The timing of this is rather curious.
The Enron Task Force, which has filed 34 criminal charges against ex-Enron employees and their associates at other businesses since its inception in January 2002, has just gotten its third director.
Sean Berkowitz joined the Enron Task Force in December 2003 after working in the criminal division of the Chicago U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Illinois. In his five years there, his work ranged from the securities fraud prosecution of officers at Anicom Inc. to a capital murder case involving the death of a federal witness.
He was assigned to be a prosecutor in the upcoming case against former Enron Chairman Ken Lay, former CEO Jeff Skilling and former Chief Accounting Officer Rick Causey.
Berkowitz is a Harvard Law School graduate who graduated first in his undergraduate class in 1989 at Tulane University.
Berkowitz replaces Andrew Weissmann, who’s served on the task force from its beginning. Weissmann was assistant director under Leslie Caldwell and then took over as director himself in March 2004.
[…]
Weissmann is expected to stay with the Justice Department for some weeks or months, as Caldwell did before him. Typically prosecutors enter private legal practice or academia when they leave the government, but not all do that.
Why leave now, when one trial is in jury deliberations and another will be gearing up shortly? Tom thinks it’s due to the recent setbacks the Task Force has suffered. I’m no expert in these matters, but I have to agree that it’s odd that this couldn’t have waited a couple more days, until after a verdict was returned in the Broadband trial. Read Tom’s post and judge for yourself.