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Mukasey Recusal From Madoff Case In Part Because of Ties To Defrauded Jewish Organizations

By Howard M. Friedman

In yet another twist, reported yesterday by the a href="http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/mukasey-recuses-himself-from-madoff-investigation/"New York Times/a and a href="http://cityfile.com/dailyfile/3530"Cityfile/a, Attorney General Michael Mukasey has recused himself from all Justice Department investigations into the massive Bernard Madoff securities fraud. One reason is that Mukasey's son, a href="http://www.bracewellgiuliani.com/index.cfm/fa/lawyer.profile/attorney/3e1d12f4-1163-4d2b-8857-a060a0243191/Marc_Mukasey.cfm"Marc/a, is a defense attorney representing Frank DiPascali, a top financial officer at Madoff's investment firm. (a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202426854578amp;rss=newswire"AP/a). However there are other reasons as well. Mukasey had close ties to two non-profit organizations that were victims of the Ponzi scheme. Mukasey's synagogue, a href="http://www.ckj.org/splash.html"Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun /aon the Upper East Side of New York, had invested $3.5 million with Madoff. Its affiliated Jewish day school, Ramaz, had $6.5 million invested with Madoff. According to a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mukasey"Wikipedia/a, Mukasey was a 1959 graduate of Ramaz. At a later date, Mukasey's wife, Susan, was a teacher and headmistress of the Ramaz lower school. Also both of the Mukasey children attended the school. (See a href="http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2008/12/jewish-charities-are-victims-of-madoff.html"prior related posting/a.)span style="font-size:78%;" [Thanks to a href="http://abovethelaw.com/2008/12/non-sequiturs_121708.php"Above the Law /afor the lead.]/span

Full post as published by Religion Clause on December 18, 2008 (boomark / email).