Giuliani partner on list as potential top prosecutor in NYC
NEW YORK — Republican politicians in New York have been putting together short lists of potential candidates to replace the top U.S. prosecutors in New York City, a hub for terrorism, insider-trading and anticorruption trials.
Some of the people being talked about as candidates include the son of a former U.S. attorney general, a former Fox News legal analyst and a prosecutor who had a chance to go after the head of the International Monetary Fund but declined.
Whoever is chosen by the White House to become the U.S. attorneys in Manhattan and Brooklyn will be inheriting a number of high-profile, potentially politically fraught investigations and cases previously overseen by prosecutors appointed by former President Barack Obama who were abruptly dismissed last week.
“I assume everything’s going to be expedited,” said U.S. Rep. Peter King, a Republican involved in helping draft lists of recommended candidates.
Among the people seen as leading candidates to replace Preet Bharara as the U.S. attorney in Manhattan is Marc Mukasey, the son of former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who served in the administration of President George W. Bush.
Mukasey, a former federal prosecutor, is currently the head of the whitecollar defense practice at Greenberg Traurig, where he is a partner with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who’s a close ally of President Donald Trump.
Mukasey is Giuliani’s favorite for the post, King said, but if picked, he could face potential conflicts of interest because of work he has done as a defense lawyer.
One of his clients has been former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, who resigned amid sexual harassment allegations. The U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan recently subpoenaed a former Fox News employee to testify before a grand jury examining how 21st Century Fox Inc. handled the harassment scandal.
U.S. Rep. Dan Donovan, a New York City Republican, said the list of possible candidates to become U.S. attorney in Brooklyn includes Joan Illuzzi, a longtime Manhattan prosecutor who ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for district attorney on Staten Island in 2015.
Illuzzi’s recent victories as a prosecutor include the conviction of a man in the decades-old case of 6-yearold Etan Patz, who vanished on his way to school in 1979.
She also was the lead prosecutor in an aborted case in 2011 against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund. Strauss-Kahn had been accused of sexually assaulting an immigrant housekeeper in a hotel.
Other Brooklyn prospects, Donovan said, include former federal prosecutor James McGovern, who held a top spot in the Brooklyn office until leaving last year for private practice, and Arthur Aidala, a former state prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney and was a Fox News legal analyst.