Justice Department

WASHINGTON - Retired federal judge Michael B. Mukasey was sworn in yesterday as the nation's 81st attorney general, filling a vacancy left when Alberto R. Gonzales resigned amid questions about his credibility. Mukasey was sworn in at a private Justice Department ceremony about 16 hours after he narrowly won Senate confirmation. The third attorney general of the Bush administration, Mukasey, 66, inherits a Justice Department struggling to restore its independent image with more than a dozen vacant leadership jobs and little time to make many changes before another president...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — While researching his epic series on Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro found himself again and again calling upon Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, the former Justice Department and State Department official. ‘‘He was a key figure in so many of the most crucial moments in both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations," says Caro, whose fourth Johnson volume, ‘‘The Passage of Power," was recently released. ‘‘And he was so careful about making sure that I truly understood them.

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department must improve its ability to track complaints of voting irregularities to assure public confidence in an upcoming presidential election expected to produce a close result, congressional investigators say. A Government Accountability Office report yesterday found that in the 2000 election, the voting section of the Justice Department's civil rights division "did not have a reliable method" to determine whether...

WASHINGTON - The United States is investigating whether the University of Montana in Missoula and local law enforcement failed to investigate and prosecute cases of alleged sexual assault against women, the Justice Department said. The department is reviewing rape accusations made by women on and off campus in Missoula, including those unconnected to the university. The Justice Department said it has not determined how many of the 80 rapes reported in Missoula during the past three years were not properly investigated.

WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department, which challenged Microsoft Corp. in courtrooms for nearly a decade over antitrust violations, will pay more than $2 million each year to buy business software from Corel Corp., a leading Microsoft rival. The new purchase agreement, unveiled yesterday, makes the latest version of Corel's WordPerfect Office software available to more than 50,000 lawyers and other Justice employees. That includes the department's antitrust division, which successfully sued Microsoft over illegal efforts to dominate the software industry but then negotiated a...

NEW YORK - The Justice Department is calling Switzerland's largest private bank a fugitive from justice after it didn't show up for a court hearing in New York. The bank was indicted on Feb. 2. Since then, US officials haven't found a way to move the case forward. Wegelin & Co. is charged with conspiring with American clients to hide $1.2 billion from the Internal Revenue Service. In a statement issued in Switzerland after the court hearing, the bank said it had not been properly served with the criminal summons.

WASHINGTON - The Senate filled the number two and three positions at the Justice Department yesterday, pushing aside objections from conservative Republicans who questioned the nominees' positions on pornography and the right to die. David Ogden was confirmed 65-28 for the second-ranking position of deputy attorney general, and Thomas Perelli was approved 72-20 for the third-ranking slot of associate attorney general. Attorney General Eric Holder had expressed concerns that he was operating the Justice Department without his top deputies.

NEW YORK - No criminal prosecutions are planned for former Justice Department officials accused of allowing politics to influence the hiring of prosecutors, immigration judges and other career government lawyers, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said yesterday. Mukasey used his sharpest words yet to criticize the senior leaders who took part in or failed to stop illegal hiring practices during the tenure of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales. But, he told delegates to the American Bar Association annual meeting, "Not every wrong, or even...

At least 45,000 teachers in 275 school districts across Massachusetts lack adequate training to instruct students who speak limited English, potentially impeding thousands of the students from advancing academically, according to a US Justice Department investigation. Detailing the problems in about 70 percent of the state's school districts, including Boston, Worcester, and Holyoke, federal investigators leveled much of the blame on the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

THE VIOLENT and symbiotic relationship between confidential informants and the FBI in Massachusetts is not just fodder for a few good movies. The Whitey Bulger saga may be decades old, but now the Senate Judiciary Committee is asking questions about the bureau's handling of New England mobster Mark Rossetti, the confidential informant and Mafia "acting consigliore" who worked for the FBI up until last year. While the inquiry into the Rossetti case is welcome, the problem appears to be systemic.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - The US trustee has objected to Kodak's plan to pay $13.5 million in bonuses to persuade certain employees to stay with the company as it reorganizes under bankruptcy protection. The trustee is an arm of the Justice Department charged with monitoring corporate bankruptcy cases. In a Bankruptcy Court filing Monday, the trustee said Kodak has not shown, as required, that the bonuses it wants to pay won't go to high-level insiders like chief executive Antonio Perez.

CLEVELAND - The Justice Department, citing "insurmountable legal and evidentiary barriers," will not reopen its investigation into the 1970 shootings by Ohio National Guardsmen during a Vietnam War protest at Kent State University. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez discussed the obstacles in a letter to Alan Canfora, a wounded student who requested that the investigation be reopened. Four Kent State students died, and nine were hurt in the shootings, which contributed to the change in the public's attitude toward the war. Canfora, who now directs the Kent...

NEW YORK - Walmart Stores Inc. is creating a new global compliance officer position following allegations the world's largest retailer covered up the results of an internal probe proving that its Mexican subsidiary bribed officials there. The new executive will ensure the discounter follows the US law that forbids American companies from engaging in bribery and other corrupt practices overseas. The officer will oversee five regional compliance directors. The company also is adding protocols to ensure investigations into possible violations of the 1977 Foreign Corrupt...

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration conceded the incontestable to a disgruntled federal court on Thursday, formally declaring that "the power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute. " Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., bowing to an unusual demand of the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, made official the backpedaling of the past few days over remarks by President Obama about the Supreme Court's coming ruling on the constitutionality of his health care overhaul.

A former office manager for US Senator Edward M. Kennedy who stole more than $75,000 from the federal government was sentenced Friday to 20 months in prison, the US Department of Justice said. Ngozi Pole of Waldorf, Md., was found guilty in February 2011 of wire fraud and theft of government property for giving himself unauthorized bonus payments from 2003 until January 2008, according to the Justice Department. Pole was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release, perform 500 hours of community service, and pay $77,609 in restitution, the Justice Department said.

WASHINGTON - In a packed forum on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, the parents of Trayvon Martin found support among members of Congress who turned the death of their 17-year-old son into a rallying cry against racial profiling. Martin's parents spoke briefly before a Democrats-only congressional panel as cameras clicked in front of them. Many in the crowd, which filled the seats and lined the walls, strained to catch a glimpse of the parents whose son was shot and killed Feb. 26 in a Sanford, Fla. gated community.

A major opposition figure and candidate for mayor of Puerto Rico's capital charged Monday that a domestic violence investigation at his home was excessive and politically motivated. Hector Ferrer, minority leader in the U.S. territory's House of Representatives, was arrested Thursday for alleged domestic violence at his home in a San Juan suburb. Police said there was evidence he damaged the house and made crude statements to his wife in the presence of his 5-year-old son. In his first public comments since his arrest, Ferrer asserted that Puerto Rico's Department of the...

A 14-year-old girl who stabbed about three dozen classmates with a hypodermic needle at her Puerto Rico school has been sentenced to two years of probation. The island's Justice Department says the teen will be evaluated at a hearing every three months during the probationary period. The Justice Department announced the sentence Friday. The court hearing was closed and the girl's name was not released because of her age. Authorities say the teen stabbed at least 37 classmates in the town of Arroyo in September.

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — The attorney for the family of a black teenager fatally shot by a neighborhood watch captain said today that the boy was talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone when the confrontation began. She heard an exchange of words, what sounded like a scuffle but not the shooting. The phone call was discussed at a news conference that followed announcements that the US Justice department would probe the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and that a local grand jury will also consider evidence in the case.