Patel Won't Recuse All Local Prosecutors

People may grumble behind the scenes, federal Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said on Monday, but that doesn’t mean she has to disqualify the entire Northern District U.S. attorney’s office from a trade secrets case.

Patel denied a request by San Francisco solo Steven Gruel to boot the whole office off the prosecution of David Nosal, a former employee of executive search firm Korn/Ferry International, because Nosal had previously retained current U.S. Attorney Joseph Russoniello, who was then a white-collar specialist at Cooley Godward Kronish.

The Department of Justice had already recused all but one of the office’s lawyers, leaving as the last man standing Assistant USA Kyle Waldinger, who was allowed to report only to Washington, D.C.-based Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools — Russoniello’s predecessor.

“Rumors are always afoot, but that’s not the test [for a conflict of interest],” Patel said.

More fun with recusal arguments after the jump.

Gruel had argued that keeping Waldinger on the case created the appearance of a conflict, and said the U.S. attorneys’ own manual indicated a recusal was necessary.

“Mr. Russoniello, in letters, in telephone conversations, in, I believe, face-to-face meetings with Mr. Waldinger, tried to sway him, as to why the case [against Nosal] should not go forward … and that is where the appearance of impropriety begins to manifest itself,” Gruel said. “Now Mr. Russoniello is sitting down there in the corner office.”

But Schools, who flew to San Francisco from Washington to argue the motion, said the manual doesn’t create any rights for Nosal, and that the DOJ has the prerogative to choose who they want to handle a case.

“The court can inject itself into that only under very unusual circumstances,” he said.

Patel denied the recusal motion from the bench, and assured both Gruel and Nosal, who stood next to his attorney, that they would receive a fair trial from her.

More pretrial motions are scheduled for early January.

—  Evan Hill