Why these two levels of justice? Could this disparity simply be a case that the big banks will fight charges more aggressively, thus making criminal prosecutions more difficult? Maybe. But it also undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that the top leadership at DOJ is drawn almost exclusively from White Collar Criminal Defense Practices at large firms that represent the very firms that Justice is supposed to be investigating. Covington and Burling, the firm from which both Attorney General Eric Holder and Associate Attorney General and head of the criminal division Lanny Breuer hail, has as its current clients Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, ING, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and MF Global among others. Other top Justice officials have similar connections through their firms.
White Collar Criminal Defense work has become one of the few revenue bright spots for large firms. According to a detailed analysis by the Professor Charles D. Weisselberg of UC-Berkeley in the Arizona Law Review, there is big money to be made because “this area of practice is not susceptible to the same types of cost controls” that apply to other legal work. In short, white collar criminal defense work is “enormously lucrative.”
Eric Holder left Covington with a $2.5 million salary and a seven figure bonus. If he returns to Covington (as two of his colleagues at Justice already have) a similar payday certainly awaits him.
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