Loretta Lynch, First Black Woman U.S. Attorney General

Loretta E. Lynch was confirmed by the Senate on April 23, 2015 and sworn in by VP Biden on April 27, 2015 as the 83rd Attorney General of the United States. President Barack Obama announced his intention to nominate Ms. Lynch on November 8, 2014.

Ms. Lynch received her A.B., cum laude, from Harvard College in 1981, and her J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1984. In 1990, after a period in private practice, Ms. Lynch joined the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York—the city she considers her adopted home. There, she forged an impressive career prosecuting cases involving narcotics, violent crimes, public corruption, and civil rights. In one notable instance, she served on the prosecution team in the high-profile civil rights case of Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was sexually assaulted by uniformed police officers in a Brooklyn police precinct in 1997.

In 1999, President Clinton appointed her to lead the office as United States Attorney—a post she held until 2001. In 2002, she joined Hogan & Hartson LLP (now Hogan Lovells) as a partner in the firm’s New York office. While in private practice, Ms. Lynch performed extensive pro bono work for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established to prosecute those responsible for human rights violations in the 1994 genocide in that country. As Special Counsel to the Tribunal, she was responsible for investigating allegations of witness tampering and false testimony.

In 2010, President Obama asked Ms. Lynch to resume her leadership of the United States Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn. Under her direction, the office successfully prosecuted numerous corrupt public officials, terrorists, cybercriminals and human traffickers, among other important cases.

Ms. Lynch is the daughter of Lorenzo and Lorine Lynch of Durham, N.C., a retired minister and a librarian whose commitment to justice and public service has been the inspiration for her life’s work.

Ms. Lynch enjoys spending her free time with her husband, Stephen Hargrove, and their two children.



Timeline

1959: Lynch was born in Greensboro, North Carolina in 1959.

1981: Loretta E. Lynch graduated from Harvard College in 1981.

1990: Lynch first joined the Eastern District as a staff attorney in 1990.

1999: In 1999, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to serve as the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

2001: In 2001, Lynch left the office to become a partner at Hogan & Hartson (later Hogan Lovells).

2010: She remained there until January 20, 2010, when President Barack Obama nominated Lynch to again serve as United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York.

2014: In September 2014 when Attorney General Eric Holder announced his intention to step down, Lynch was speculated as being a potential candidate as the next United States Attorney General.



Biography

Dr. Ben Carson

Benjamin S. Carson, neurosurgeon and Republican Presidential Candidate in 2016, was born on September 18, 1951 in Detroit, Michigan. Carson was raised in a single parent home when his father deserted the family in 1959 when he was eight years old, leaving his mother, Sonya, and his older brother, Curtis. Because of the turmoil in the family, Carson and his brother fell behind in school and he was labeled a “dummy” by his classmates in fifth grade. Once his mother saw their failing grades, she stepped in to turn their lives around. They were only allowed to watch two or three television programs a week and were required to read two books per week and write a book report for her despite her own limited reading skills. Carson developed a love for books and scholarship and eventually graduated third in his high school class. He enrolled in and graduated from Yale University and from there completed medical school at the University of Michigan after training to become a neurosurgeon.

Benjamin Carson joined the medical staff at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1985 he revived a little used surgical procedure, the hemispherectomy, which involved removing half the brain of a child who had experienced numerous seizures. This procedure had been stopped in the 1970s after hundreds of failed attempts. Dr. Carson, however, was able to complete it successfully. He made medical history again in 1987 when he led a team of 140 surgeons and nurses in a 22 hour surgery that successfully separated Siamese twins who were conjoined at the back of the head.