Why I let Wall Street walk
Justice Department prosecutor Lanny Breuer gives an unapologetic exit interview to Dealbook
Topics: Wall Street, Lanny Breuer, The New York Times, Criminal Justice, Financial Crisis, Matt Taibbi, lawsuit, Law enforcement, Editor's Picks, Business News, Politics News
Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Justice Department's Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer (Credit: Reuters/Joshua Lott)I’ve never seen as relatively unheralded an official as the head of the criminal division at the Justice Department get so many exit interviews in national newspapers. But Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, who’s retiring to spend more time with his family at white-shoe law firms on Wall Street, has been given multiple chances to make a last impression. When you spend nearly four years and fail to prosecute anyone of significance for the financial crisis that caused millions of foreclosures, layoffs and a giant hole in the economy that has still not been papered over, I guess you need your pals in the establishment to help you plead your case.
This interview with the New York Times’ Dealbook (sponsored today by the financial firm Allianz) is no different. As a prelude, he gets a commendation from former Attorney General and current corporate lawyer Michael Mukasey (always good to have the lawyer from the other side of the table, defending those you could have but chose not to prosecute, praising your work). He gets phantom criticism from unnamed members of “the Occupy Wall Street crowd” and “Rolling Stone magazine,” a reference to Matt Taibbi. There’s no easier way to marginalize critics than to refuse to name them.
Breuer talks about his hardscrabble upbringing and his selfless decision to enter public service as a junior district attorney in Manhattan (we know it was selfless because he told us about it himself). In the same interview, he proudly says how constantly walking through the revolving door from government law enforcement to corporate firms makes him a “better private lawyer,” and how he’s going to look at all kinds of offers rather than just settling for Covington & Burling, the corporate firm where he (and Attorney General Eric Holder) last worked. The humble-bragging here is a bit unsightly.
But the big question on everyone’s minds is, why hasn’t Wall Street paid a price for its conduct that exploded the economy. And here’s his non-answer.
I can tell you that I assigned the top, most talented attorneys to investigate them, and I know that U.S. Attorneys’ offices across the country assigned aggressive prosecutors to these cases as well. I assigned people from my fraud section and my own front office to look at them. And I approached these cases exactly the same way I approached BP, the same way I approached Libor, the same way I approach every case. If there had been a case to make, we would have brought it. I would have wanted nothing more, but it doesn’t work that way.
David Dayen is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter at @ddayen. More David Dayen.




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