Tag Archives: AUSA

DOJ Continues To Circle the Drain – Update for July 23, 2026

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

TOUGH TIMES FOR PROSECUTORS

The Dept of Justice is now requiring all Criminal Division Assistant U.S. Attorneys to maintain at least 25 open cases, “tightening the Trump administration’s grip on operational decisions previously left to US attorneys,” according to Bloomberg Law.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office communicated the informal “25 open matters” threshold to all 93 U.S. attorneys in recent weeks, with an emphasis on driving up public safety and fraud statistics, four people familiar with the new policy told Bloomberg Law. A formal policy change is still under development, they said.

The new policy comes as DOJ brass try to dispel criticism over personnel departures by purporting to show that the Department is doing more with less.

DOJ has hemorrhaged thousands of veteran attorneys since Trump returned to office due to the President’s revenge campaigns, immigration crackdown, and increasingly overwhelming workloads, Daily Beast reported last week.

The government has lowered hiring standards and offered signing bonuses, despite historically being deluged with applications from lawyers who were happy to take a pay cut in exchange for the prestige of DOJ service.

“A one-size-fits-all policy is unworkable,” said Mark Yancey, a former senior official in the DOJ’s Executive Office for US Attorneys. “These things need to be worked at the district level by the US attorney.”

The quota runs the risk of prosecutors feeling pressured to bring cases with insufficient evidence just to hit their targets, Yancey told Bloomberg Law.

Last week, Blanche appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a hearing on his nomination to be the next Attorney General.  In the runup to the hearing, a letter signed by 2,649 lawyers and legal professionals was delivered to the Senate urging rejection of Blanche as AG.

“No one in the history of the Justice Department has moved directly from representing a president in criminal proceedings to running the institution that prosecuted those cases,” said Traci Feit Love, Executive Director of Lawyers for Good Government. “Todd Blanche isn’t America’s Attorney General. He is Donald Trump’s personal fixer with a federal badge. The Senate has a constitutional obligation to say no.”

During his confirmation hearing, Blanche was braced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) over BOP’s decision to place Ghislaine Maxwell (convicted of helping Jeffrey Epstrein commit sex and trafficking offenses) in a camp, a move some have alleged was in exchange for her testifying that President Trump committed no sex offenses with Epstein. Blanche told Booker that Maxwell was “receiving threats,” which merited the transfer.

Booker argued that under BOP policies, an inmate who receives threats is moved to solitary confinement, not to a minimum-security prison camp.

Blanche countered: “That’s not always true,” but Booker rejected that claim. “What is true is that someone who is accused of child sex trafficking under the Bureau of Prisons’ own policies is not put in a facility like this that seems clearly like a reward,” he said.

What the exchange failed to note that a May 2026 change in BOP designation policy I reported on last month grants the Attorney General the right to make any designation decision he or she pleases regardless of BOP policy. The unheralded change in designation policy that has been in place for 135 years provides ex post facto authority for the  Maxwell placement in a camp, as well as a tool that can be abused in years to come to benefit the Administration’s friends and punish its foes.

Questions over Blanche’s role in the DOJ “anti-weaponization” fund and in handling the Epstein files have left at least two Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee undecided. If just one votes ‘no,’ that could block the acting attorney general’s nomination from moving forward. A vote is likely later this month.

US Law Week, DOJ Sets Case Quotas for Line Prosecutors in Push to Boost Stats (July 13, 2026)

Daily Beast, Trump Justice Department Scrambles as Lawyers Flee in Droves (July 14, 2026)

Letter to Senators Grassley and Durbin, Senate Judiciary Committee (July 10, 2026)

The Hill, Booker: ‘Absurdity’ for Blanche to be concerned about Maxwell safety (July 16, 2026)

Christian Science Monitor, Blanche’s nomination for attorney general uncertain after hearing (July 17, 2026)

~ Thomas L. Root

Instant Karma’s Gonna Get You – Update for September 22, 2023

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

SCHADENFREUDE

Permit us to end the week enjoying for a moment the misfortunes of someone else who has spent a career doing to others what’s about to be done to him. 

ruddyA230922

One of the country’s hardest-charging AUSA narcotics prosecutors was captured on law enforcement bodycams last July offering his business card to police to avoid being charged in a hit-and-run accident while his blood-alcohol level was over twice the legal limit. The story just broke a week ago thanks to the Associated Press.

Joseph Ruddy, 59, fled the crash scene but was followed to his home. There, he drunkenly handed his business card to police in what Associated Press said was “a clear attempt to influence this arrest based on his position as a federal prosecutor.” Indeed, after the cop read the card, he told Ruddy, “What are you trying to hand me? You realize when they pull my body-worn camera footage and they see this, this is going to go really bad.”

The officer was correct.

ruddyB230922Ruddy, who has been prosecuting cases as an AUSA since 1985, appeared pretty drunk in footage obtained by the Associated Press. He admitted to having left the scene of the accident. He told the police, “I didn’t realize it was that serious.”

Let’s see some of the small-fry “mostly poor fishermen from Central and South America” Joe likes to prosecute for transporting drugs try that line as a defense trope.

Despite being charged, Ruddy remained on the job for two months, representing the United States in court as recently as early September. A day after the AP asked the US Attorney about his subordinate’s status, Ruddy was pulled off three pending criminal cases. A DOJ spokesman said only that Ruddy was still employed but had been removed from his supervisory AUSA role on July 11th.

Sure he was.

The case also has been referred to the Office of the Inspector General. That probe will likely focus on whether Ruddy was trying to use his public office for private gain, according to Kathleen Clark, a legal ethics professor at Washington University in St. Louis who reviewed the footage.

“It’s hard to see what this could be other than an attempt to improperly influence the police officer to go easy on him,” Clark said. “What could possibly be his purpose in handing over his U.S. Attorney’s Office business card?”

Ruddy has a state court appearance next Wednesday.

Youtube, Prosecutor offers business card in DUI Crash (September 8, 2023)

AP, Body cam catches elite federal prosecutor offering his Justice Department card in DUI crash arrest (September 8, 2023)

The Independent, Prosecutor allegedly caught on video sliding business card to police investigating a DUI hit-and-run (September 8, 2023)

– Thomas L. Root

BOP Delegates CARES Act Home Confinement Decision to Prosecutor? – Update for January 26, 2023

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We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

BOP ISSUES STEALTH CARES ACT MEMO GIVING THE US ATTORNEY A HECKLER’S VETO

Even if the CARES Act does not expire in two months, the BOP very quietly issued a memo last month that essentially gives the Assistant U.S. Attorney (AUSA) who prosecuted a prisoner being considered for CARES Act a heckler’s veto.

heckler230126A “heckler’s veto” is a situation in which a party who disagrees with a speaker’s message can unilaterally trigger events that result in the speaker being silenced. Three weeks ago, an inmate who met all of the BOP’s standards for CARES Act home confinement (BOP, April 22, 2020, and April 13, 2021, memos) was rejected for home confinement by his local BOP Residential Reentry Management office.

In a response to his administrative remedy, the BOP told the inmate that “the memorandum for Cares Act Home Confinement was recently updated… on December 19, 2022.” Under the new memo, if the CARES Act candidate has 60 months or more remaining on his sentence, “the Residential Re-entry Management office will contact the AUSA office in the respective court of jurisdiction to solicit input regarding the request for Home Confinement. The input from the AUSA is to be considered among factors used by the RRM office in making a Home Confinement decision.”

henhouse180307The BOP has not suggested it has designated any standards for the AUSA “input.” Like a heckler’s veto, apparently the AUSA can shout down the CARES Act application without a reason, or at least without a reason that relates to the standards the BOP has already set out to qualify for CARES Act home confinement. And thus, the fox has been delegated authority to guard the henhouse.

This does pose a conundrum for the government, however.  Recall that in August, I reported on Tompkins v. Pullen, a case in which an inmate who was yanked back to prison from CARES Act home confinement argued her due process rights were violated. The government opposed the argument, of course, contending that home confinement was just another designation of an inmate to a facility under 18 USC § 3621, sort of an “FCI Home.” Home confinement was nothing special, the government argued, certainly nothing that came with due process rights.

If that’s so (and the court didn’t buy it), one has to wonder why the AUSA has been given a voice in the CARES Act decision, and why it would consider home confinement anything different than transfer from a medium to a low, hardly anything of interest to the prosecutor.

The BOP Public Affairs office declined to provide me with a copy of the memorandum. I have since requested it through a Freedom of Information Act request, for all the good that will do. Back in October 2017, I filed a BOP FOIA request for a report the BOP provided a congressional committee on pre-First Step Act compassionate release. The BOP filled the FOIA request in October 2022, just a week shy of five years after I filed it.

BOP, Home Confinement (April 13, 2021)

BOP, Home Confinement (April 22, 2020)

– Thomas L. Root