[Peace-discuss] Only Obama and Wall Street Criminals will Love Loretta Lynch as Attorney General

Thu Nov 13 11:15:42 EST 2014

Loretta-Lynch

    Only Obama and Wall Street Criminals will Love Loretta Lynch as AG

  * Posted on November 11, 2014
    <http://ringoffireradio.com/2014/11/only-obama-and-wall-street-criminals-will-love-loretta-lynch-as-ag/>by
    Guest Blogger <http://ringoffireradio.com/author/guest-blogger/>
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/Reposted with permission from Reader Supported News 
<http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26860-focus-the-republican-senate-will-love-loretta-lynch>./

After the news broke of Eric Holder's departure from the DOJ, I called 
on President Obama to nominate Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood 
<http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/26088-focus-jim-hood-an-attorney-general-who-would-jail-the-bankers>, 
based on his exemplary record of defending consumers and citizens from 
predatory banks, big oil, insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical 
industry. My more cynical readers commented that Obama was too much of a 
corporatist to nominate Hood, and that whoever Holder's successor would 
be, they would be completely subservient to the banks. And after the 
news of Lynch's nomination and looking into her past, I can say with 
confidence that those readers were right.

Right after graduating from law school, Lynch went to work as a 
litigation assistant for the prestigious New York-based law firm Cahill 
Gordon & Reindel between 1984 and 1990. CG&R attorneys represented some 
of the more notorious figures behind the Savings and Loan Scandal of the 
1980s and 1990s, including a man who had personal dealings with Charles 
Keating 
<http://openjurist.org/935/f2d/475/alfadda-v-a-fenn-nv-sa-nv-sa>. In its 
profile of Lynch, the DOJ's own website describes her as someone with 
extensive experience in "white collar criminal defense." 
<http://www.justice.gov/usao/biographies/lynch.html> It's very likely 
that Lynch went from Harvard straight to defending some of the worst 
financial criminals the country had ever seen at the time. On CG&R's 
website, the "securities litigation and white collar defense" 
<http://www.cahill.com/practices/litigation-securities-white-collar-defense>section 
describes the kind of crooks the firm defends:

    Recent matters include the alleged manipulation of the US Dollar
    London Inter-Bank Offered Rate ("LIBOR") and multi-billion dollar
    federal and state court class and individual actions involving
    subprime and structured finance products.... We have handled some of
    the most significant investigations arising from existing and
    emerging regulation in the white collar arena, including for some of
    the largest transnational companies and banks as well as the largest
    securities rating agency.... Our securities litigation and white
    collar defense practice is top-ranked by Chambers USA, The Legal 500
    and Benchmark Litigation.

Lynch basically got her first six years of white collar criminal defense 
experience working at the firm that is currently responsible for keeping 
the bankers behind the great subprime mortgage grift out of jail. CG&R 
is also defending the financial institutions that jacked up interest 
rates on everything from student loans to home loans out of greedy 
self-interest. They even defended the agencies that knowingly rated 
worthless mortgage-backed securities as AAA, setting up millions to lose 
their retirement savings in a snap.

After six years of exemplary work at this soulless law firm, Lynch 
walked through the revolving door to the U.S. Attorney's office in the 
Eastern district of New York, which plays a major part in investigating 
financial crimes. She gradually worked her way up the ladder 
<http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/02/12/meet-loretta-e-lynch/>, going 
from an assistant U.S. attorney in 1990 to becoming the unit's Deputy 
Chief of General Crimes in 1993. She was chief of the office's Long 
Island division by 1998, and was tapped as U.S. Attorney by June of 
1999, where she remained until 2001. Then, Lynch walked back through the 
revolving door to return to defending the worst of America's worst 
corporate criminals.

Lynch couldn't wait to get started at the Hogan & Hartson law firm (now 
known as Hogan Lovells). Interestingly enough, Lynch was a partner at 
Hogan, working alongside John Roberts 
<http://www.hoganlovells.com/newsmedia/newspubs/detail.aspx?news=456>, 
the current chief justice of what is the most corporate-friendly Supreme 
Court 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/opinion/sunday/the-corporate-friendly-court.html?_r=0> 
in decades. Hogan's website doesn't list its past clients, but you can 
get a pretty good idea by visiting the site's "financial institutions" 
section: <http://www.hoganlovells.com/financial-institutions/>

    We represent banks, brokers, insurers, asset managers, investment
    funds, regulators, and other market participants, large and small,
    on the full range of legal services. This includes corporate,
    competition, employment, finance, IT, intellectual property,
    litigation, pensions, real estate and tax.

As soon as Lynch joined Hogan in 2002, she interrupted her own vacation, 
came to the office without pay and immediately got to work defending an 
Arthur Andersen partner who had helped cook the books for Enron 
<http://www.nationallawjournal.com/home/id=1202675892921/If-Chosen-Lynch-Faces-Dual-BattlesOn-Merits-Confirmation-Process?mcode=1202617074964&curindex=1>. 
 From 2003 to 2005, Lynch sat on the board of the New York Federal 
Reserve, working directly under future U.S. Treasury secretary Tim 
Geithner 
<http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/11/next-attorney-general-may-be-former.html>. 
The New York Fed has been widely documented 
<http://www.propublica.org/article/carmen-segarras-secret-recordings-from-inside-new-york-fed> 
for its incestuous relationships with the big Wall Street banks it's 
supposed to regulate. The revolving door spun once again in 2010, when 
President Obama appointed Lynch to her old job as U.S. Attorney of New 
York's Eastern District.

Drawing on her past experience of standing up for white collar crooks, 
Lynch has spent the last four years treating big banks with kid gloves. 
Under Lynch's oversight 
<http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/attorney-general-nominee-loretta-lynch-quietly-earns-respect-admirers-say-1.9599152>, 
the U.S. government allowed HSBC to pay a fine that amounted to five 
weeks of profit for the bank after they admitted to laundering $800 
million for Mexican drug cartels 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/opinion/how-bankers-help-drug-traffickers-and-terrorists.html>. 
Lynch was also responsible for Citibank paying a $7 billion settlement-- 
$3.8 billion of which was later billed to U.S. taxpayers 
<http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/14/justice-citi-7-billion-dollar-settlement/12616741/> 
-- rather than going to jail over misleading millions of investors about 
mortgage-backed securities that were doomed to fail.

There's really no question about whether or not Lynch will survive her 
senate confirmation hearing. Senator Dick Durbin once referred to his 
chamber as overly subservient to the big banks, saying, "They own the 
place." 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/dick-durbin-banks-frankly_n_193010.html> 
Bankers everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that the 
president's pick for the nation's top lawyer won't try to put any of 
them in jail. The senators they sponsored in the last election cycle 
will likely confirm her with haste.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

/Carl Gibson, 27, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nonviolent grassroots 
movement that mobilized thousands to protest corporate tax dodging and 
budget cuts in the months leading up to Occupy Wall Street. Carl and 
other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary We're Not 
Broke, which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. Carl is also 
the author of How to Oust a Congressman, an instructional manual on 
getting rid of corrupt members of Congress and state legislatures based 
on his experience in the 2012 elections in New Hampshire. He lives in 
Sacramento, California./

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