https://www.newsday.com/opinion/in-the-heat-of-the-summer-1.13954895
https://outline.com/RWpyAy
At the groundbreaking Tuesday, LaGuardia Gateway officials announced that their private consortium has added new investors: basketball legend Magic Johnson’s infrastructure investment fund and his partner, Loop Capital Markets.
The Trump administration reviewed more than a dozen names for the coveted position of U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York and vetted a handful of them. Now it’s focused on two men: Richard Donoghue and Edward McNally.
Their names were sent recently to New York’s two U.S. senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, along with candidates for the Southern District, aka the replacement for Preet Bharara, and openings on the federal bench.
The two candidates for the Eastern District have contrasting backgrounds.
Donoghue, who lives on Long Island, is considered a “prosecutor’s prosecutor.” McNally has worked as a political appointee in past Republican administrations.
Donoghue, who is chief counsel to CA Technologies in Islandia, briefly considered running for Suffolk County district attorney this year, but having been nonpartisan, he didn’t have the needed political network in place, according to Long Island political sources.
He is a retired U.S. Army captain and served for seven years in the military’s legal system representing soldiers. A graduate of Hofstra University and St. John’s University law school, Donoghue spent 11 years as a prosecutor in the Eastern District, including heading the Long Island office and bringing MS-13 gang cases before taking over as chief of the criminal division. He left in 2011 to join CA.
In contrast, McNally is more high profile. He is a Chicago native and a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Marc Kasowitz, a longtime personal attorney of Donald Trump and a key member of the team representing the president in the special counsel investigation of Russian election meddling.
McNally worked as a federal prosecutor in the Southern District when Rudy Giuliani was the U.S. attorney. He also has more national experience: He spent time as a speechwriter under George H. W. Bush and in the White House counsel’s office for George W. Bush. He went to Yale University as an undergraduate and got his JD from Notre Dame. Earlier this year, he was being considered as a replacement for Bharara in the Southern District.
Schumer’s closeness to Bharara might be one of the reasons McNally was a nonstarter for the Southern District. All U.S. attorneys must be confirmed by the Senate, and while Republicans are in control, any senator can put an indefinite hold on a nomination. Schumer, The Point was told, warned the Trump administration long ago that he would exercise that prerogative on Eastern and Southern district nominees.