Viet Dinh
 Viet Dinh    (lawyer, academic) | ||||||||||
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| Born | 1968-02-22 Saigon, South Vietnam | |||||||||
| Nationality | US | |||||||||
| Alma mater | Harvard University, Harvard Law School | |||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholic | |||||||||
| Party | Republican | |||||||||
As United States Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy a panelist for the discussion Have Civil Liberties Been Unnecessarily Eroded? at the 2002 Bilderberg. Chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act and is a former member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.
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Viet D. Dinh is a lawyer and a legal scholar[1] who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Born in Saigon,[2] in former South Vietnam, he was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act and is a former member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.[3][4][5]
Viet D. Dinh was a panelist for the discussion entitled Have Civil Liberties Been Unnecessarily Eroded? at the 2002 Bilderberg.[6]
Contents
Early life
Dinh was born in Saigon, South Vietnam. He and his family emigrated to the United States in 1978, three years after the fall of after the fall of Saigon. His father, Phong Dinh, was being held as a political prisoner (implying he probably was some sort of fairly high ranking official). They initially settled in Portland, Oregon, but moved to Fullerton, California, two years later.[7]
Dinh graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1990 with an A.B. in Government and Economics. While at Harvard, he was a member of the Phoenix S.K. Club. He then attended Harvard Law School, where he was a Class Marshal, an Olin Research Fellow in Law and Economics, and Bluebook editor of the Harvard Law Review, and received his Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cum laude in 1993.
Career
Law
After graduating from law school, Dinh served as a law clerk to Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor during the 1994 Term.
Dinh has been Associate Special Counsel to the U.S. Senate Whitewater Committee, as Special Counsel to Senator Pete V. Domenici for the Impeachment Trial of President Bill Clinton, and as counsel to the Special Master in re Austrian and German Bank Holocaust Litigation.
In late 2003, he was one of a group of prominent U.S. security officials hired by ChoicePoint to advise the company on developing its government homeland security contracts.
In 2006 he joined Kenneth Starr in challenging the constitutionality of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act.[8]
Dinh currently serves on or has served on the boards of the News Corporation, The Orchard Enterprises, Inc. (NASDAQ; ORCD), Liberty's Promise, the American Judicature Society, the Transition Committee for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Section on National Security Law of the Association of American Law Schools, the ABA Section on Administrative Law, Revlon, LPL Financial, and McAndrews and Forbes Worldwide.
Dinh has taught at Georgetown University Law Center, and became a partner at Kirkland & Ellis in September 2016, when Kirkland hired all of the attorneys at the firm Dinh founded, Bancroft PLLC.[9][10] Dinh left Kirkland in 2018.[11]
Dinh, along with fellow News Corp. board member, fellow lawyer, and Corporation executive Joel Klein, took over the investigation of the News of the World phone hacking affair and related Corporation issues in July, 2011, from News International UK Chief Executive, Rebekah Brooks. Brooks' own possible involvement in the phone hacking scandal made her unable to continue as an impartial investigator.[12] Tom Perkins, also on the News Corp. board, was one who recommended Dinh for the investigation role.
It emerged after he was appointed to the board investigation that Dinh is godfather to one of Lachlan Murdoch's children and friend of Lachlan since 2003. Further, in 1992, a decade before he met Lachlan, Dinh wrote of his sister, held in a Hong Kong refugee camp, in the New York Times, which led to NBC TV coverage and then to a series of articles in the South China Morning Post. The Post was owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Dinh's articles there were credited with helping free his sister. The personal ties to Murdoch interests and family were debated as Dinh took the role in the phone-hacking investigation.[13][14]
Dinh was mentioned as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States in a Republican administration.[15]
Department of Justice
Dinh served as Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush.[16] He was confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 96 to 1, with the sole No vote coming from Hillary Clinton.[17][18] As the official responsible for federal legal policy, Dinh worked with issues of illicit drugs, racial profiling in federal law enforcement, exploitation of children, human trafficking, DNA technology, gun violence, and civil and criminal justice procedural reform. Dinh was also involved in the selection and confirmation of 100 district and 23 appellate judges in his role representing the U.S. Department of Justice. After 9/11, Dinh conducted a comprehensive review of DOJ priorities, policies and practices, and played a key role in developing the USA PATRIOT Act and revising the Attorney General's Guidelines, which govern federal law enforcement activities and national security investigations.[16]
Georgetown University Law Center
Dinh has been a Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. His expertise lies in constitutional law, corporations law, and the law and economics of development. He was also currently Co-Director of the Asian Law & Policy Studies Program. He previously served as Co-Director of the Joint Program in Law and Business Administration, from 1998 to 1999.
Fox Corporation
In September 2018, Dinh was appointed as Chief Legal and Policy Officer of Fox Corporation and would report directly to CEO Lachlan Murdoch. Dinh is responsible for all legal, compliance, and regulatory matters, as well as oversight of government and public affairs.[19]
In April 2020, it was announced that Dinh and a handful of other Fox Corp. executives would forgo their salaries for six months as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.[20]
Events Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/2002 | 30 May 2002 | 2 June 2002 | US Virginia Chantilly Westfields Marriott | The 50th Bilderberg, held at Chantilly, Virginia. |
| Brussels Forum/2007 | Belgium Brussels | Yearly discreet get-together of huge amount of transatlantic politicians, media and military and corporations, under the auspices of the CIA and NATO-close German Marshall Fund. |
References
- ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/21/AR2009022101422.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20040216212445/http://www.usdoj.gov/olp/vietdinh.htm
- ↑ http://www.newscorp.com/news/news_208.html
- ↑ http://newscorp.com/corporate-governance/board-of-directors/
- ↑ http://www.seattletimes.com/business/murdoch-takes-on-shareholders-at-annual-meeting/
- ↑ File:Bilderberg-Conference-Report-2002.pdf
- ↑ Mui, Yian Q. "From East to West then Up and to the Right" in Washington Post, August 29, 2001. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2001/08/29/from-east-to-west-then-up-and-to-the-right/24a7330d-6cb3-44e7-9bab-30f53f083304/. accessed October 8, 2017
- ↑ http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102110&d=815&h=817&f=816&dateformat=%25B%20%25e,%20%25Y
- ↑ http://abovethelaw.com/2016/09/kirkland-ellis-hires-paul-clement-viet-dinh-and-all-of-bancrofts-lawyers
- ↑ http://www.bancroftpllc.com/who-we-are/viet-dinh/
- ↑ https://www.law360.com/articles/1083327
- ↑ Doward, Jamie, Toby Helm, et al., "Phone-hacking scandal: is this the tipping point for Murdoch's empire?", The Guardian, 9 July 2011 23.11 BST. Retrieved 2011-07-12.
- ↑ "Murdoch’s Denials Are Tough to Believe, Former Wall Street Journal Reporter Sarah Ellison Says", interview by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, July 20, 2011.
- ↑ Grover, Ronald, and Tom Schoenberg, "News Corp. Director Leading Phone-Hack Probe Has Personal Ties to Murdoch", Bloomberg, Aug 8, 2011 12:01 AM ET. Retrieved 2011-09-02.
- ↑ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1481879/posts
- ↑ a b https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2003/May/03_ag_291.htm%7Cpublisher=United States Department of Justice|access-date=July 2, 2017 quote=He played a key role in drafting and implementing the USA PATRIOT Act, landmark legislation that provided the law enforcement and intelligence communities with necessary tools to fight the war against terrorism. Dinh also spearheaded the revision of the Attorney General’s Guidelines, which govern the conduct of federal law enforcement activities and national security investigations.
- ↑ http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Washington-Notebook-Shaping-up-ranks-will-take-2033557.php%7Caccess-date=July 2, 2017
- ↑ https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/185579951.html?dids=185579951:185579951&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep+18%2C+2002&author=ERIC+LICHTBLAU&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&edition=&startpage=A.1&desc=COLUMN+ONE%3B+At+Home+in+War+on+Terror%3B+Viet+Dinh+has+gone+from+academe+to+a+key+behind-the+scenes+role.+Conservatives+love+him%3B+others+find+his+views+constitutionally+suspect.
- ↑ https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/viet-dinh-appointed-chief-legal-and-policy-officer-for-new-fox-300713577.html
- ↑ https://news.bloomberglaw.com/corporate-governance/top-fox-media-lawyer-to-go-without-pay-through-september
