Legal News

Mukasey talks about elimination of L.A. public corruption unit

By Jason Siegel

The controversy over the elimination of the L.A.'s  public corruption unit is built upon the language used to describe it, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said at a speech in Los Angeles.

Mukasey responded to a question from the audience saying that the controversy was created by using the word "disband" rather than more corporate language like "energize" and "reorganize," The Recorder reported.

U.S. Attorney Thomas O'Brien scrapped the public corruption unit last month, moving the 17 attorneys in the unit to the major fraud and organized crime sections that are now mandated to battle corruption. By placing that mandate into other unit, there will be more attorneys who can work on public corruption cases, O'Brien told The Recorder.

Mukasey said that it was absurd to see the unit's closure "as a signal that the Central District of California is out of the public corruption business," the Associated Press reported. "I didn't read it that way and ... that's not the life truth of it."

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on March 28, 2008 (boomark / email).