federal investigations with ties to public officials, similar to the one involving new york city mayor bill de blasio, probably will move forward in the trump administration, although the types of cases that the u.s. justice department will pursue over the longer term is more uncertain, legal analysts say. whomever occupies the u.s. attorney<u+2019>s office takes the lead role in choosing what crimes to prosecute; manhattan u.s. attorney preet bharara, for example, has made political corruption a top priority. new york<u+2019>s southern and eastern districts have a tradition of independence from washington, and most former prosecutors say the new administration<u+2019>s primary influence will be new leadership, not politics. the southern district<u+2019>s mr. bharara, the eastern district<u+2019>s robert capers and paul fishman, of new jersey, aren<u+2019>t likely to remain in office. all were nominees of president barack obama. new u.s. attorneys ordinarily don<u+2019>t drop cases unless they appear to be dead ends, which is why the investigations already under way are likely to proceed, according to current and former prosecutors. <u+201c>it is only in rare circumstances that a leadership change impacts prosecutions or well-developed investigations already in progress at the time of the transition,<u+201d> said arlo devlin-brown, who once headed the public-corruption unit in the southern district. outgoing u.s. attorneys sometime push to wrap up investigations before a change in administrations<u+2014>more from a desire to finish what they started than from political concerns, prosecutors said. the bigger impact will be the shift in priorities and change in institutional knowledge. <u+201c>if you<u+2019>re a public-integrity prosecutor, and you<u+2019>ve been doing that for five years, you know who all the players are,<u+201d> said anthony capozzolo, a former prosecutor in the eastern district. under mr. bharara, the southern district has aggressively pursued public-corruption cases, most recently in september when it unsealed charges against a former aide to new york gov. andrew cuomo. the office is also looking into the fundraising activities of mr. de blasio, who hasn<u+2019>t been charged with wrongdoing. federal prosecutors also won convictions against former new york state assembly speaker sheldon silver and former state senate majority leader dean skelos. both men are appealing. still, former prosecutors say crimes such as corruption or terrorism tend to capture the interests of most people who would head the office. the larger questions, they say, is whether civil rights, police misconduct or environmental prosecutions could fall off the radar under the trump administration. mr. bharara<u+2019>s team, for example, investigated health and safety conditions at new york city<u+2019>s public-housing complexes and violence against inmates at prisons and jails. <u+201c>i don<u+2019>t think they<u+2019>ll walk away from anything that is ongoing,<u+201d> said paul shechtman, a former southern district prosecutor. <u+201c>it<u+2019>s awfully hard to say, <u+2018>we don<u+2019>t care anymore about conditions on rikers island.<u+2019> the harder question is, will they bring new cases.<u+201d> write to corinne ramey at corinne.ramey@wsj.com
new priorities likely for u.s. attorney offices - wsj
corinne ramey