With all the recent news about various U.S. Attorney controversies, I’ve neglected to report much on the new U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose. This one’s a little different from some of the controversies — inasmuch as Paulose does not stand accused of allowing politics to dictate prosecutorial decisions — but it’s interesting anyway.<\/p>\n
Paulose, who, at age 34, was senior counsel to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty for two months before her interim appointment, first started raising eyebrows a couple of weeks ago, when KSTP-TV in St. Paul aired an investigative piece on Paulose’s “coronation<\/a>.” At her swearing-in ceremony, she had a Marine Corps honor guard and choir, and someone who works for her compiled a list of “potential problem reporters” who might attend the event. Asked about the list by reporters, Paulose didn’t want to talk about it.<\/p>\n But that was just odd. Things heated up considerably on Thursday, when three of her top deputies stepped down<\/a> from their leadership positions, citing her ideologically driven and dictatorial managerial style.<\/p>\n A source said managers had been unhappy with Paulose and decided to collectively resign. <\/p>\n “They did it jointly because they couldn’t stand her anymore,” the source said, citing what been described as her “dictatorial management style and general lack of management experience.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The whole story raises more questions than answers. * Why did Paulose’s predecessor, Thomas Heffelfinger, resign in early 2006? Right now, the circumstances appear “murky<\/a>.”<\/p>\n * Why is the DoJ blaming the messenger? The NYT reported<\/a>, “Ms. Paulose’s defenders at Justice Department headquarters said the criticism of her was unwarranted. They said older lawyers had difficulty dealing with a young, aggressive woman who had tried to put into place policies important to Mr. Gonzales like programs to combat child exploitation.” (David Kurtz added<\/a>, “Got it? The administrators who resigned are a bunch of sexist old men — never mind that one of the four who resigned was a woman — who are soft on child exploitation.)<\/p>\n * If everything is fine in Paulose’s office, as her defenders claims, why is the DoJ sending in John Kelly, Deputy Director of the US Attorney’s executive office in DC, to help run<\/a> the office in Minneapolis?<\/p>\n
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\n* What, specifically, did Paulose do to anger the top prosecutors in her office? One source told the Pioneer Press<\/a>, “These are career prosecutors who wouldn’t do it without a reasonable basis. If these folks took this action en masse and all of them are well respected career prosecutors, they wouldn’t do so lightly.”<\/p>\n