[Infowarrior] - Michael Mukasey to be nominated for Attorney General

[Richard Forno]

Bush to Name Ex-Judge as Successor to Gonzales
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and PHILIP SHENON
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/17/washington/17attorney.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=s
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 ‹ President Bush has decided to nominate Michael B.
Mukasey, a former federal judge from New York who has presided over some
high-profile terrorism trials, as his next attorney general and is expected
to announce the selection Monday, according to several people familiar with
the decision.

Should the Senate confirm him, Mr. Mukasey (pronounced mew-KAY-see) would
become the third attorney general to serve under Mr. Bush. As the top law
enforcement officer in the United States, he would preside over a Justice
Department that has been buffeted by Congressional inquiries into the firing
of federal prosecutors and the resignation of the previous attorney general,
Alberto R. Gonzales.

Unlike Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Mukasey is not a close confidant of the president.
Nor is he a Washington insider. But people in both political parties say he
possesses the two qualities that Mr. Bush has been looking for in a nominee:
a law-and-order sensibility that dovetails with the president¹s agenda for
the fight against terror, and the potential to avoid a bruising confirmation
battle with the Democrats who now run the Senate. With 16 months left in
office, Mr. Bush can ill afford a drawn-out confirmation fight.

One of those Democrats, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, who led the
fight to oust Mr. Gonzales, issued a statement on Sunday evening praising
Mr. Mukasey ‹ a suggestion that Democrats, who are already challenging Mr.
Bush over the war in Iraq, have little appetite for another big fight.

³While he is certainly conservative,² Mr. Schumer said, ³Judge Mukasey seems
to be the kind of nominee who would put rule of law first and show
independence from the White House, our most important criteria. For sure
we¹d want to ascertain his approach on such important and sensitive issues
as wiretapping and the appointment of U.S. attorneys, but he¹s a lot better
than some of the other names mentioned and he has the potential to become a
consensus nominee.²

Mr. Mukasey¹s handling of the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen
suspected of membership in Al Qaeda, has attracted particular notice from
critics of the Bush administration. Although Mr. Mukasey backed the White
House by ruling that Mr. Padilla could be held as an enemy combatant ‹ a
decision overturned on appeal ‹ he also defied the administration by saying
Mr. Padilla was entitled to legal counsel.

Some critics cite the decision as a sign of Mr. Mukasey¹s independence, and
such issues will undoubtedly be front and center during confirmation
hearings.

Beyond Mr. Schumer, who in 2003 suggested Mr. Mukasey as a possible Supreme
Court nominee, the former judge is not well known on Capitol Hill, and it is
impossible to predict how the hearings would go.

When another Democrat, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, was asked on
Sunday about him, he said Mr. Mukasey would have to prove he was ³not just
the president¹s lawyer, but the country¹s lawyer² as well.

³He has to pass that test for me, go through that filter,² Mr. Biden said on
Fox News Sunday.

White House officials refused to discuss the selection on Sunday. But Mr.
Mukasey spent the afternoon at the White House, and by evening the news that
he would be the nominee spilled out. Some White House allies spoke about the
selection as if Mr. Bush had already announced it.

³I think the president, by reaching outside the inner circle, by reaching
outside the usual suspects, is bringing someone who is really going to
restore a lot of integrity to the department,²

said Jay Lefkowitz, a former domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush who now
practices law in New York. Mr. Mukasey, 66, was appointed to the federal
bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, and retired last year to go into
private practice. He spent 19 years as a federal judge in New York,
including as chief judge of the United States District Court for the
Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan. Before that, he was
a prosecutor in Manhattan when Rudolph W. Giuliani was the United States
attorney there. He and his son, Marc, are advisers to Mr. Giuliani¹s
presidential campaign.

But Mr. Mukasey is not viewed as a political partisan, which has troubled
conservatives, many of whom were hoping the president would select Theodore
B. Olson, the former solicitor general, as his nominee. Mr. Olson seemed to
be moving to the top of the president¹s short list last week until Senator
Harry Reid, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Olson could not be confirmed.

Over the weekend, the White House appeared to be floating Mr. Mukasy¹s name
with conservatives. A sign that he would pass muster with them came Saturday
night, when William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, a
conservative magazine, endorsed Mr. Mukasey.

In 1993, Mr. Mukasey presided over the trial of Omar Abdel Rahman, the
so-called Blind Sheik, whom he sentenced to life in prison for his role in a
plot to blow up New York landmarks and tunnels. Mr. Mukasey had a reputation
for decisions that were largely supportive of law enforcement that often
brought criticism from civil-liberty advocates.

He has spoken in support of provisions of the Patriot Act, and last month
wrote an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal on ³the inadequacy of the
current approach to terrorism prosecutions,² a view that the Bush
administration has expressed.

Still, he has garnered praise in some surprising quarters. Glenn Greenwald,
a frequent critic of the administration who writes about legal issues for
Salon.com, assessed Mr. Mukasey¹s part in the Padilla case in an article
over the weekend and praised him as ³very smart and independent, not part of
the Bush circle.²