Salon-

Despite all the unabashed punditry, relatively little is known by the country about Loretta Lynch, the low-profile U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, who President Obama nominated on Saturday to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General. We’ve heard about the cases Lynch has prosecuted for the government, from the police shooting of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima to public corruption cases against the likes of Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY).

But what’s less known is Lynch’s career in the private sector. After reviewing her record in this capacity, it’s not that she’s openly corrupted by the forces that increasingly rule our government, so much as she’s marinated in their worldview, in their cultural milieu. To ask her to take on powerful interests in finance would be like asking someone to rat out their friends.

Lynch’s first job was as a litigation associate at Cahill Gordon & Reindel in the mid-1980s. Their litigation department includes the legendary First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who defended the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case (Abrams subsequently argued the Citizens United case, on “campaign money is speech” grounds). But it also does a great deal of white-collar defense in securities and antitrust law, representing companies like AIG, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Bank of America and more. It’s a corporate law firm.

[SALON]

image: Reuters/Yuri Gripas

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