United States Attorney

Lawyers for former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona said Thursday that dozens of federal prosecutors have disqualified themselves from prosecuting his corruption case -- and the defense wants to know why. Carona's lawyers disclosed in federal court in Santa Ana that federal prosecutors in Los Angeles and Orange counties have declared an unspecified conflict of interest and said they could not be involved in Carona's prosecution.

After his first job, which involved routinely breaking the sound barrier in an F-14, and once tangling with a Soviet MIG off the coast of Vietnam, Tom O'Brien was looking for a new challenge. And somehow, working as a stockbroker just wasn't cutting it. So O'Brien -- already a law school graduate -- landed a job as a prosecutor, embarking on a path that eventually led to his appointment last year as the Justice Department's top lawyer in Los Angeles. For years, the job of U.S.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called on Atty. Gen. Michael Mukasey to explain the recent disbanding of a high-profile unit in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles that specialized in prosecuting public corruption cases. In a letter to the attorney general, Feinstein said she read about the shake-up in news accounts. The articles described how U.S. Atty. Thomas P.

Five months after the sudden dismantling of the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles, questions are still being raised in Washington, D.C., about the controversial move. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been exchanging letters with a top Justice Department official over the unit's disbanding, and the subject came up during a congressional oversight hearing late last month. In March, Los Angeles U.S. Atty. Thomas P.

Two prominent Democratic congressmen asked the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday whether the Bush administration forced San Diego U.S. Atty. Carol Lam to resign because of her vigorous prosecution of public corruption cases, including that of a longtime Republican lawmaker. In a letter to Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzalez, Reps.

In a highly unusual development, veteran Judge Dickran M. Tevrizian has emerged as one of the leading candidates for the job of top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles. Tevrizian, who has been a federal judge for 21 years, was considering leaving the bench to go into the lucrative field of private judging. But he was recruited by local lawyers to apply for the position, according to a number of people in the legal community. Tevrizian, 66, declined to comment.

Longtime federal judge Dickran M. Tevrizian has withdrawn his name from consideration as the next U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, it was learned Wednesday. Though Tevrizian declined to comment, others in the legal community said the 66-year-old jurist had recently notified a search committee for the Justice Department that he no longer was a candidate for the job. Only days ago, Tevrizian, a U.S.

Democrats plan to subpoena two more U.S. attorneys who were recently dismissed, as congressional leaders gear up for House and Senate hearings today to determine whether the Bush administration played politics with the firings. Meanwhile, a left-leaning congressional watchdog group on Monday called for a Senate ethics investigation into Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) for allegedly interfering with the work of the U.S. attorney in his state. That would be a violation of Senate rules.

Until recently, David C. Iglesias was best known in New Mexico as one of the role models for the military lawyer Tom Cruise played in "A Few Good Men." A trim, straight-backed former Navy lawyer, Iglesias rode that all-American reputation to high levels in Republican politics: He nearly became the state attorney general and was appointed U.S. attorney. Now Iglesias has a new role: star witness. The Bush administration fired him in December and contended it was for poor job performance.