自考|成考|专升本|高升专|高升本|在职研究生-学历教育网

Related

Putting a Covington partner--he spent nearly a decade at the firm--in charge of Justice may have sent a signal to the financial community, whose marquee names are Covington clients. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank are among the institutions that pay for Covington's legal advice, some of it relating to matters before the Department of Justice. But Holder's was not the only face at Justice familiar to Covington clients. Lanny Breuer, who had co-chaired the white-collar defense unit at Covington with Holder, was chosen to head the criminal division at Obama's Justice. Two other Covington lawyers followed Holder into top positions, and Holder's principal deputy, James Cole, was recruited from Bryan Cave LLP, another white-shoe firm with A-list finance clients.

Justice's defenders point out that prosecuting financial crime is a complicated matter requiring the highly specialized expertise found in the white-collar defense bar. But some suggest there is also the potential for conflicting interest when the department's top officials come from lucrative law practices representing the very financial institutions that Justice is supposed to be investigating. "And that's where they're going back to," says Black. "Everybody knows there is a problem with that." (Two members of Holder's team have already returned to Covington.) A spokesperson for Covington was not available for comment. (Newsweek uses the firm as outside counsel.)

Top bankers after meeting with Obama, who told them “my administration is the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks.” (Mark Wilson / Getty Images)

Justice's inaction regarding the big Wall Street firms is not for a lack of suspicious activity. Three different government entities exhaustively examined the practices that contributed to the financial collapse, and each has referred its findings to the department for possible criminal investigation. One such matter involved a 2007 transaction by Goldman Sachs, in which Goldman created an investment, based on mortgage-backed securities, that seemed designed to fail. Goldman allowed a client who was betting against the mortgage market to help shape the investment instrument, which was called Abacus 2007-AC1; then both Goldman and the client bet against the investment without informing other clients (whose investments were wagers on its success) how the securities included in the portfolio were selected. These uninformed clients lost more than $1 billion on the investment. In 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman with securities fraud "for making materially misleading statements and omissions" in marketing the investment. The SEC, which conducts only civil litigation, referred the case to Justice for criminal investigation.

A year later, in April 2011, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Democrat Carl Levin, after a two-year inquiry, issued a fat report detailing several transactions, including Goldman's Abacus deal, that Levin and his staff believed should be investigated by Justice as possible crimes. The subcommittee made a formal referral to the department (as did the federal Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, chaired by Phil Angelides), and Levin publicly stated his view that criminal inquiry was warranted. Goldman executives, including the firm's chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, started hiring defense lawyers.

Meanwhile, Obama's political operation continued to ask Wall Street for campaign money. A curious pattern developed. A Newsweek examination of campaign finance records shows that, in the weeks before and after last year's scathing Senate report, several Goldman executives and their families made large donations to Obama's Victory Fund and related entities, some of them maxing out at the highest individual donation allowed, $35,800, even though 2011 was an electoral off-year. Some of these executives were giving to Obama for the first time.

Justice insists that political operations such as fundraising are kept strictly distanced from the department, in order to avoid even the appearance of political influence. But the attorney general and his team are not unfamiliar with the process; Holder was himself an Obama bundler--a fundraiser who collected large sums from various donors--in 2008, as were several other lawyers who joined him at Justice.

1505847972	1256358232	1363884583	1902839745	800072298	754854002
中专升大专	中专升本科	高升专	高升本	专升本	自考