It is the honor of a lifetime to serve as Director. I long ago grew to know and admire the FBI from my earliest days as a line prosecutor to my years as assistant attorney general.
At the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey, I worked as an Outreach and Re-entry Coordinator and an Assistant U.S. Attorney. I have seen the best of our law enforcement community and the commitment that they have made to the public's safety. But I've also seen too many examples of where our system falls desperately short.
Any district attorney knows that an endorsement from law enforcement unions is vital to earning voters' trust. As a result, police unions play an outsized role in district attorney elections.
I was raised in a Bronx public housing project, but studied at two of the nation's finest universities. I did work as an assistant district attorney, prosecuting violent crimes that devastate our communities.
I started off as a prosecutor and I would be sitting there, waiting for the defense attorney to come, and they would either bypass me because they would assume that I'm not the attorney or they would assume that I was the legal secretary or a paralegal - never the attorney.
Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, has seen a few financial schemes in his time. As the lead local prosecutor in the world's financial capital, he has battled frauds like the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which stole billions of dollars from investors worldwide.
I was an assistant U.S. attorney. I was the associate attorney general of the United States, third-ranking official under Ronald Reagan.
I didn't spend a lot of time with prison guards, but my father was an assistant district attorney for a long time so I was always hearing stories about prisoners and prison guards.
I think the only time I doubted myself was my senior year in high school. I was not offered a Division I scholarship. I remember a scout from Ohio State coming in and looking at my film. He was all excited to meet me. Then he met me and I was 5'10" and he said that I was not a Division I quarterback.
Having served as both attorney general and deputy attorney general in the Justice Department, I had responsibility for supervising the FBI, working on virtually a daily basis with its senior leadership.
It is Hillary's [Clinton] star power that radiates to every corner of the ballroom. New York bigwigs, such as financial-media impresario Michael Bloomberg, attorney and labor mediator Theodore Kheel, and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, crane to see her.
As a former District Attorney and Attorney General, I know the urgency of providing safe homes, schools and neighborhoods for all. This remarkable tour-de-force is a powerful study of one promising solution: a data-rich, eminently readable demonstration of why we should treat gun violence as an American epidemic.
Then I usually leave the choice of the second assistant director and any other assistant directors to the first assistant director, who will choose because he or she is responsible for the conduct and the efficiency of the second assistant directors.
There are 10,000 local governments in the state of New York. Ten thousand! Town, village, lighting district, water district, sewer district, a special district to count the other districts in case you missed a district.
Unless you've ever been a law enforcement officer or a prosecutor handling a difficult homicide case, you cannot know what it's like to launch the type of investigation and come to the right conclusion.
Before I was a prosecutor, I was a defense attorney. I took a cut in pay because I wanted to stand up for the victims.