Hugo Black Courthouse
Two assistant U.S. attorneys (AUSAs) in the Northern District of Alabama apparently resigned about 24 hours after federal judge Abdul Kallon announced his resignation last week, according to a report at banbalch.com.
Who are the USAs, what do their resignations mean, and are they tied to the curious Kallon announcement, where he stated plans to give up a coveted lifetime appointment -- apparently because his wife had received an attractive job offer from out-of-state? Those are just three entries on a growing list of unanswered questions swirling around the Hugo Black Courthouse in downtown Birmingham. But the questions add to the sense that something big is brewing on the local legal scene.
A federal judge makes a stunning resignation announcement, followed by two U.S. attorneys hitting the exits? Those kinds of events are well outside the norm. Writes Ban Balch Publisher K.B. Forbes:
Over the weekend, the same high-level sources who accurately told us about Federal Judge Abdul K. Kallon’s abrupt resignation last Wednesday, alleged that two Assistant U.S. Attorneys in Birmingham have resigned a mere 24 hours later.
Yesterday, we, the CDLU, reached out to the Public Affairs Specialist for the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. We finally spoke at about 2:00 p.m. CDT yesterday afternoon.
We told her that we had heard that two AUSAs had resigned last Thursday.
She stated, “Oh yes…,” and then caught herself, saying after a pause, “I’ll have to check on this. Do you have names?” We told her that we did not, but we were calling to verify the news and obtain the names since it is highly unusual for two AUSAs to resign simultaneously.
She asked what blog we were, and we told her BanBalch.com the site that published the photos of disgraced ex-U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town having cocktails with Mark A. Crosswhite, the Chairman and CEO of Alabama Power and former partner at embattled law firm Balch & Bingham. She acknowledged that she knew the site.
The public affairs specialist suddenly was in no hurry to confirm what a reliable source already had told Forbes:
We emphasized that we wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth since last week our reliable source also told us of Judge Kallon’s resignation and we spoke to his clerk who confirmed the fact with a sigh.
She never replied even though we texted her cell phone Monday evening asking her to confirm or deny. This morning, we let her know we were on a drop-dead deadline. We left her a voicemail a little before 12:30 p.m CDT today.
The silence was beyond deafening, and confirmed to us that the reports of twin resignations had merit.
Now, moments ago she replied via text, “We have no comment.”
Maybe we know something we shouldn’t know.
