Based on the large, and expensive, legal team he has assembled, Rupert Murdoch appears to be gearing up for a big legal fight, both in the United Kingdom and the U.S., over the phone-hacking scandal.

 

According to John Dean, writing in The Guardian, in Britain Murdoch’s parent company, News Corp., has retained one of London’s most expensive barristers, Lord Grabiner, who’s known to charge more than $4,900 an hour. Assisting Grabiner is the Washington law firm of Arnold & Porter, whose London partner, Kathleen Harris, is an experienced criminal defense lawyer.

 

Murdoch’s top American attorney is Joel Klein, former chancellor of the New York City school system. Klein reports to Viet Dinh, a News Corp. board member and former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. Viet Dinh is considered “Mr. Fixit” in Washington, and his law firm, Bancroft & Associates, is known for getting its defendants off on legal technicalities.

 

Klein and Dinh also have retained the Washington law firm, Williams & Connolly and its “highly skilled” criminal defense attorney, Brendan Sullivan, as well as Mark Mendelsohn, former deputy chief of the fraud section, criminal division, in the U.S. Department of Justice, and George W. Bush’s former attorney general, Michael Mukasey, and former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, both of Debevoise & Plimpton.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

For All You Need to Know About Rupert Murdoch, Look at His Lawyers (by John Dean, The Guardian)