More than a year before President Obama nominated federal prosecutor Loretta Lynch to be attorney general, a former federal judge quietly called on Congress to investigate her U.S. attorney’s office for trampling on victims’ rights.
Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah, said Ms. Lynch’s office, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, never told victims in a major stock fraud case that a culprit had been sentenced — denying them a chance to seek restitution of some $40 million in losses.
Mr. Cassell, in written remarks to a House Judiciary Committee panel in 2013, said if prosecutors were using secretive sentencing procedures to reward criminals for cooperating with them, it could violate the Crime Victims Restitution Act.
“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, urging the subcommittee to conduct its own inquiry into Ms. Lynch’s office.
The Judiciary Committee acknowledged in an email to The Washington Times that it never followed up to contact Ms. Lynch’s office, but added the panel “has not ruled out sending an inquiry to the U.S. attorney’s office regarding its handling of victims’ rights.”
Ms. Lynch’s nomination to be attorney general will soon come before the Senate Judiciary Committee, now controlled by Republicans, and the case could surface as a topic of inquiry.
Read more: Washington Times