On April 20, President Obama put forth Mary L. Smith as his nominee to be the Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division. A hearing to consider the nomination was held last month, on May 12. The report on the hearing was sent to the Senate for consideration earlier this week. And that’s where things got ugly.
As an attorney, Smith has a pretty impressive resume. She graduated from the University of Chicago School of Law, cum laude, where she was a member of the Law Review. She had previously received a B.S., magna cum laude, in mathematics and computer science from Loyola University of Chicago.
Smith served in the Clinton White House as Associate Counsel to the President and Associate Director of Policy Planning before heading to Skadden Arps. She eventually moved on to Schoeman, Updike & Kaufman, where she is now a partner.
She’s a member of the Board of Managers for the Chicago Bar Association, a member of the Council of the American Bar Association’s Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities and Co-Chair of the District of Columbia Bar’s Section of Litigation Steering Committee.
And just look at this list of “Areas of Concentration” from her web site bio: Securities Enforcement and Compliance, Corporate Governance, SEC Defense and Investigations, Complex Litigation, Government Enforcement Litigation, Class Action Litigation, Securities Litigation, Appellate Practice, and Government Contracts Litigation.
You can read more about Smith by checking out her questionnaire relating to her nominations (it downloads as a pdf).
Some cool stuff in her background. But there’s something oddly missing from these lists… Oh, say, tax?
That’s right: she has no tax experience. She has never written a paper on tax, spoken on tax or even taken a CLE on tax.
She also has no experience as a prosecutor.
And yet, she’s been asked to serve as one of the highest ranking attorneys in the Tax Division of the judiciary.
I agree with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) who spoke out against Smith’s nomination, saying, “Tax law is very specialized and it’s certainly not an area where you learn on the job.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) noted that there must have been “thousands of highly experienced tax lawyers who would love to have a job like this.”
Um, yeah.
So why Smith? Clearly, it’s a political move. No Democrats offered clear support for Smith but still voted to send her nomination to the Senate. The committee vote was 12-7 in favor.
Surprisingly, there were a number of letters of support for Smith. You can read many of the letters here.
Of course, nobody asked me to serve…
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