The man who brought down Eliot Spitzer.

by Scott Horton

Manhattan’s U.S. attorney Michael Garcia may have chased Eliot Spitzer out of office, but he also ignored years of chicanery on Wall Street. So how did he pull down a multi-million dollar job in private practice?

Michael J. Garcia is leaving his post as U.S. attorney in Manhattan to take up a $3 to 4 million per annum partnership at the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis. His transition has been marked with a number of puffy interviews with regional papers. The New York Times extolled his 16 years as a public servant and pointed to a bright career ahead in private practice. But his departure is not as smooth as the press coverage suggests. Congress is planning a hearing questioning his handling of the prosecution that forced Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York to resign and about the failure of regulatory oversight over Wall Street on his watch. The stench of collusion in his aggressive handling of the Spitzer case and his passivity in dealing with Wall Street hang over his departure.

Garcia’s sudden move to Kirkland & Ellis was engineered by executive committee member Jay Lefkowitz—a high-powered neoconservative who authored President Bush’s stem cell research policy and was once considered to serve as White House chief of staff. It caught many senior partners there by surprise. “Normally it would certainly be a plum to pick up a U.S. attorney, but frankly it’s disappointing when you first hear about it reading the morning New York Times,” one senior partner in the New York office told me. Garcia did not respond to inquiries for this story. The Chicago-based Kirkland has long been renowned for its ties to powerful Republicans. Former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr also makes his home at Kirkland, and the firm recently hired former U.N. ambassador John Bolton as a “special advisor.” It is said to be looking to recruit a number of other high-profile Bush administration lawyers.

“Michael was just fine as a prosecutor,” one of his close colleagues confided, “but he never really managed to shine. He made his way up the ladder with good political instincts. He had a knack for knowing what would make the politicos happy, and he played that very effectively.” Garcia made his way to Washington with an appointment from President Bush as assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Department of Homeland Security. Then he returned to Manhattan and the U.S. Attorney’s office just over three years ago, this time as boss.

Read on.