Is someone playing politics with Fishman confirmation?

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.

Fishman was recommended for the post by Lautenberg U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) last February.  The post has been vacant since Republican Christie resigned on December 1.  Marra is now the Acting U.S. Attorney.

The 52-year-old Fishman, a Princeton University graduate and editor of the Harvard Law Review, worked in the U.S. Attorney's office as Chief of the Criminal Division and as First Assistant before going to Washington as a senior advisor to Reno and as a Deputy U.S. Attorney General.  Fishman is a partner at Friedman, Kaplan, Seiler and Adelman, where he specializes in white collar criminal matters.  Fishman has represented several public officials prosecuted by Christie, and is currently an attorney for former CWA Local 1034 President Carla Katz, who is seeking to keep her e-mail correspondence with Gov. Jon Corzine private.

Lautenberg pushed hard for Fishman to get the U.S. Attorney post when Faith Hochberg was nominated to a federal judgeship in 1999.  But Fishman got in the middle of a rather extraordinary public feud between Lautenberg and U.S. Senator Robert Torricelli.  The Clinton administration sided with Torricelli, and when Hochberg resigned to take her seat on the bench (after a lengthy delay in the confirmation process), Attorney General Janet Reno elevated Torricelli's preferred choice, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Cleary, as New Jersey's interim federal prosecutor.