold over nominations that appear on the agenda for the first time for one week.

U.S. Attorney-designate Paul Fishman

The postponement of the Senate Judiciary Committee's consideration of Paul Fishman as the next U.S. Attorney from New Jersey is indeed curious.  It makes you wonder if the nominee's chief patron, U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park), doesn't have the clout to keep Fishman on the agenda.  Is there a problem because Fishman represented the embattled EnCap project from 2007 to 2009?  Or is it more sinister: do Democrats want to keep Fishman out until after the gubernatorial election so they can continue to blame Republican Christopher Christie's allies for delays in fulfilling document requests? 

President Barack Obama nominated Paul Fishman on June 4.  Five of the seven federal prosecutors nominated that day won Senate confirmation before they recessed in August, but Fishman, who was in the original group of Obama U.S. Attorney appointments, was not one of them.   Fishman was on the Judiciary Committee's agenda as recently as 10AM this morning, but the committee chairman announced that discussion of his nomination would be rescheduled.

A spokeswoman for the Senate panel told PolitickerNJ.com that committee rules permit any item listed on the agenda for the first time can be held over at the request of any Senator for one week.

Democrats have criticized Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra, a Democrat, for delaying the release of documents requested by Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign under the Freedom of Information Act.  Democrats have accused the Office of the U.S. Attorney of deliberately delaying the release of the requested FOIA documents, inferring that they are trying to help Christie.  Marra has said the request involves considerable work, including the removal of legal papers that are not public, and says he's working with the FOIA office at the Department of Justice.  Once Fishman takes over, the decision to release documents related to Christie will be is.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) just announced that a hearing on the nomination of Paul Fishman as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, scheduled for today, will be held over.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet at 10AM today to consider the nomination of Paul Fishman as the U.S. Attorney from New Jersey.  Fishman was nominated earlier this year by President Barack Obama after winning the recommendation of New Jersey's two U.S. Senators, Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez.

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The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the nomination of Paul Fishman as U.S. Attorney for next Thursday. The full Senate typically votes on confirmations soon after committee approval; a delay would be suspicious. That means Fishman could be in control of the federal prosecutor's office in Newark by the end of September. 

Fishman now becomes a player in the race for governor.  Democrats have criticized Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra, a Democrat, for delaying the release of documents requested by Gov. Jon Corzine's campaign under the Freedom of Information Act.  Democrats have accused the Office of the U.S. Attorney of deliberately delaying the release of the requested FOIA documents, inferring that they are trying to help Christie.  Marra has said the request involves considerable work, including the removal of legal papers that are not public, and says he's working with the FOIA office at the Department of Justice.  Once Fishman takes over, the decision to release documents related to his predecessor, Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie, will be is.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will consider moving attorney Paul Fishman's nomination forward, The Star-Ledger reports.

The committee has scheduled a meeting for next Thursday, September 17, at 10am to consider whether to send Fishman's nomination on to the Senate for a confirmation vote.  Also up for consideration is a U.S. Attorney nominee for the Western District of Washington.  

Fishman, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who once served in that office’s No. 2 spot, is currently a partner in the firm Friedman Kaplan Seiler & Adelman, where he specializes in white collar criminal defense.  He was nominated by President Obama in May.  

Since former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie left the office in December, his former First Assistant U.S. Attorney, Ralph Marra, has headed up the office in an acting capacity. 

New Jerseyan Philip Murphy did not make a very good impression on his first day as the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, according to a Congressional Quarterly report.   Murphy, who was a top executive at Goldman Sachs and the Democratic National Committee Finance Chairman, apparently arrived in Berlin last month on a Gulfstream V jet just as the German press "was describing how top embassy posts in the Obama administration were going almost exclusively to wealthy campaign donors."

The "ostentatious top-of-the-line executive jet that left German Chancellor Angela Merkel grinding her teeth over President Obama's gift of ambassadorships to wealthy donors," the report said. 

From CQ:

President Barack Obama submitted his first seven nominations for U.S. Attorneys on June 4.   The U.S. Senate confirmed five of the seven on August 7, but New Jersey's Paul Fishman was not one of them.  The five who were confirmed came from New York (Southern District), Alabama, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Vermont. 

Until the Senate confirms Fishman, which is unlikely to be any earlier than next month, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra will remain in the post he's held since Christopher Christie resigned on December 1, 2008 to seek the Republican nomination for Governor.  The Associated Press, citing two unnamed sources, reported earlier this week that the Department of Justice is investigating whether Marra made inappropriate public comments during a high profile announcement of public corruption cases that might have boosted the Christie campaign.

Representatives of New Jersey's two U.S. Senators, Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) and Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken), continue to predict a smooth confirmation for Fishman, who jointly recommended his appointment to Obama in February.  But Lautenberg and Menendez have not been able to get the Democratic-controlled Senate to move forward on Fishman.  They have not said why.

President Obama's nominee for U.S. Attorney, Paul Fishman, is expected to win a speedy confirmation by the United States Senate and could be in office as early as this summer.