One key player in the ouster of eight U.S. Attorneys from the Justice Department has landed in private practice. Michael Battle, who headed the Justice Department’s Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys until earlier this year, has landed in the Washington office of Fulbright & Jaworski. For his time at EOUSA, Battle will be remembered as the man who made the calls to seven of the U.S. Attorneys to fire them on Dec. 7 (an eighth was fired earlier).
E-mails and testimony about the firings indicate that Battle had a relatively limited role in deciding which prosecutors would be canned. Indeed, when some of the fired U.S. Attorneys asked Battle why they were being given the sack, he told them the decision had been made “on high” and was unable to provide an explanation. Battle’s resignation from the Justice Department was effective March 16 as the furor over the firings reached a fever pitch, though friends have said he’d been planning to leave for some time.
