Michael Mukasey Biography

Michael Mukasey is the former federal judge who became Attorney General of the United States in 2007. He served in that post until 2009, the end of the George W. Bush administration.

He succeeded the controversial Alberto Gonzales, who resigned following congressional investigations into his leadership of the Justice Department.

Mukasey graduated from Columbia University (1963) and Yale Law School (1967), and worked as an Assistant United States Attorney in New York from 1972 to 1976. He served as chief of his district’s Official Corruption Unit from 1975-76.

A lawyer with the New York firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler from 1976 to 1987, Mukasey became a federal judge in 1988, after being appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Ronald Reagan.

He served until 2006, when he retired after 18 years on the bench to return to private practice. The next year President George W. Bush nominated Mukasey to replace Gonzales.

Mukasey was criticized by many Democrats during his confirmation hearings, when he refused to say whether the brutal interrogation technique known as waterboarding was a form of torture. However, he was confirmed by a 53-40 vote of the Senate and took office on 9 November 2007.

Mukasey returned to private practice, and in 2014 stated he did not believe waterboarding was torture.

He made the news again in 2019 when he registered as a lobbyist for an Iranian organization, all while his law partner Rudy Giuliani was in the news for his involvement in the scandal that led to President Donald Trump‘s impeachment.