White House leans toward veteran trial lawyer as next U.S. Attorney
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
September 17, 2009
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The White House is leaning toward veteran trial lawyer Ron Machen as it ponders its choice for D.C.'s next top prosecutor, The Examiner has learned.
Passed over in the process is homegrown product Channing Philips, the interim U.S. attorney -- a D.C. native and son of a civil rights leader.
Although President Obama has final say, tradition has always given sway to members of Congress in the selection of U.S. attorneys. Multiple sources speaking on condition of anonymity told The Examiner that D.C.'s nonvoting Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat, forwarded Machen's name, along with those of former federal prosecutor and current Nixon Peabody partner Anjali Chaturvedi and former Justice Department inspector general and current Fried Frank partner Michael Bromwich, as her favorites.
The exclusion of Philips is a rebuke to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, D.C.'s former top prosecutor and mentor of Philips. Sources said that Norton was miffed at the Justice Department and saw Philips as part of the old guard, having been a top assistant to consecutive Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys.
Philips' father, Channing Sr., was a revered preacher and civil rights activist who helped challenge D.C.'s Jim Crow-era establishment.
Through a spokesman, Philips declined comment. Norton's spokeswoman sent out a news release saying the White House had already made its choice but declining to discuss Norton's role in the nomination.
A Detroit native, Machen went to Stanford University on a football scholarship. He played wide receiver next to future NFL star John Lynch, then was accepted into Harvard Law School. He was hired as an assistant U.S. attorney by Holder around the same time as Philips.
His cause has been championed by former prosecutor and rising white-collar defense star Vince Cohen, who gathered up two dozen former colleagues to back Machen's nomination.
"His experience and temperament and charisma puts him in a perfect position to do that job," Cohen said of his old friend.
Cohen said Machen was a tireless prosecutor who took on the toughest cases -- often long-unsolved "cold case" homicides -- and was nearly invincible in a courtroom. After leaving the prosecutor's office, Machen became a top-notch defense lawyer. Among his high-profile clients was disgraced defense contractor Mitchell Wade, who was sent to prison for bribing then-Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif. Wade turned informer and spurred several pending investigations into Capitol Hill corruption.
In 2006, Washingtonian magazine named Machen, then 37, a top "40 under 40" lawyer and predicted that the U.S. Attorney's Office was in his future.
