U.S. Attorney Christina Nolan provided an early glimpse at the direction she would take when she was sworn in as Vermont’s top federal prosecutor in December 2017. In a speech, Nolan spoke directly to those who commit crimes against children, financial crimes and drug offenses that fuel the opioid epidemic.
“We have the talent and resources to bring you to justice,” she said.
On Sunday, Nolan’s tenure as the 38th U.S. Attorney for Vermont — and as the first woman to hold the job — comes to an end.
“I hope it sends a signal to people, all young people, especially women,” she said, “that there is no line of work, there’s no career, that you shouldn’t consider.”
Nolan has taken a hard line on drug and firearms offenses. She has prosecuted complex fraud cases. And, at times, she has clashed with Vermonters pushing to reform the criminal justice system.
Nolan has plenty of company as she leaves office. President Joe Biden’s administration asked nearly every U.S. attorney in the country to resign, as typically happens when a new president takes office. Nolan, 41, submitted her resignation last week to the U.S Department of Justice, effective Feb. 28.
It’s “commonplace” for a new administration to bring in new political appointees of their own choosing, Nolan said. It’s been a “honor and privilege” to serve in the post, she said.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Ophardt will become Vermont’s acting U.S. attorney. He has served with the office for nearly six years and will lead it until a successor is appointed by Biden and confirmed by the Senate.
Bipartisan praise
Nolan was named U.S. attorney in 2017 by President Donald Trump, with bipartisan recommendations from the state’s Republican Gov. Phil Scott, and Democratic U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy. At the time, Nolan had been an assistant U.S. attorney in the office for about seven years.
“In these divided times, terribly divided times,” she said upon taking office in 2017, “the parties came together to fill this position.”
Through a spokesperson last week, Nolan declined to answer what political party, if any, she belongs to.
Leahy is expected to speak about Nolan’s time in office on the Senate floor later this week.
“During her tenure, Christina worked to stem the deadly surge of heroin and fentanyl in our small state, and she has joined with federal partners to slow the illegal trafficking of firearms,” Leahy plans to say, according to draft remarks provided to VTDigger.
“Her personal approach to each and every case, signing off on every charging document in the office,” Leahy expects to say, “as well as her commitment to victims and her dedication to upholding the rule of law, are evident to anyone who has witnessed her work – and her work ethic.”
As the state’s senior senator, and a member of the same party as the president, Leahy is expected to to play a leading role in the appointment of the next U.S. attorney for Vermont.
According to his spokesperson, David Carle, Leahy has begun to discuss the opening with the Biden administration, but Carle declined further comment pending the selection.
Thomas Anderson, Scott’s commissioner of public safety from 2017 to 2019 and a former U.S. attorney appointed by George W. Bush, wrote a commentary shortly after Biden’s election urging that Nolan be reappointed.
Anderson, also considered a hardliner on drug enforcement, called Nolan an independent, nonpartisan leader who has the “respect” of law enforcement.
Nolan doesn’t expect to be reappointed. She said she is already exploring employment outside the office, though she said no final decisions have been made. A native of Westford and a Boston College Law School graduate, Nolan did say she intends to stay in the state.
“I do appreciate that I’m going to have to keep the lights on in my home and pay the bills.” she said. “I need to make a decision on that soon.”
A Trump appointee in Vermont
According to Vermont Attorney General TJ Donovan, Nolan was “a great partner” with his office and law enforcement throughout the state.
“I think it’s an example of bipartisanship, if you will, that people from very different political views can work well together,” said Donovan, a Democrat. “She was apolitical; she was a great communicator.”
In an interview, Nolan said she approached her job in an apolitical manner — and experienced little interference from Washington and the Trump administration as she carried out her duties.
The U.S. Department of Justice under former Attorney General William Barr faced criticism for politicizing the office’s prosecutorial decisions and for its cozy relationship with the White House. In Vermont, Trump was not particularly popular, losing to Biden in the state by a margin of 65% to 30% in the 2020 election.
According to Nolan, neither national politics nor Trump’s standing in the state affected her in the job.
“You have really total independence to do the job and to enforce the laws in a way that makes sense in your state,” she said. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach; that’s why you have 93 different U.S. attorneys, because it’s a different job in every state.”
There were a few occasions during Nolan’s tenure that her office received marching orders from the U.S. Department of Justice.
Take the case of Donald Fell, who faced the death penalty in the carjacking and slaying of 53-year-old Teresca King of North Clarendon in 2000.
The case had been working its way through the federal court system for nearly two decades. At one point, Fell became the first person sentenced to death in Vermont in almost 50 years, though that sentence was eventually overturned due to a juror’s misconduct.
Then, in September 2018, despite calls from King’s family to continue to pursue the death penalty against Fell, a plea agreement was reached that spared him the possibility of execution and instead sent him to prison for the rest of his life, with no chance of parole.
That decision, according to Nolan, as with all capital cases, was ultimately made in Washington, with the attorney general — at the time, Jeff Sessions — making the final call.
Still, it was left to Nolan, outside the Rutland federal courthouse after Fell’s plea hearing, to face the press. She said at the time that she understood it wasn’t the result the King family had wanted.
“This is not a good ending,” Nolan told reporters. “There was never going to be a good ending for this case because Terry King died in a brutal way, a terrifying way, a senseless way, and her family is suffering unspeakable grief; they have for 18 years.”
A focus on financial fraud
After her resignation was announced earlier this month, Nolan’s office distributed a document outlining her accomplishments. Among them: a conviction in the first human trafficking case to go to trial in Vermont and a conviction in the first federal hate crime charged in the state.
The document also highlighted her office’s efforts in pursuing an indictment and obtaining one conviction so far in the largest fraud case in the state’s history, the Jay Peak scandal. Charges are pending against three others.
It was an investigation that started in 2015 during the tenure of Nolan’s predecessor, Eric Miller, and continued through the May 2019 fraud indictment of Ariel Quiros, Jay Peak’s former owner, and Bill Stenger, the resort’s past CEO and president, as well as two of their associates.
The charges involved a failed project by the Jay Peak developers to build a biomedical research facility, known as AnC Bio Vermont, in the economically challenged Northeast Kingdom city of Newport.
The lure of hundreds of high-paying jobs ended with barely a shovel in the ground despite Quiros and Stenger raising more than $80 million from over 160 foriegn investors seeking green cards.
Quiros has since pleaded guilty to federal fraud and false statement charges and faces up to eight years in prison when sentenced later this year. The cases against Stenger and the two others are pending.
Asked why it took so long for her office to bring charges in the case, Nolan replied, “There were millions of pages of documents. The allegations are sweeping and complex and you want to get it right and you want to take the time it takes. We believe we got it right.”
In another high-profile white collar case, her office played a key role in a national case that resulted in a more than $8 billion settlement last fall with Purdue Pharma over the deceptive marketing of opioids.
Guns and drugs
Nolan has also highlighted her focus on drug and firearms offenses, which she said have exacerbated violent crimes in Vermont.
“Because there are so many federal gun laws and so few state gun laws, I said I want to do as many of those cases that I can,” Nolan said.
In 2019, Nolan’s office — along with multiple federal, state, county and local law enforcement agencies — conducted three separate “geographically-targeted coordinated ‘surges,” making dozens of arrests on drug and firearms charges. Those “surges” took place in the Rutland, Brattleboro and Northeast Kingdom regions.
“We are coming after those who prey on the lives of Vermonters by peddling poison and profiting from addiction,” Nolan said at a press conference after the Brattleboro sweep. “I promise we will be relentless.”
There was also operation “Fury Road,” an enforcement effort along Interstate 91 which spanned from October 2018 to February 2020.
In total, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Operation “Fury Road” led to 82 federal arrests for firearm and drug offenses and the seizure of 128 firearms, 7,511 rounds of ammunition and “kilograms” of heroin, fentanyl and crack cocaine.
Nolan said she understands that such sweeps won’t eliminate the supply of illegal drugs. But she said they disrupt the flow for a period of time, allowing people time to choose to seek treatment.
Speaking after the 2019 surges, Nolan took issue with claims that such raids led to arrests of low-level offenders rather than kingpins.
“If you sell fentanyl, you are not small, that’s all there is to it,” she said, according to a report in the Brattleboro Reformer.
“If you sell fentanyl, you can potentially kill someone,” she added. “Frankly, the same is true of meth, crack, powder, heroin. … We don’t see this as small-time behavior. These are the people who are making it possible for [out-of-state] dealers to operate here.”
Speaking to VTDigger, Nolan called one of her proudest achievements her role in the opening of a recovery center for women in Lamoille County. The facility provides a “holistic approach” to assist women not only battling substance abuse but those who have also suffered from domestic and sexual violence.
A ‘measured’ approach
Michael Desautels runs Vermont’s federal public defender’s office, which represents about 60 percent of the criminal defendants who come into federal court. He said Nolan was someone he could trust and someone who has always been open to discussion.
“I told her I couldn’t have asked for more than that,” he said.
In one instance, Desautels said, he strongly disagreed with the way a certain case was being handled by Nolan’s office, so he wrote her a letter.
“She said, ‘Come on over and talk,’ so we did,” Desautels said. “I think my points were listened to. I wouldn’t say there was a 180-degree change in policy or practice but it certainly was received and I believe it was respected.”
Desautels, who has held the same job through the tenures of four previous U.S. attorneys, said that Nolan brought more gun charges than others, particularly what had been a rarely used charge of being a known drug user in possession of a firearm.
“Before Christina Nolan you wouldn’t have seen a lot of those,” he said.
Her rationale was that drugs and firearms were a lethal mix, Desautels said. In bringing that charge, he added, the prosecutor’s office was not necessarily looking to put those people in prison but to ensure they couldn’t have a gun again, and if they did, seek a harsher sentence.
The hardline approach has led to clashes with criminal justice reforms backed by some county prosecutors.
In one case, shortly after taking office, Nolan released a statement pushing back against Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah George’s support for safe injection facilities in Vermont.
In such facilities, people can use drugs under medical supervision and without fear of prosecution, often coupled with avenues to addiction treatment and other social services.
Nolan, her statement, appeared to be threatening prosecution if safe injection facilities came to Vermont.
“Exposure to criminal charges would arise for users and [facility] workers and overseers. The properties that host [them] would also be subject to federal forfeiture,” the statement read.
George could not be reached for comment for this story.
Robert Sand, the founding director of Vermont Law School’s Center for Justice Reform and a former Windsor County state’s attorney, said he saw Nolan as taking a “measured” approach while in office, though he didn’t view her as a reformer.
“I frankly was impressed with the way she maintained some balance even in the face of a pretty conservative, and I might even say, right-leaning administration,” Sand said.
“With President Trump and William Barr as the AG, it’s not surprising the Vermont U.S. attorney was not perceived as a criminal justice reformer,” he said. “If the U.S. attorney for Vermont got too far out ahead of William Barr or Donald Trump, that person would be gone.”
Nolan, in a recent interview, said she believed she had strong relationships with county prosecutors across Vermont, though she acknowledged at times they didn’t always agree.
“Where there is a difference of opinion, that never impeded our ability to work on cases,” she said. “You can have an honest debate and disagreement and then come down on different sides.”
