More than two dozen conservative groups pressed the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday to look into whether the federal prosecutor’s office run by attorney general nominee Loretta Lynch violated restitution and crime victim laws in a major stock fraud case.
Ms. Lynch will face senators at her confirmation hearing next week, and the groups, including the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, Liberty Coalition and Frontiers of Freedom, said Ms. Lynch must answer why the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York fought to keep sentencing details secret in the case of a defendant turned cooperator.
Felix Sater pleaded guilty in a 1998 stock fraud scheme, but his case remained on a secret docket for more than a decade while he cooperated with federal authorities in other investigations.
Attorneys who have fought to pry loose records in the case said Mr. Sater should have paid tens of millions of dollars in forfeiture and restitution when he was sentenced more than a decade after his guilty plea.
Instead, he was given a $25,000 fine. His attorney told The Washington Times that Mr. Sater cooperated in major national security investigations and that the sentence was appropriate.
The groups, in their letter, urged senators to question Ms. Lynch about the case. If she admits her office obstructed efforts to keep information from coming to light, “the committee needs to consider long and hard her fitness to lead the United States Department of Justice,” the letter states.
Beth Levine, a spokeswoman for the Judiciary Committee, which is led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, said the senators are “very much aware of this issue.”
It’s unclear whether senators will ask about the situation during the hearing or in written follow-up questions.
“Questions are still being formulated, and decisions have yet to be made as to what Chairman Grassley asks in the hearing or submits as questions for the records,” Ms. Levine said.
Ms. Lynch took over as U.S. attorney a few months after Mr. Sater’s sentencing, but Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, told a congressional panel more than a year ago that the office has since fought to keep details about the sentencing secret. The office never told victims that Mr. Sater had been sentenced and denied victims a chance to seek restitution of some $40 million in losses, he said.
“Every day that the office withholds notice from the victims in this case about the continuing proceedings that are occurring in this case is a day in which the office is violating the CVRA,” he wrote to a House Judiciary subcommittee.
He suggested that the panel conduct its own inquiry into Ms. Lynch’s office.
In an email Thursday, Mr. Cassell said nobody from Congress has contacted him about providing further testimony. Still, he said, he thinks the topic is important enough to be raised during Ms. Lynch’s confirmation hearings.
A Justice Department spokesman has told The Times that key developments in the case “occurred outside of Ms. Lynch’s stints as U.S. attorney,” first in 1999 and again in 2010.
The government’s arguments for keeping records sealed — many of them redacted or filed under seal while Ms. Lynch was in charge — have been upheld in rulings by the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn and by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, despite arguments pushing for more transparency from victims’ rights and press groups.
Ms. Lynch’s nomination has faced little opposition based on information posted on the Senate Judiciary Committee website. The committee has posted letters it received urging her confirmation, including one from Estee Lauder, the makeup and perfume company.
But Elena Sassower, director at the Center for Judicial Accountability, sent the committee a letter that raised concerns about the nomination weeks ago. Although she has posted it on her group’s website, it hasn’t appeared on the Senate Judiciary website.
Ms. Levine, the committee spokeswoman, wrote in an email that Republicans, who took over the Senate this month, just received access to the website and it was probably an oversight that the letter hadn’t been posted.
• Jim McElhatton can be reached at jmcelhatton@washingtontimes.com.
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