Minnesota Lawyer Blog

We just passed the one-year anniversary of the day (April 5, 2007) when three top deputies and one administrator at the office of then-U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose stepped down from their leadership posts in protest of her management style. It's an interesting milestone to reach as we await the results of a preliminary investigation by the legislative auditor into what's going on at the Minnesota Attorney General's Office, where similar issues regarding management style have been raised.

Of course, that's not what the auditor is looking into. His investigation is limited to determining whether there is any basis to allegations that AG Lori Swanson committed any ethical or legal lapses in how she has run the office. The narrow focus was designed to show respect for the wide discretion public officials -- particularly elected ones -- are afforded in managing their own offices.

Because the standard for ethical and legal violations is fairly high, it is not an unlikely result that the auditor will find that none exist. If that happens, it would be taken by some as a "clean bill of health" for the AG's Office, even though the underlying management-related concerns would continue to fester. That is unfortunate.

If I had my druthers, there would be a managerial boot camp or some sort of roving advisor who could counsel people such as Swanson or Paulose who, depite their intelligence and work ethic, run into difficulties managing a major public office. It's easy when you're locked into a combative management situation to lose sight of the forest for the trees. An outside perspective would be very helpful.

Katherine Kersten has a farewell piece to U.S. attorney Rachel Paulose in today's Strib worth checking out.

Not surprisingly, it's a positive look at some of the high points Paulose's tenure. Given that a lot of the press Paulose got here was unduly negative, I cannot begrudge her this one tribute piece. I have no doubt that taxpayers will get more than their money's worth out of Paulose in her new post in Washington, D.C. Whatever managerial issues she might have had locally, she is unquestionably a dedicated, hardworking and highly talented individual.

Vaya con Dios!

In her first public statement on the allegation that she once used a racial epithet in reference to a subordinate, U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose vigorously denied the charge.

“I NEVER made any such statement. I have told the department so, and the department is defending me against this outrageous and defamatory lie,” said Paulose in an online article posted on the National Review site.

Paulose goes on to add, "The McCarthyite hysteria that permits the anonymous smearing of any public servant who is now, or ever may have been, a member of the Federalist Society; a person of faith; and/or a conservative (especially a young, conservative woman of color) is truly a disservice to our country.”

The article was authored by Powerline blogger and Minneapolis attorney Scott Johnson.

Click here for more.

There has been a lot of back and forth of the Internet and elsewhere about whether or not new U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey will keep on U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose or give her walking papers. There are certainly some in her office -- and a number of partisan blogs -- lobbying for the latter. And indeed, it wouldn’t shock me if that happened. Most politicians do the easiest thing , and let’s face it, it’s much easier to throw something away and get a new one rather than to try to salvage it. We do live in a throw-away culture, after all. But personally I am loath to do that with human beings unless we have to.

My opinion of the situation of the situation at the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office has not significantly changed since last April, when I wrote a column expressing my views on it. At that time I pointed out that while Paulose appeared to be highly intelligent and hard-working 34-year-old woman with a sterling educational and legal background for her age, she was an inexperienced manager who made some managerial missteps due to that inexperience. Those mistakes occurred in a tinderbox environment because the people she was managing included career prosecutors with significantly more age and seasoning. As a result, she definitely suffered some growing pains, or, as former assistant U.S. attorney Hank Shea recently put it, had “a baptism by fire.”

Paulose does seem to be learning, reportedly delegating a lot more and promoting awareness of her office by doing outreach work on the road. The complaints I see circulating in the blogosphere trace back to events six months or more ago. (There are, of course, a number of matters under investigation in the office, and those matters no doubt will continue to be looked into.)

I have no idea what Mukasey will ultimately decide to do about the situation at the Minnesota office. Hopefully, he will examine the facts closely and weigh all the options before rushing to a decision. Personally, I would like to see him continue to give Paulose a chance to show that she has learned something from her experiences. If nothing else, you have to admire her pluckiness for even wanting that chance after the battering she has taken in the media and on the Internet. I can't quite decide if she is highly committed or just plain masochistic.

It was like the local U.S. Attorney's Office hit the daily double in Duluth today.

First, U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose announced in a Duluth press conference that 29 people from the area have been indicted for cocaine trafficking. Twenty five of those people have already been apprehended. (The move demonstrates that drug traffickers can't evade prosecution by setting up shop in greater Minnesota, Paulose told reporters.)

Secondly, U.S. District Judge Richard H. Kyle, sitting in Duluth, sentenced a man to 30 years in prison -- the maximum sentence -- for producing some extremely graphic child pornography. (Click here for Strib article.) The local U.S. Attorney's Office has, of course, made child porn prosecutions a top priority.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Attorney's twin victories yesterday did not translate into any victories for the Minnesota Twins. Playing in Toronto, the tanking team dropped yet another one to the Blue Jays. Perhaps they should have played in Duluth ...

So, we find out yesterday during Monica Goodling's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that somebody at the Department of Justice thought that former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger was spending too much time on Native American issues. Now I might be a bit old fashioned here, but isn't that maybe the kind of thing that maybe someone should discuss with him rather than just adding his name onto a list for firing? I wonder if the folks down in D.C. were aware that the Red Lake school shootings were a pretty big deal here. ...

In any event, if I were Rachel Paulose I would be opening a bottle of champagne, ... errr ... lemonade. I don't think Goodling's testimony could have gone any better for her. Goodling and Paulose became friends after Paulose was hired as interim U.S. attorney. They did not know each other prior to the start of the hiring process.

So, despite being roasted over a spit by the media in connection with the firings controversy, it now appears Paulose's only "crime" on that score was being a smart young conservative with a Yale Law pedigree in the right place at the right time. Or maybe I should say the wrong place at the wrong time. How many of us would want to take the nonstop beating leveled at her by the media for the last two months -- even if it came with a business card saying that you were the U.S. attorney?

There are, of course, internal managerial issues at the local U.S. Attorney's Office still in the process of being addressed. Now that the eye of this national storm has passed, maybe the office can finish hammering those out and get back to doing more things like helping to bust up that "sex slavery" ring. Just a thought.

In any event, it is now up to Paulose to succeed or fail on her own merits, which is as it should be.

No reason to leave the U.S. Attorney story alone. Deputy Paul McNulty resigned, ostensibly for financial reasons, and it has been reported previously that he was considering going back to the private sector. U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose was his senior counsel when she was appointed in Minnesota.

A few weeks ago, I posited in a post ("A double standard?") whether their was any significance to the fact that the general media had intensely scrutinized issues involving Republican U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose's Office, but had virtually ignored issues at DFL Attorney General Lori Swanson's Office. I provocatively threw it out for comment whether their differing political affiliations may have played into the disparate media coverage. That post led to a lot of debate.

I was curious if things had changed at all after it was revealed on April 26 that there were indeed significant management issues at the AG's Office and that the employees there were battling to unionize. So I went through the Star Tribune's archives and pulled up all the articles or blog entries chronicling issues at the two offices from April 27 until today. Here is what I came up with:

Issues at AG’s Office
-- “DFL rift exposed in fight between AG’s Office, Union” (4/27)
-- “Swanson-AFSCME Dispute intensifies” (4/28)
-- “Hatch quits post in AG’s office” (5/2)
-- Nick Coleman: “Mad Mike made for one AG too many” (5/2)

Issues at U.S. Attorney’s Office
-- Nick Coleman: “We need to know the answers about Paulose’s assent” (4/27)
-- “Former U.S. attorney was on early fire list” (4/28)
--- Correction: Letter stating Paulose went to “tier four” law school incorrect; she went to Yale (5/4)
-- “Ellison seeks Justice Department documents on Heffelfinger, Paulose” (5/9)
-- The Big Question Blog: “Assistant U.S. attorneys to Paulose: Quit dissing us and clear our names” (5/9)
-- “Workers who left Paulose’s office protest remarks” (5/10)
-- Editorial: Minnesota still needs answers from Justice (5/11)
-- “Gonzales: Justice Department working with Paulose”* (5/11)
-- “Gonzales Addresses concerns about Paulose”* (5/11)

* Although these last two stories both appear on the Strib’s website, they appear to be different versions of the same story.

The thing that kind of struck me is not so much the difference in the number of mentions between Paulose and Swanson (although it is substantial), but the fact that the Strib coverage of the AG's Office goes completely blank after Hatch announced that he was quitting. I guess Strib readers are not really all that concerned where that leaves things or what is happening with the unionization attempt now that Hatch has left. And this is before the recently announced cuts in the size of their newsroom. What will coverage be like after? Sigh.

We in the media love a local angle to a story, which is one reason there have been so many attempts to tie the recent upheaval in the local U.S. Attorney's Office with the national scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. It's tough to sit on the sidelines with such a juicy story brewing nationally. So when U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose's three deputies stepped down earlier this month, it gave the local media a chance to participate in the fun and games if only we could connect those darn dots.

The problem was that it required fitting a square peg into a round hole. As I pointed out in my last column "A management primer: Who moved the U.S. attorney's cheese?" the deputy dispute was exactly what it appeared to be, a managerial issue between a young new manager who wanted to change the status quo and strong-willed and experienced deputies with ideas of their own about how the office should be run.

Nonetheless, the attempts continue to tie Paulose's office with the national scandal. The Star Tribune reports today on a case involving a probe last summer by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office into alleged overbilling by an autism center chaired by Ron Carey, who is now chairman of the state Republican Party. In the middle of running for governor at the time, then-Attorney General Mike Hatch, a DFLer, referred the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office to avoid the appearance that any subsequent prosecution was politically motivated. The case is still pending at the U.S. Attorney's Office. (The Strib story published today is "Politics colored probe of autism center billing.")

So was this the ever elusive "missing link?" If Paulose's office has failed to prosecute a case involving a prominent Republican, doesn't that show she is tied in to the firings scandal and related attempts to politicize the office of U.S. attorney? Errr .... sorry. This one was an air ball. It turns out that Paulose prudently recused herself from the case.

But rather than just giving up he ghost at this point, the story then switches gears and goes after the assistant U.S. attorney who was assigned the case. The article maintains he had a conflict of interest because he applied for a judgeship from (Republican) Gov. Tim Pawlenty while the case was pending. Seems like a stretch to me to find a conflict here -- particularly given that Pawlenty had no idea that the assistant USA was handling the case and in any case wound up awarding the coveted judgeship to someone else -- but I suppose the Strib reporters didn't want to just write off all that time they had spent trying to connect Paulose to the national U.S. attorneys' scandal.

Meanwhile, speaking of the AG's Office, no one seems to have picked up on an ironic little fact reported Minnesota Lawyer's Bar Buzz column recently. Right about the time Paulose's three deputies stepped down, two of newly installed state Attorney General Lori Swanson's deputies departed from her office with nary a peep in the press. (See "Two deputies exit AG’s office," in the April 9 Minnesota Lawyer, password required.)

Swanson, a relatively youthful 40 and the first woman to hold the AG job in the state, is a DFLer. Paulose, a relatively youthful 34 and the first woman to hold the U.S. attorney job in the state, is a Republican. Hmm. We will leave it to you and the political blogs to speculate if there is any significance to the disparate coverage.

The House Judiciary Committee has made a request that U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose and several others submit to voluntary interviews as part of the committee's investigation into the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, according to the Associated Press. The request was reportedly made in a Monday letter to Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling.

"In our continuing effort to determine the truth behind these firings, we believe that these future interviews will also provide information which we may not already have but that is critical to our investigation nonetheless," the letter said.

Click here for more.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the Senate Judiciary Committee has rescheduled the appearance of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales from today to Thursday.

As a special extra to our blog readers, Minnesota Lawyer is once again making this week's editor's column available in its entirety.

A management primer: Who moved the U.S. Attorney’s cheese?

By Mark A. Cohen
Minnesota Lawyer, April 16, 2007

Unlike the silly tempest in a teapot some made of Rachel Paulose’s $225 investiture ceremony, the decision of the U.S. attorney’s top deputies to step down from their leadership posts cannot be laughed off.

It is a serious business indeed when three highly regarded career prosecutors take a risky step like that. And when such a radical move accompanies reports that the U.S. attorney’s management style is “abrasive” and “disrespectful,” we must be doubly concerned.

My, how things change in just a few short months. When Paulose became the nation’s youngest U.S. attorney at the age of 33, she was lionized in the media. Her confirmation in the U.S. Senate had been unanimous. The child of an immigrant family, she was on top of the world. But now she finds herself fighting to keep her job and to prevent her previously spotless reputation from being torn to shreds.

Welcome to public life, Ms. Paulose. And as bad as things have gotten, they have the potential to get worse.

A number of media sources have tried, though so far unsuccessfully, to link the current controversy in the Minnesota U.S. Attorney’s Office with the national debate over U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ role in firing eight U.S. attorneys in other jurisdictions.

Paulose’s predecessor, Thomas Heffelfinger, left public life 14 months ago for a job in the private sector. He has repeatedly said that his decision was personal and that he was under no pressure to resign. But the unknown in the mix is whether Heffelfinger was on a “hit” list of U.S. attorneys slated for removal and would have been squeezed out had he stayed. If his name was on the list, and the document becomes public, Paulose is likely to again find herself in a firestorm of controversy.

It would, of course, be a shame if Heffelfinger’s name is there, given that Heffelfinger is a dedicated public servant who ran the office for two presidents. But the people who added the name to the list would be the ones properly answerable for that, not Paulose.

By all accounts Paulose is intelligent, talented, hardworking and highly driven. As far as I can tell, there are really only two potential areas of inquiry left in determining whether she can be a good U.S. attorney — her independence and ability to manage.

Minnesotans have a right to expect their U.S. attorney will exercise her independent judgment in running the local U.S. Attorney’s Office. If the job were merely to be an instrument of the attorney general, there would be no need for U.S. Senate confirmation. By the same token, Paulose has a responsibility not to use her office for purely political ends. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I think that Paulose is entitled to the benefit of the doubt on these issues.

More troublesome at the moment is the question of Paulose’s managerial abilities. Given her youth and status as a relative outsider when she became acting head of the office last year, it was to be expected that some of the nearly 50 experienced, talented and mostly older attorneys who work there would be unhappy having her as a boss. However, the action by the deputies goes well beyond the typical grumbling. It would be doing the three distinguished deputies a disservice to imply that they would do what they did out of petty jealousies or mere office politics. I credit the reports that they had major differences with Paulose over her management style.

Paulose’s resumé is highly impressive. It demonstrates that she is a Type A super achiever with enough energy to power a small city. However, the one thing missing from her otherwise stellar background is significant management experience.

For someone used to relying on his or her own skills and hard work to achieve success, having to rely on the work of others, as is the case in management, can come as quite a shock. There is a real temptation to micromanage rather than trust your people to do what they do best. And when your subordinates are of a high level of ability, they are likely to feel patronized and degraded when you micromanage them.

Do I know for sure this is what happened in Paulose’s case? Certainly not. I am actually speaking from my own experience. When I became editor of this paper, I was a 32-year-old with limited prior supervisory experience. I probably committed every management mistake in the book during that first year. Fortunately, unlike Paulose, I was not operating in a fishbowl. After a lot of trial and error, I eventually found a management style that worked for me and survived the experience. In fact, I wound up becoming so interested in the topic that I began taking management classes and eventually obtained my MBA.

I have already noticed some encouraging changes in Paulose’s management approach. I read an Associated Press report that said Paulose early last week called a general meeting of her staff, acknowledged that she had made some mistakes and apologized. These actions are all positive steps.

So were do we go from here?

To borrow a reference from Scripture, as Paulose is reportedly apt to do, I do not agree with those calling for her head on a platter. However, to whom much is given, much is required. Paulose has been given an extraordinary opportunity at a relatively young age, so our expectations are correspondingly high. Hopefully, our faith will be justified.

Mark A. Cohen is the editor-in-chief of Minnesota Lawyer. He can be reached at (612) 584-1531 or by e-mail at mark.cohen@minnlawyer.com.

The Star Tribune has an interesting interview with U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose today, "Paulose says 'conspiracy theories' on her fast rise to top are off base." I don't want to get too much of the substance of the interview, since a column I wrote on some of these issues will be out on Monday. I would encourage you to read the Strib piece, and follow it up tomorrow by reading my column (which I wrote prior to this interview coming out).

The Associated Press had an interesting follow-up piece on the controversy surrounding the decision of three of U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose's deputies to step down from their leadership posts.

By Frederic Frommer
Associated Press/ April 10, 2007

The U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Rachel Paulose, apologized to her staff this week for "her mistakes" in the wake of the self-demotions of three of the top prosecutors in her office, her spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, Sen. Norm Coleman, who championed Paulose's nomination last year, told her he was "deeply disappointed" to learn of the resignations, and Rep. Keith Ellison called on Congress to look into the matter.

Paulose's spokeswoman, Jeanne Cooney, said Paulose met with her assistant U.S. attorneys on Monday and had an all-office meeting Tuesday.

"At both of those meetings, the U.S. attorney took responsibility and apologized for her mistakes," Cooney said in a telephone interview Tuesday night. "She also said something to the effect that she pledged to do better as we move forward. She asked employees to remain focused on our mission and our service."

For the full article, click here.

Kudos to the Pioneer Press for getting the scoop Thursday on the decision of U.S. attorney Rachel Paulose's top deputies to step down from their leadership role. Here are a couple of links to articles on it:

-- Shakeup at U.S. attorney's office (Pioneer Press)
-- Paulose shakeup spills into national controversy over U.S. attorneys (Pioneer Press)
-- Justice official is expected to help U.S. attorney's office (Strib)

All of the deputies are respected, so the loss is unfortunate. It promises to be an interesting time at the U.S. Attorney's Office as it undergoes a structural reorganization while under a national media spotlight.

Editor's Note: As an extra for our blog readers, Minnesota Lawyer is making the text of this week's editor's column available in its entirety.

By Mark A. Cohen
Minnesota Lawyer, 4/02/07

For the extravagance of spending less than the price of an iPod on the ceremony marking her investiture as the state’s top federal prosecutor, U.S. attorney Rachel Paulose recently found herself on a TV news report fending off a charge that she had wasted taxpayer money. How did this odd turn of events come to be? Therein lies our tale.

The 33-year-old was appointed as acting head of the U.S. Attorney’s Office a little more than a year ago after Thomas Heffelfinger announced he was leaving his post to return to private practice. Shortly before they adjourned for the year last December, senators unanimously voted to confirm Paulose to fill the post on a permanent basis.

Hailing from an immigrant family, Paulose has an impressive resume and a reputation as a hard worker. As the youngest U.S. attorney in the nation, she has a compelling story that seems tailor made for a feature article.

The Pioneer Press printed such a piece in February (in fact, it was puffy enough to make a magic dragon blush), but the honeymoon with the media was soon to be over.

Apparently lacking absolutely anything interesting to cover, KSTP’s Bob McNaney prepared an investigative report on Paulose’s investiture ceremony. (The report aired on March 23, two weeks after the investiture.)

Due to the large number of guests to be accommodated, Paulose had been on the lookout for a larger-than-usual venue for the investiture, and jumped at the University of St. Thomas Law School’s offer to make its auditorium space available for free. The deal was a good one for the UST, which got the distinction of holding a U.S. attorney’s investiture on its grounds, and for taxpayers, who did not have to pay anything for the space. (UST charges private parties up to $1,500 for use of the space.) Paulose’s office had a budget of $500 for the ceremony. Because the space was free, only $225 was actually spent.

I am at a loss to explain how this constitutes mismanagement of taxpayer funds, but McNaney’s report gives off the distinct impression that it was. I found the report’s attempts to make a federal case out of this $225 “coronation” laughable. The only thing missing from the melodramatic segment was a soundtrack.

And then it got one! The report cuts to a shot of a choir singing the national anthem at the investiture. Was having a choir sing at the event over the top? Film at 11:00.

Paradoxically, the report accuses Paulose of both wasting taxpayer money and acting unethically by accepting free use of the auditorium. The report maintains the space arrangement created an “appearance of a conflict of interest.”

The exact nature of this conflict was never fully explained, but presumably had to do with UST’s giving something of value (a discount) to the U.S. attorney. Where the logic falls down is that the discount benefited the taxpayers rather than Paulose herself. And just what is UST supposed to be purchasing? UST is a Catholic university with a mission of encouraging ethics. From the report, you’d think that Vito Corleone had loaned Paulose the room.

The report did mention almost as an aside that there has been some attrition from the U.S. attorney’s office. However, it did not provide any statistics, expert commentary or anything else to show the amount of departures was unusually high given the changeover in regimes. (I cannot say at this point whether it is or isn’t — only that the story should not be reported unless you have the evidence to back it up.)

My critique of the report would probably end right here if I had not gone on the KSTP website and viewed the raw footage of the interview with Paulose. As is typical with TV news, the station aired only a few short sound bites from a lengthy interview. The added footage is available as a Web “extra.”

I found what I saw disturbing. It is clear that Paulose is operating under the mistaken belief that the interview will be about her priorities as U.S. attorney. McNaney, of course, had an entirely different motive.

I am aware that Paulose as a precondition for her interviews has been asking that the questioning be limited to her priorities in the office. (In fact, that’s exactly what Minnesota Lawyer was told when we inquired about the possibility of an interview earlier this year.) Scott Johnson, a co-author of the Powerline blog and a friend of Paulose, confirmed for me that KSTP had agreed to those parameters. (I left McNaney a voicemail message last week, but he did not return my call — perhaps because I told him what I actually wanted to talk to him about.)

In the raw footage, McNaney initially asks softball questions. He lets her give an overview of her priorities, but then, seemingly out of nowhere, keeps bringing up the investiture (which had not yet been held at the time of the interview). At first he seems to know little or nothing about it, and even implies that he thinks it is going to be held at a courthouse. Paulose corrects him and tells him it will be at UST.

McNaney soon pounces, telling Paulose that he has a six-page single-spaced typewritten document that contains all the details about the investiture at UST. This document shows that it will be an elaborate affair at which there will be a … gasp … choir. Is she aware of the document? Does it surprise her to know that he has the document? Does it surprise her that somebody would give him the document?

Despite Paulose’s request for information about what document he is talking about, McNaney never offers to furnish the document or provide additional details. Without further information, Paulose wisely refrains from commenting on the purported document.

McNaney then switches to other topics, and soon asks the question reporters often ask when they are wrapping up. “Is there anything you would like to add?”
Paulose looks straight toward McNaney, and says in a clear, measured voice: “I would like to discuss more about my priorities.”

As I watch this raw footage, it’s obvious that everything she says after this point is going to be left on the cutting-room floor. Paulose herself even asks at one point, “Are you just going to delete all of this?” McNaney responds, “Naw. If we get more we can use it in more than one story, obviously.” It’s almost humorous to watch Paulose keep McNaney and his crew hostage talking about what they were supposed to be there to discuss when they so obviously want to leave.

By the way, I’m still waiting for those other stories from KSTP ….