Mukasey Record: Prickly and Independent
Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey is variously described as someone who is fiercely independent, fiercely intelligent, impatient and injudicious in articles published in the past few days.
A Sunday New York Times article focuses on Mukasey’s decisions permitting indefinite detentions of potential terrorism witnesses. A lawyer for one such witness, Randy Hamud, said he was surprised at how “injudicious and malicious” Mukasey acted during a hearing in the case a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Another Sunday New York Times article analyzed Mukasey’s opinions and reported that the judge came across as “fiercely intelligent, prickly, impatient, practical and suspicious of abstractions.” His stint as a reporter at United Press International helped him write quickly and clearly.
The newspaper said Mukasey’s sentences were lower than the median in immigration cases, twice as high in white-collar cases, and about the same in drug and weapons cases.
The Los Angeles Times said Mukasey had a reputation for fierce independence—hence the nickname for his Manhattan court as the “Sovereign District of New York.”
Edward Shaw, who worked with Mukasey at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, told the Los Angeles Times the administration may be surprised by Mukasey’s independent streak. “If I were George W. Bush, I never would have picked Michael Mukasey,” he said.
