Ordinarily, a federal court sentencing pursuant to a plea agreement is a pre-packaged, check-the-boxes sort of exercise. Federal sentencing guidelines even provide the judge with a structured framework for determining the appropriate punishment. It’s really hard to mess it up.
But that’s what the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office managed to do in a recent sentencing hearing in U.S. v. Villafane, a child pornography case. The hearing was a microcosm of the turmoil and incompetence in Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Justice Department that is alienating federal judges and jeopardizing thousands of criminal cases.
Before sentencing the defendant, District Judge Zahid Quraishi, a Biden appointee, pressed Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosenblum on why he had entered into a lenient plea agreement despite the shocking images recovered by the FBI from the defendant’s devices. Rosenblum admitted that he had finalized the binding plea agreement with the defendant’s lawyer without waiting for the FBI to complete its forensic analysis.
“How did this screwup happen?” Quraishi asked. “How did you execute a plea agreement without knowing all the evidence on the device only later to find out, ‘Oh my God. There’s babies and prepubescent children and bestiality?’” Aside from a backlog at the forensic laboratory, Rosenblum had no good answer.
Judge Quraishi then asked a more basic question: “Who is currently running the U.S. Attorney’s Office?” Ordinarily, that’s not a mystery. But this is the Pam Bondi Justice Department, where she and President Trump have been running something resembling a shell game with their appointments to lead multiple U.S. attorneys’ offices.
In New Jersey, it started with Trump’s appointment of his personal attorney, Alina Habba, as the interim U.S. attorney. That temporary appointment does not require Senate confirmation — something the sharply partisan Habba, who vowed to use the office to “turn New Jersey red,” would have been unlikely to get.
But when her statutorily prescribed 120-day term ended, Habba remained in office anyway. That prompted a ruling by Judge Matthew Brann — a former Republican party official appointed by President Barack Obama — that she was holding office illegally. The Justice Department’s attempted workaround was to install a “triumvirate” of three federal prosecutors to run the office, which Brann also ruled illegal.
In both rulings, Brann warned that the illegal appointments could result in dismissal of thousands of cases including “scores of dangerous criminals.” The risk is not limited to New Jersey, because Trump’s interim U.S. Attorney appointments have been declared illegal in multiple other districts.
Against that backdrop, Quraishi continued to press Rosenblum as to just who was currently running the office. As Rosenblum struggled to answer, another federal prosecutor, Mark Coyne, rose and began speaking but Judge Quraishi immediately cut him off: “Sit down, Mr. Coyne, you didn’t file a notice of appearance. You don’t get to blindside the court.” Coyne ignored the judge’s order — never a good idea in a federal courtroom — and kept talking. The judge directed the court security officer to remove Coyne, which typically is done to criminal defendants or spectators who disrupt court proceedings.
Quraishi then ordered the so-called “triumvirate” to appear and explain under oath “who is currently operating this office,” and postponed the sentencing, which left the defendant unsentenced but still in jail without bail.
Before the hearing ended, Quraishi, who once served as a federal prosecutor in the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office, issued a damning rebuke. He reminded Rosenblum that generations of prosecutors had painstakingly built the office’s credibility with federal judges. “Your generation destroyed it within a year.”
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”
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