Jay Clayton, left, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York at the New York City Bar Association, being interviewed by James M. McDonald, a Sullivan & Cromwell attorney.
Rick Kopstein
Jay Clayton, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Tuesday his top priorities on the job include focusing on “what everyday New Yorkers want,” such as going after gun and fentanyl-based crimes and increasing the speed of corporate compliance in white collar criminal investigations.
“For me, it’s what would New Yorkers want us to do? As you walk the streets, ride the subway, take your kids to school, there are people you interact with. How would they want us to spend our time? What would they want us to do?” Clayton said during a live interview by Sullivan & Cromwell’s James McDonald at a New York City Bar Association conference on white collar crime.
“For me right now…it’s [decreasing] crimes with guns,” Clayton said on his primary objective. “We should be able to reduce the number of gun-toting criminals in New York City. And [decrease] the distribution of fentanyl.”
Clayton, a former chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was appointed as Manhattan U.S. attorney in April after President Donald Trump nominated him for the job. As the U.S. Attorney for the so-called “Sovereign District” — considered one of the country’s most elite federal prosecutor posts — the office has faced its share of controversy with Clayton at the helm.
In September, the Trump administration abruptly fired Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey from his office. Comey is the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, a Trump adversary, and worked on prosecutions of both the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
Last month, Trump tapped Clayton to investigate potential ties between Epstein and prominent Democrats.
Neither the Maurene Comey firing and the Epstein investigation were addressed at the City Bar conference on Tuesday as Clayton mostly stuck to his office’s work on gun violence and his proposals to quicken the pace of white collar enforcement.
“One of the things that’s frustrating, which I think we all need to do a better job of, is time,” Clayton said. “If someone’s defrauded $100 and we get them back $70 tomorrow, that’s a lot better than getting them $90 in five years.”
When asked how he’d accomplish that, Clayton emphasized the importance of corporate compliance in investigations. To encourage that compliance, Clayton said he believed the barriers and consequences corporations may face when considering whether to come forward or accept charges for white collar crimes should be reduced or eliminated, something one attorney at the bar association event characterized as a “supply side liberalism” approach.
“We need real corporate cooperation, where the corporation and its shareholders do not sustain a serious penalty, or perhaps no penalty at all,” Clayton said. “I’ll have people come in to me and say…we’d love to agree to that charge and go forward. But we can’t, because there’s some collateral consequence.”
Clayton suggested offering all corporations that come forward a deferred prosecution agreement, which would temporarily postpone criminal charges while the corporation meets certain conditions, like quickly turning over necessary documents for an investigation, then dismiss those charges if the corporation complies.
“You can tell your shareholders, look, we’re solving it in conjunction with the DOJ, and we’re ready to go,” Clayton said.
