Marc Mukasey
Marc Mukasey, a prominent white-collar defense attorney, and two other partners from Greenberg Traurig announced Wednesday the official launch of a boutique law firm, Mukasey Frenchman & Sklaroff LLP. The firm is "steeped" in financial services representations, "especially those that have potentially criminal consequences," Mukasey told ThinkAdvisor in an interview.
Besides handling corporate cases involving Securities and Exchange Commission and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority malfeasance, Mukasey is also mulling representing those involved in the recent multimillion-dollar college admissions scandal that has ensnared celebrities and financial executives.
While "not involved yet," Mukasey said, "we're in some discussions with some folks."
Mukasey, who also represents President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization in a couple of matters, including the case against Trump's charitable foundation brought by the New York Attorney General's office, has also represented a major corporation in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. His father is Michael Mukasey, who was US Attorney General under President George W. Bush from 2007-2009.
As to how Mukasey, a former SEC enforcement lawyer and ex-chief in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, feels about the college admissions' scandal and the unfolding legal cases, he said, "These are the kinds of cases you would not have necessarily seen 20 or 25 years ago, [when] there was a lot more violent crime on the streets. I think this stuff would have been dealt with administratively."
That being said, he continued, "they are well-investigated cases, and bribery is bribery."
Mukasey said he's seen first-hand how the Justice Department sometimes overreaches, pointing to his client, the former Louisville basketball coach Rick Pitino, "who was swept up unfairly and unjustly, in my opinion, in all the hoopla surrounding the bribery of athletes to go to different colleges."
While Pitino was not charged in the probe by the Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney's Office, "he lost his job and his reputation took a hit. I think that if you're a prosecutor you have to be careful how far you extend these cases."
