This Denver Post article reports on the appointment of former Enron Task Force prosecutor Cliff Stricklin as the lead prosecutor in the Justice Department’s criminal case against former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio on insider trading charges. Stricklin was a member of the Task Force’s team that handled the Lay-Skilling trial, although he sat about fourth chair and did very little in the courtroom during the trial.
However, neither the fawning Post article nor the other media accounts of Stricklin’s appointment that I have seen mention Stricklin’s dubious conduct in the first Enron Broadband trial, which did not turn out quite so “successfully” for the Task Force as the Lay-Skilling trial. As noted in this earlier post, Stricklin was one of the lead prosecutors during that debacle in which the prosecution was caught eliciting false testimony from one of the Task Force’s main witnesses and threatening two defense-friendly witnesses (Beth Stier and Lawrence Ciscon). Then, to top it off, U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore cut off Stricklin from further cross-examination of one of the defendants and rebuked him in open court during the latter stages of that trial when Stricklin violated one of the court’s limine orders. That trial — which appeared to be a tap-in for the Task Force at the outset — ended in a crushing defeat for the Task Force.
In the Post article noted above, Colorado U.S. Attorney Troy Eid issued the following statement about Stricklin:

“Cliff’s extraordinary background, including his work on the Enron Task Force, makes him the ideal leader to handle the Joseph Nacchio case while serving Colorado as first assistant U.S. attorney.”

Yeah, right.