The Republican Senate Will Love Loretta Lynch

fter the news broke of Eric Holder’s departure from the DOJ, I called on President Obama to nominate Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, based on his exemplary record of defending consumers and citizens from predatory banks, big oil, insurance companies, and the pharmaceutical industry. My more cynical readers commented that Obama was too much of a corporatist to nominate Hood, and that whoever Holder’s successor would be, they would be completely subservient to the banks. And after the news of Lynch’s nomination and looking into her past, I can say with confidence that those readers were right.

Right after graduating from law school, Lynch went to work as a litigation assistant for the prestigious New York-based law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel between 1984 and 1990. CG&R attorneys represented some of the more notorious figures behind the Savings and Loan Scandal of the 1980s and 1990s, including a man who had personal dealings with Charles Keating. In its profile of Lynch, the DOJ’s own website describes her as someone with extensive experience in “white collar criminal defense.” It’s very likely that Lynch went from Harvard straight to defending some of the worst financial criminals the country had ever seen at the time. On CG&R’s website, the “securities litigation and white collar defense” section describes the kind of crooks the firm defends:

Recent matters include the alleged manipulation of the US Dollar London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”) and multi-billion dollar federal and state court class and individual actions involving subprime and structured finance products.… We have handled some of the most significant investigations arising from existing and emerging regulation in the white collar arena, including for some of the largest transnational companies and banks as well as the largest securities rating agency.… Our securities litigation and white collar defense practice is top-ranked by Chambers USA, The Legal 500 and Benchmark Litigation.

Lynch basically got her first six years of white collar criminal defense experience working at the firm that is currently responsible for keeping the bankers behind the great subprime mortgage grift out of jail. CG&R is also defending the financial institutions that jacked up interest rates on everything from student loans to home loans out of greedy self-interest. They even defended the agencies that knowingly rated worthless mortgage-backed securities as AAA, setting up millions to lose their retirement savings in a snap.

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