Archive for the ‘Eric Holder’ Category

California Assembly decides not to retain former US Atty. Gen. Eric Holder as outside counsel, parting from Senate – Los Angeles Times

June 1, 2017, 12:23 p.m.

The California Assembly has decided not to continue its contract with former U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder, even as the Senate says it plans to keep him as outside counsel for legal strategy against the Trump administration.

Speaker Anthony Rendon (D-Paramount) said in a statement that Holder's firm, Covington & Burling, has provided "valuable guidance" since itwashired on a short-term contract in February.

"We will continue to seek their guidance as the need arises," Rendon said.

The Senate, meanwhile, said it plans to continue with its high-profile hire, which signaled the aggressive posture California was taking against President Trump.

Dan Reeves, chief of staff to Senate leader Kevin de Len (D-Los Angeles) said the firm's "advice and guidance has been very valuable to the Senate in responding to the Trump administration's sustained attack on California's polices and values."

"We currently have a number of ongoing projects with Covington and plan to continue that valuable relationship," Reeves continued.

He did not specify how the Senate plans to pay to continue its work with Covington. The contract initially from February through April and then extended for one additional month was set at $25,000 per month, split between the operating budgets of both houses, with a limit on 40 hours of attorney work each month.

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California Assembly decides not to retain former US Atty. Gen. Eric Holder as outside counsel, parting from Senate - Los Angeles Times

Eric Holder to tell Uber what exactly is wrong with them on Wednesday – Fast Company

Amazon, hungry for content for its Prime Video service, has inked a new deal to develop original documentaries with Investigative Reporting Productions, a nonprofit documentary production company connected tothe University of California, Berkeley.

The deal will give Amazon "first look" rights to IRP's projects, while theuniversity will retain intellectual property rights. "For the first time since the serious decline in journalism's economic model, there is a commercial market for reliable nonfiction production,"John Temple, managing editor of the journalism school's Investigative Reporting Program, told Nieman Lab earlier this month. "Why not take advantage of that?"

Lowell Bergman, the legendary investigative reporter and the company's chairman, said the deal was "huge." "Anybody who's familiar with my work knows that I've been looking to create a new model to support investigative journalism," he wrote on the IRP website.

The Berkeley deal, whose terms are confidential,is Amazon's first big step toward news publishing.CEO Jeff Bezos is already deeply invested in journalism. In 2013 he bought The Washington Post for $250 million, and last week donated $1 million to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a group that provides legal support to journalists.

Meanwhile, Amazon's spending on video doubled during the second half of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015. The company also nearly tripled the new TV shows and movies it offers to Amazon Prime members, and is estimated to spend $4.5 billion on video this year as it competes with other streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube. [Monday Note via Geekwire]

[Photo by Steve Jurvetson] AP

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Eric Holder to tell Uber what exactly is wrong with them on Wednesday - Fast Company

Uber board reportedly receiving Eric Holder’s report this week … – TechCrunch

Ubers board of directors will reportedly hear the results of former Attorney General Eric Holders investigation into its workplace culture on Wednesday, according to Axios. The investigation by Holder was announced after former Uber employee Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing her own experience at the company, including accounts of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination.

Holder and colleague Tammy Albarran, who are partners at law firm Covington & Burling, are leading the investigation, which will report its results to the full board. Since its outset, Holders team has been reporting weekly with updates to an Uber board subcommittee, including David Bonderman, Bill Gurley and Arianna Huffington, on the investigations progress. In April, Holder and Albarran requested more time to complete their investigation, which Huffington at the time noted consists of info received from hundreds of employees.

At the time, Huffington noted that the revised timing for the delivery of the reports results was the end of May, which fits with a presentation later this week. The results of the report will be made public once received by Ubers board, according to comments made by Huffington during a press call in March discussing the steps Uber has taken to address its workplace culture and employment practices. Axios notes that the timing of the reports reception could change given the recent passing of Uber CEO Travis Kalanicks mother, which occurred suddenly during a boating accident this past weekend.

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Uber board reportedly receiving Eric Holder's report this week ... - TechCrunch

Tough-on-crime official eyes other policies on DOJ agenda – ABC News

A zealous prosecutor who was crucial in writing the Justice Department's new policy encouraging harsher punishments for criminals is now turning his attention to hate crimes, marijuana and the ways law enforcement seizes suspects' cash and property.

Steve Cook's hardline views on criminal justice were fortified as a cop on the streets of Knoxville, Tennessee, in the late 1970s and early '80s. The unabashed drug warrior is now armed with a broad mandate to review departmental policies, and observers already worried about Attorney General Jeff Sessions' agenda are wringing their hands at Cook's ascension.

After some 30 years of prosecuting mostly violent crimes, Cook sums up his philosophy in simple terms that crystalized one night on patrol when he came upon a family whose station wagon had been hit head-on by a "pilled-up drug user." Two daughters were dead in the backseat. In Cook's eyes, everyone had to be punished, including the courier who shuttled the drugs into town and the dealer who sold them to the man behind the wheel.

"This theory that we have embraced since the beginning of civilization is, when you put criminals in prison, crime goes down," he told The Associated Press during a recent interview. "It really is that simple."

It is actually a widely challenged view, seen by many as far from simple. But it is one that governs Cook as he helps oversee a new Justice Department task force developing policies to fight violent crime in cities. Already he is pushing ideas that even some Republicans have dismissed as outdated and fiscally irresponsible.

Cook helped craft Sessions' directive this month urging the nation's federal prosecutors to seek the steepest penalties for most crime suspects, a move that will send more people to prison for longer, and which was assailed by critics as a revival of failed drug war policies that ravaged minority communities.

Former Attorney General Eric Holder, whose more lenient policies contributed to a decline in the federal prison population for the first time in decades, slammed the reversal of his work as "driven by voices who have not only been discredited but until now have been relegated to the fringes of this debate."

Cook finds the criticism baffling. All this discussion of criminal justice changes takes the focus off the real victims, he said: drug addicts, their families and those killed and injured as the nation's opioid epidemic rages.

"For me, it's like the world is turned upside-down," Cook said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We now somehow see these drug traffickers as the victims. That's just bizarre to me."

Even some police and prosecutors supported recent bipartisan efforts to reduce some mandatory minimum sentences and give judges greater discretion in sentencing, a reversal of 1980s and '90s-era "tough-on-crime" laws. But Cook sees today's relatively low crime rates as a sign that those policies worked.

Long, mandatory minimum sentences can goad informants into cooperating and ensure drug peddlers stay locked up for as long as possible, he said.

As a defense attorney in 1986, Bill Killian recalled being unable to convince Cook then a rookie prosecutor to agree to leniency for his client, whom he described as a minor player in a massive meth lab operating in the wooded farmland of eastern Tennessee. The man had no criminal past and was not profiting like the ringleaders.

"He wanted the maximum, whatever the maximum could be," Killian said. More than 20 years later, Killian became U.S. attorney for that region, and Cook was chief of the criminal division, overseeing mostly violent crime, gang and drug cases.

When Holder told prosecutors in 2013 that they could leave drug quantities out of charging documents, so as not to charge certain suspects with crimes that would trigger long sentences, Cook was aghast, Killian said. Killian, meanwhile, embraced Holder's so-called smart-on-crime approach, which encouraged leniency for offenders who weren't violent or weren't involved in leading an organization.

Obama administration officials cited a drop in the overall number of drug prosecutions as evidence the policies were working as intended. Holder argued prosecutors were getting pickier about the cases they were bringing and said data showed they could be just as successful inducing cooperation from defendants without leveraging the threat of years-long mandatory minimum punishments.

But to Cook, there is no such thing as a low-level offender.

"Steve Cook thinks that everyone who commits a crime ought to be locked up in jail," Killian said. "He and I have philosophical differences about that that won't ever be reconciled."

Now Cook is detailed to the deputy attorney general's office in Washington, studying policies to see how they reconcile with Sessions' top priorities: quashing illegal immigration and violence. Cook has been traveling the country alongside Sessions as he espouses his tough-on-crime agenda, seeking input from law enforcement officials that he will take to the task force as it crafts its recommendations, which are due in July.

He offers no hints about what lies ahead. But those advocating changes to the justice system are nervous. With Sessions and Cook in powerful positions, such efforts are in peril, said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

"You've put the arch enemies of criminal justice reform in charge of the U.S. Justice Department, you've made the hill a little steep," he said. Of Cook, he added, "He is out of central casting for old school prosecutors, and he's nothing if not earnest. I think he is profoundly misguided, but it's certainly not an act."

The National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys, which Cook led before his new assignment, said his ascendancy within the Justice Department bodes well for prosecutors who felt handcuffed by Obama-era policies.

Lawrence Leiser, the group's new president, called him inspiring.

"His heart and soul is in everything he does," he said. "And he is a strong believer in the rule of law."

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Tough-on-crime official eyes other policies on DOJ agenda - ABC News

Former AG Eric Holder Calls Jeff Sessions New Policy ‘Dumb on Crime’ – AppsforPCdaily

Officials say Holder's "Smart on Crime" policy "convoluted the process", and left prosecutors applying the law unevenly, which they said "is not Justice".

The memo sent by Sessions also rescinded the policies of former attorney general Eric Holder Jr., effectively immediately. He added that Sessions' policy was an "unwise and ill-informed decision" and that Congress should enact criminal-justice legislature to reverse the move. We will not allow the Attorney General to turn the clock back on federal criminal justice reform. However, the federal prison population is expected to grow under Sessions' watch, considering both his battle against drug offenses and the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, said in a statement that Sessions is trying to revive the "war on drugs", which she said "treated drugs, addiction and substance abuse as a crime instead of as a public health issue".

Sessions said the crackdown was "a key part of President Trump's promise to keep America safe", linking drug trafficking to increased homicide rates in some cities.

Sessions, who is also threatening to unwind police reform and recently said marijuana is "nearly as unsafe as heroin" (it is not), is certainly not going to let extremely clear facts and figures get in the way of his obsession with stuffing as many black and brown people into prisons and detention centers as he possibly can. It means that we are going to meet our responsibility to enforce the law with judgment and fairness.

"If you are a drug trafficker we will not look the other way, we will not be willfully blind to your misconduct", he said, promising that prosecutors would focus on traffickers and not low-level drug users. Harsher sentences don't work to deter crime, research has shown. Earlier this year, Sessions reversed a directive from the previous deputy attorney general Sally Yates that would stop the use of private prisons for holding federal prisoners. Ofer said that the new policy will harm communities and set minorities "on a vicious cycle of incarceration". It would also cut the Drug-Free Communities Support Program, which funds programs to prevent substance abuse among young people.

The Sessions memo was largely crafted by Steven H. Cook, a federal prosecutor who was president of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys and is now detailed to the Justice Department.

"To be tough on crime we have to be smart on crime".

Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, an organization of almost 200 current and former police chiefs, sheriffs, and prosecutors, called the move an "ineffective way to protect public safety".

Faith leaders across the country have opposed Sessions' confirmation as USA attorney general with petitions and statements, calling him unfit to make decisions that are helpful to communities of color across the U.S - especially around prison sentencing for black people.

"While we appreciate the attorney general's commitment to reducing crime and combating risky opioid abuse, we think his strategy is misguided, unsupported by evidence, and likely to do more harm than good", FAMM said. "This will help law enforcement do our jobs better".

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Former AG Eric Holder Calls Jeff Sessions New Policy 'Dumb on Crime' - AppsforPCdaily